Researching Religious Education: Classroom Processes and Outcomes (eBook)

Book Cover / Buchtitel 1
Contents / Inhalt 5
Introduction (Friedrich Schweitzer, Reinhold Boschki) 9
1. The focus on processes and outcomes in Religious Education 9
2. The wider background: religious education as a research discipline 11
3. Aims of the volume 13
4. The institutional research context for religious education at the University of Tübingen 14
5. How the volume developed 15
6. The breakdown of the book 16
7. Terminology 16
8. A note of thanks 17
References 17
Nested Identity and Religious Education Some Methodological Considerations (James C. Conroy) 23
1. Introduction 23
2. The nature of the task 25
3. Methodological Overview 27
4. The Professionals – Delphi 31
5. Being in Schools – An Ethnographic Approach 34
6. The Iterative Process 39
7. Conclusions 40
References 41
How Can Religion and Lifeworld Come into Dialogue with Each Other? A Research Project by the Essen Religious Education Research Group (Rudolf Englert) 43
1. The origins of the study 43
2. The aim of the project 44
3. Strategic decisions 45
4. Basic characteristics of the research design 46
5. The research instruments 47
a) The rating instrument 47
b) The instrument of the expertise of correlation 50
c) The instrument of the case analysis 52
6. Selected results of the study 53
a) A practice-based typology of patterns of orchestration in Religious Education 53
b) The observation of a tendency towards a descriptive rather than personally engaging type of Religious Education 54
c) The observation of weaknesses in the field of cognitive activation 54
References 55
Measuring Religious Competence: The Berlin Study (Henning Schluß, Joachim Willems, Christine Salmen) 57
1. Background 57
2. The Study 58
The Model of Religious Competence 58
The Construction of Testable Tasks 60
3. The Survey 62
4. Further results 65
5. Implementation 69
References 70
Researching Selective Traditions in Religious Education in Swedish Middle School. Delayed Meetings with “the World”, its Religions, and Existential Dimensions (Christina Osbeck) 73
1. Research context 74
Social Studies and Religious Education 74
Selections within the Religious Education field 76
2. Methodology of the empirical study 77
Selective traditions 77
Purpose, research questions and material 77
3. Selective traditions concerning content I: Religious Education and the other Social Studies subjects 78
Teachers’ perspectives concerning the balance of the Social Studies subjects 79
Selections in Social Studies subjects reflected in pupils’ perspectives on important content 79
4. Selective traditions concerning content II: Religious Education and selections within the subject 80
Teachers’ perspectives concerning the balance of content within Religious Education 81
Selections in Religious Education reflected in pupils’ perspectives on important content 82
5. Selective traditions concerning working methods: Religious Education and selections within the subject 83
Teachers’ perspectives concerning frequently used working methods in Religious Education 83
Selections in Religious Education reflected in pupils’ perspectives on important working methods 84
6. Concluding discussion 84
References 87
Researching Approaches to Religious Education. The Example of Performative Religious Education (Martina Kumlehn) 89
1. The project in the context of empirical research 89
2. The project in the context of the debate on performative Religious Education 90
3. Research design and methodology 91
4. Illustrative insights into a case example 94
5. Conclusion 101
References 102
Religious Education and Dialogue in Contextual Perspective. A Comparative Case Study in Hamburg and Duisburg (Germany) (Thorsten Knauth, Dörthe Vieregge) 105
1. Introduction 105
2. Methodology, methods, and terminology 107
3. Results 109
Similarities at the semantic level 109
Differences at the pragmatic level 110
Differences at the syntactic level and the impact of the contextual setting 111
4. Discussion: balancing tensions as a key task of dialogical practice 113
References 114
Video Analysis. Opening the Black Box of Teaching Religious Education (Ulrich Riegel) 117
1. The Technique of Video Analysis 117
1.1 Terminology 118
1.2 Benefits and Obstacles 119
1.3 Practice 120
2. Video Analysis in Religious Education 122
2.1 Video analysis as case study 123
2.2 Video analysis by qualitative methods 124
2.3 Video analysis by quantifying methods 125
3. Conclusion 126
References 128
Controversial Issues in Religious Education: How Teachers Deal with Terrorism in their Teaching (Trine Anker, Marie von der Lippe) 131
1. Introduction 131
2. RE and Controversial Issues 132
3. July 22 in school 134
4. Methods and materials 135
5. No joint strategy 136
6. Lack of time and expertise 137
7. Different teaching approaches 137
8. Discussion 140
References 142
Effectiveness of Innovative Ways of Inclusive RE in the Netherlands (Ina ter Avest) 145
1. Introduction 145
The end of the Dutch ‘pillarised’ society 146
Mono-, multi-, inter-religious: what’s in a name? 146
2. Islam in mono-religious education 147
‘Diversity – the key to peace’ 147
‘Every child matters’ 149
‘A bird with two wings’ 150
3. Islam in multi-religious education 151
4. Islam in inter-religious education 154
‘Child in context’ 154
5. Effective Religious Education 156
6. Conclusion and recommendations 156
References 157
Empirical Research on Religion Teachers. A Triangulated Study in the Evangelical Church in the Rhineland (Martin Rothgangel in cooperation with Philipp Klutz and Christhard Lück) 161
1. Design, method, and context of the study 161
2. Perspectives and experiences of Religious Education teachers regarding classroom processes 163
2.1 Pupil-oriented classroom processes 163
2.2 Emotional aspects and role conceptualisation when handling interdenominational and interreligious topics 165
3. Contextual factors of classroom processes 167
3.1 The reference field of Religious Education teachers 167
3.2 The contextual factors of (dis-)satisfaction 171
4. The pupils and the form of Religious Education 173
4.1 The pupils in Protestant Religious Education 174
4.2 Reasons for the abandonment of denominational separation in Religious Education 174
4.3 Attitudes to different forms of Religious Education 175
5. Outlook 175
References 176
How Teachers Deal with Religious Plurality in Denominational Religious Education. A Research Project in the Northernmost State of Germany (Uta Pohl-Patalong) 179
1. The Reason for conducting the ReVikoR Study 179
2. The design of the ReVikoR Study 180
3. Religious plurality as a natural part of denominational Religious Education 182
4. Didactic strategies in dealing with religious plurality 183
(1) “There is a common ground” – An increased consideration of topics which apply to more than one religion 183
(2) “That you think about what values these religions pass on” – World religions as a topic 184
(3) “Then I could always rely on insider knowledge” – Interreligious and inter-denominational learning 184
(4) “To get the others on board” – Religious multi-perspectivity 185
(5) “So you just always have to start from scratch” – Religious Education and religious literacy 185
(6) “I really just make sure not to get too biblical and too Protestant or Christian” – Holding back on the Christian denominational profile 186
(7) “I have to teach them the same topics” – Lesson planning without considering religious diversity 187
5. How do teachers picture the future of Religious Education? 187
6. Conclusion 190
References 191
Researching Classroom Processes and Outcomes in Religious Education. The Need for Intervention Studies (Friedrich Schweitzer) 195
1. Reasons for researching classroom processes and outcomes in Religious Education 195
2. Topics of research: The example of interreligious education and values education 199
3. The design of intervention studies and its usefulness for Religious Education 202
4. Conclusions 205
References 206
Interreligious Learning Through Perspective-Taking. An Intervention Study (Martin Losert, Magda Bräuer, Friedrich Schweitzer) 209
1. Introduction 209
1.1 The need for empirical research on interreligious learning 210
1.2 Interreligious competence 211
1.3 Research goals and overview 214
2. Method 215
2.1 Recruitment, research design, and procedure 215
2.2 Teaching units 217
2.3 The questionnaire 218
3. Results 221
3.1 Sample 221
3.2 Factor analyses 222
3.3 Measurement scales and variables 229
3.4 Learning effects 230
4. Discussion 235
References 236
Appendix 239
Interreligious Competence for Kindergarten Teachers in Education (Friederike Strohm, Rebecca Nowack) 245
1. Introduction 245
1.1 Aims of the study 245
1.2 How the study was conducted 246
2. How the study was conducted 248
2.1 Design, methods and sample 248
2.2 Teaching units 249
2.3 Measurements 250
3. Preliminary results 251
3.1 Qualitative analysis 252
3.2 Quantitative analysis 253
4. Discussion 255
References 255
Training Future Caregivers Through Religious Education. An Intervention Study (Martin Losert) 257
1. Introduction 257
2. Method 257
2.1 Recruitment, research design, and procedure 257
2.2 Teaching units 258
2.3 Questionnaire 258
3. Results 260
3.1 Sample 260
3.2 Factor analysis 261
3.3 Learning effects 265
4. Discussion 268
References 269
Appendix 271
Values in Religious Education. An Intervention Study (Friederike Strohm, Georg Wagensommer) 273
1. Design and methods 273
1.1 Procedure and sample 274
1.2 Teaching units 275
1.3 Measurements 277
2. Results 280
2.1 Interest 280
2.2 Value Orientations 281
2.3 Moral reasoning 281
3. Discussion 282
References 283
Researching Religious Education in Finland (Antti Räsänen) 287
1. Introduction: From catechetics to religious education 287
2. Paradigms and paradigm change 291
3. The paradigms of Finnish Religious Education 292
4. Discussion 299
References 300
Empirical Research in Austria (Martin Rothgangel, Robert Schelander) 303
1. Historical perspectives 303
2. Conditioning factors of Religious Education 305
2.1 Religious plurality and religious minorities 305
2.2 Curriculum and textbook analyses 306
2.3 Studies on the organisational form of religious and ethical education 306
3. Research on pupils 306
3.1 Pupils’ perceptions of Religious Education 307
3.2 Empirical studies of the religiosity, values and happiness of young people and children 307
4. Studies of Religious Education teachers 307
4.1 Prelude: Religious Education teachers in the big city 308
4.2 Main focus: professional satisfaction 308
4.3 Further studies 309
5. Education research in the narrower sense 309
6. General research in schools and religious educational research beyond schools 310
7. Summary considerations 311
References 312
Researching Religious Education in Switzerland. Empirical Research in the Context of Current “Didactic Paradigm”-Debates (Thomas Schlag) 317
1. Reasons for the lack of empirical research on Religious Education in Switzerland 317
1) Cooperation of state and church: No need for plausibility checks of RE 317
2) Lack of profile of academic religious education 318
3) RE – not a “regular” subject and not sufficiently interesting 319
4) The Churches’ lack of interest and their political silence 319
2. The current situation of Religious Education in Switzerland – the shift to new forms of Religious Education in schools 320
1) The pluralism-argument 320
2) The secularisation-argument 321
3) The dissatisfaction-argument 321
3. Starting points of empirical research 322
1) RE-teachers in the Cantone Berne (2004) 322
2) Evaluation of Islamic Religious Education (2004) 323
3) Arguing for an obligatory RE in the context of “teaching about” (2004ff.) 323
4) Teacher motivations in confessional RE (2009) 324
5) Subject-oriented and competence-based religious didactics (2010) 325
6) The societal relevance of RE and the responsibility for it (2010) 325
7) Assessing RE teacher trainers (2016) 326
4. Conclusions and future empirical perspectives – How to interpret classroom processes in a “teaching about”-context 326
1) Teacher’s training 327
2) REMEMBER – An international comparative study on the Teaching of the Holocaust in RE 327
3) Teaching Islam in RE – An international comparative study 327
References 328
The Micro- and Macro-Politics of the Classroom and of Classroom Research. The Case of Denmark (Mette Buchardt) 331
1. The scientification of public educational debate 331
2. The politics of classroom research 332
3. A concept for the classroom within curriculum as an extensive social practice 335
4. Classroom research in religion and school as social practice – and politico-scientific challenges of future research 337
References 340
Current State of Research on Islamic Religious Education in Germany (Fahimah Ulfat) 343
1. The term “Islamic religious education (Islamische Religionspädagogik)” 343
2. The Development of Islamic religious education as a scientific discipline in Germany 346
3. Current situation of the subject “Islamic Religious Education” 348
a. Systematic-theoretical religious education research 348
b. Historical research on religious education 352
c. Empirical research on religious education 355
d. Evaluative Research 357
e. International comparative research 363
4. Conclusion 364
References 366
Conclusions (Reinhold Boschki, Friedrich Schweitzer) 373
1. Introduction 373
2. Researching processes and outcomes in Religious Education 374
3. General observations 377
4. Perspectives for the future 379
References 380
Appendix 383
The Tübingen Institutes of Vocation-Oriented Religious Education. An Overview of Empirical Studies (Reinhold Boschki, Matthias Gronover, Christoph Knoblauch, Hanne Schnabel-Henke, Friedrich Schweitzer) 385
1. Introduction 385
2. Examples: Additional research projects carried out at the Tübingen Institutes 386
RE teachers’ spirituality: a qualitative teacher study 386
Development of Religious and Interreligious Competence in Early Childhood Education: A Qualitative Explorative Study 388
New organisational models for RE in vocational schools 390
The denominational character of RE: A Delphi-Study 391
References 392
Questionnaire: Interreligious Competence (Future bank employees) 395
Questionnaire: Interreligious Competence (Future Caregivers) 409
Authors 421