Transnational links of Afghan madrasas: Implications for the reform of religious education

Described as “terrorist factories”, the South Asian madrasas have become the subject of great controversy since September 11, 2001. In Afghanistan, people commonly blame Pakistani madrasas for recruiting Afghan youth into militant groups. In response, the Afghan government has initiated a comprehensive reform of the Islamic education sector. Yet, little analytical attention has been paid to Afghan madrasas and their transnational links. This article examines more closely the role of religious education in Afghanistan, transnational connections with madrasas in Pakistan, the alleged links to militancy, and the scope for reform of the religious education sector in Afghanistan.     

Problematizing public engagement within public pedagogy research and practice

In this article, we explore issues related to how scholars attempt to enact public pedagogy (i.e. doing ‘public engagement’ work) and how they research public pedagogy (i.e. framing and researching artistic and activist ‘public engagement’ as public pedagogy). We focus specifically on three interrelated issues we believe should be addressed by scholars as they continue to theorize, enact, and analyze public pedagogies in the broader public sphere: (a) power dynamics embedded in individualized versus more collective enactments of public intellectualism; (b) conflicting and complicated conceptualizations of the relationship between the public pedagogue and the public, and how that relationship should be enacted; and (c) ethical issues surrounding the framing of public engagement and activist work under the umbrella of ‘pedagogy’.     

Legitimizing public schooling and innovative education policies in strict religious communities: the story of the new Haredi public education stream in Israel

The study explored how a group of private Haredi (ultra-Orthodox Jewish) schools legitimized an innovative non-mandatory reform. Specifically, it examined the circumstances that facilitated and hindered a coincidence of wants between the schools and the Ministry of Education, which resulted in signing agreements that changed the status of the schools from private to public. The study drew on interviews and on various documents, including contracts, summaries of meetings, and work plans. The conclusions portray the correspondence between the top-down and bottom-up processes that facilitated the reform. At their intersection, discursive interactions transpired between the Haredi inspectors at the Ministry of Education and school leaders, reflecting a mutual aspiration toward pragmatic legitimacy. The prominent barriers to the reform derived from the Ministry of Education’s strategic assumption that a quiet, unregulated reform would generate less resistance. However, this assumption led to actions that ultimately reduced the effectiveness of the discursive interactions and their ability to produce pragmatic legitimacy. We argue that to legitimize innovative non-mandatory educational reforms in strict religious groups, the State should speak in several voices: through discursive interactions led by cultural mediators, but also through official publications, regulations, and marketing campaigns that would strengthen the reform’s pragmatic legitimacy.     

Developments in religious studies: towards a dialogue with religious education

The early days of non-confessional, multi-faith religious education in Britain benefitted from close collaboration between academics in universities, teacher educators and teachers. This article attempts to initiate a revival of such a dialogue, by summarizing some developments in religious studies at university level and suggesting possible implications for religious education in schools. After a brief retrospective of phenomenological and ethnographic approaches in religious studies and religious education, it examines feminist, queer and postcolonial theory as well as the changing religious landscape in contemporary Britain and the wider world. Themes emerging from this analysis prompt the following proposals: to take an anti-essentialist approach to ‘religion’ and ‘religions’; to stress diversity within and between traditions; to recognise complexity and change in religion and society; to acknowledge both local and global contexts; to focus on real people and seldom-heard voices; and to criticize dominant discourses, whether as patriarchal, heteronormative or colonialist.     

Narthical religious learning: redefining religious education in terms of pilgrimage

Religious education at school should be more than just the acquisition of knowledge. It should not only provide cognitive facts on how religious people act according to their moral and religious convictions, but also on how learners can gain as much profit as possible from these facts in order to build their own identity as religious ‘tourists’. Good religious education challenges them also to become ‘pilgrims’ and to allow the ‘slow questions’ of religion to enter into their own life, in all their vulnerability and provisionality. This paper discusses the recent orientation towards religious experience in religious didactics in Western Europe and makes out a case for a mystagogical‐communicative or ‘narthical’ approach to religious learning. This argument is presented against the background of individualisation, pluralisation and detraditionalisation of religion, which is the typical context for young people in their search for meaning today.     

Critical religious education: highlighting religious truth-claims in non-confessional educational contexts

In this article, a religious education, which combines a respect for relevant critical demands, when analysing religious truth-claims, and a sensitivity to the need to avoid unwarranted criteriological constraints in the analysing process, is examined. Starting with an analytical comment upon Andrew Wright’s critical realist approach in terms of a ‘pursuit of truth’, the question of how to motivate epistemological analyses within religious education is raised and discussed with reference to three relevant sceptical arguments. These arguments are made objects of critical comments, and an illustration of pedagogical and methodological consequences is presented with reference to the new syllabuses for religious education in Sweden. Finally, a constructive re-interpretation of Wright’s approach is elaborated, and a critical position in relation to it is outlined.     

Empirical research: Challenges and impulses for Islamic religious education

ABSTRACT

The following article describes how empirical research can give new impulses to Islamic religious education. These impulses could lead to a reconciliation of the Islamic religious heritage with the fast-changing reality of Muslims in non-Muslim countries and societies. Due to the presence of Muslim children in public schools and the urgent question of their religious education, as an academic discipline, Islamic religious pedagogy (Islamische Religionspädagogik) has acquired a pioneering role among the various Islamic theological disciplines. On a scientific level, it has already taken its first steps in the scientific landscape in Germany and Austria and has established diverse references to modern science. Islamic religious pedagogy, as a young scientific discipline, necessarily requires empirical research to provide sound foundations for the quality of Islamic religious education and for a better understanding of religious educational processes. This calls for a dialogue between empirical educational research and theology and cannot be achieved based on purely theoretical assumptions.     

Fake news,fake truth: A new purpose for public schooling

The world is adversely affected by the plethora of easily available fake and misleading information. Public schools are established to help generate responsible citizens.Public schools may have a role to play in addressing the fake news, fake truth problem.     

Fascinating technology: computer games as an issue for religious education

Computer games as an important part of youth culture can, from a certain perspective, be highly relevant for religious education. I will review the role of computer games, and then give a brief overview, suggesting a specific phenomenological approach for research on computer games and religious education. After presenting one example of such research I will explore the potential religious dimensions of computer games and raise the question of the possible consequences for religious education.