Dutch children and their ‘God’: the development of the ‘God’ concept among indigenous and immigrant children in the Netherlands

How Many Gods in Heaven? Young Children and Religious Plurality — Results of a Qualitative Study

“…In these countries and elsewhere there seems to be a growing interest in the relationship between religious plurality and the religious development and education of young children; but, according to these reports and to the best of our own knowledge, hardly any empirical data have come to light so far except for some studies from the Netherlands (see section 2.1). There certainly are studies of related interest (for example, ter Avest, 2009;Ipgrave, 2009); but for the most part these relate to older children and adolescents and not to the age group we are concerned with, which is young children under the age of 6.…”

“…In the Netherlands, Siebren Miedema and Ina ter Avest have studied young children in multicultural and multireligious contexts, including kindergartens (Miedema & ter Avest, 2008ter Avest, 2010). These authors are activated by an interest similar to our own in kindergarten interreligious education, except that they focus on the educational approaches used in kindergartens rather than on systematic research into children's views of religious plurality (although such views clearly play a part in their study).…”

‘Sami Religion’ in Sámi Curricula in RE in the Norwegian School System: An Analysis of the Importance of Terms

“…That students with an indigenous background might think in other ways than the (stereo)typical Westerner, though, was a finding in a Dutch research project that asked, "What do children do with 'God' when confronted with stories from different religious traditions?" (Avest 2009). In this project, they found that "Indigenous pupils more than children with a migrant and Islamic background, and girls more than boys, tend to explore new possible interpretations, e.g., the 'problem' of God's call to people" (Avest 2009, p. 256).…”

Learning to Live with Religious Plurality in Personhood Formation

“…One example in the Netherlands as it was practiced for 10 years is the one and only interreligious primary school we have had, the Juliana van Stolberg Primary School (Ter Avest 2003;. In a similar way this is still concretized and practiced in the state of Hamburg in Germany (Doedens and Weisse 1997).…”