Abstract
Starting from the last decade of the twentieth century, in particular after 9/11, people in Europe increasingly become aware of the need for social cohesion in the midst of ethnic and cultural diversity. The renewed importance of cultural and religious identity gives food for thought for teachers in primary as well as in secondary education. In this contribution the author describes two qualitative research projects, one in secondary education and one in primary school. Pupils and youngsters are interviewed on their perceptions and receptions of religion. The results show that youngsters show curiosity towards ‘the other’ and that pupils in primary school develop an open attitude. As a tentative conclusion, the author states that intentional learning of dialogicality is promising and should be prioritised in education to learn with and from ‘the other’ in order to create social cohesion.
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Notes
- 1.
REDCo is the acronym for Religion in Education: a factor of Conflict or contributing to Dialogue? It is a European project running from 2006 to 2009; its project leader is Prof. Dr. Wolfram Weisze from Hamburg University, Germany. The following countries participated in this project: England, Estonia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Russia and Spain.
- 2.
‘whateverism’ is a translation of ‘ietsisme’ as a new developed word in the Dutch language, coined by R. Plasterk, the former minister of Education, Culture and Science.
- 3.
With the concept of interplexity, we refer to the interrelatedness not only of different factors influencing each other, which already is very complex in itself, but at the same time the result of these complex influences in itself influences other factors and their interrelations (Kunneman 1997).
- 4.
In what follows, the school will be referred to as interreligious primary school.
- 5.
Instead of interreligious school, the school is also referred to as a Christian-Islamic primary school.
- 6.
Longitudinal research in general is hampered by a loss of respondents; in this case, the loss is even worse due to the fact that during the last 3 years of secondary school, there had been very little contact with the young adolescents, in combination with the fact that the dialogical interview that completed the research demanded a voluntary time investment of the youngsters of 2 × 2 h.
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Avest, I.t. (2013). Religious Education Beyond Multireligious Instruction: Pupils’ and Students’ Reactions to Religious Education in a Context of Diversity. In: Gross, Z., Davies, L., Diab, AK. (eds) Gender, Religion and Education in a Chaotic Postmodern World. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5270-2_10
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