Three dimensions and four levels: towards a methodology for comparative religious education

Abstract

This article is an abstract of a suggested methodology for comparative studies in religious education. It is based on a study where religious education in state schools in England and Norway were compared. The methodology is a synthesis of two sets of ideas. The first is an idea of three dimensions in comparative education: supranational, national and subnational processes. The second regards levels of curriculum: societal, institutional, instructional and experiential. I exemplify how this methodology can be used by referring to my particular study, but also suggest ways of developing it for further uses.

A Double Bypass? Tracing How the Aims of Religious Education Are Negotiated Across Different Dimensions of the Curriculum in Norway

“…Teachers that have been interviewed repeatedly bring up tradition and culture as central to RE, "which was basically a view of 'Christianity as Norwegian cultural heritage'." 88 Soundings that Bråten did among pupils furthermore show that they here mirror their teachers. 89 In her book, Bråten gives a thorough summary of an interview with an RE teacher who considered her main aim to pass on (Christian) cultural heritage and to introduce it to pupils from other backgrounds.…”

“…88 Soundings that Bråten did among pupils furthermore show that they here mirror their teachers. 89 In her book, Bråten gives a thorough summary of an interview with an RE teacher who considered her main aim to pass on (Christian) cultural heritage and to introduce it to pupils from other backgrounds. 90 This sentiment recurs in several Norwegian studies on the attitudes and motivations of RE teachers.…”

“…89 In her book, Bråten gives a thorough summary of an interview with an RE teacher who considered her main aim to pass on (Christian) cultural heritage and to introduce it to pupils from other backgrounds. 90 This sentiment recurs in several Norwegian studies on the attitudes and motivations of RE teachers. 91 Moreover, a closer look at textbook studies shows that their influence on teaching is not as strong as I initially stated.…”

“…79 Or, to use Bråten's term, a dimension can be bypassed. 80 I propose that the prefaces to the three RE textbooks, although different in several ways, unite in relying more on ideas and priorities hailing from academic, international fora and debates on RE. 81 For instance, in Robert Jackson's Signposts (2014) RE is conceived of and promoted as intercultural education, including many civically oriented aims, which include cultivating appropriate attitudes, against a background of upholding certain values, including tolerance, respecting the right of others to hold a religious or non-religious stance, human dignity and civic-mindedness.…”

Policy and implementation: local, regional, national, international, global

“…As Oddrun Bråten argued in her useful template for comparing religious education (Bråten 2015), influences also come from supra-national and sub-national dimensions, and the curriculum is inflected at levels including the individual school and single classroom. It is the relationship between official national policy and the experience of pupils in their classrooms that unites the articles and report in this issue.…”