Research in Religious Education: Content and Methods for the Postmodern and Global Era

This article presents an overview of how “Christian religious education” as a “polydoxical” discipline is being taught, based on a survey of 24 syllabi of graduate courses offered by scholars teaching in Mainline Protestant, Evangelical Protestant, and Catholic theological schools. The review offers an account of how the scholars frame the discipline in four dimensions: (1) how they define the nature and purpose of CRE; (2) how they describe and interpret the environment(s) for teaching and learning; (3) how they frame the “canon” of the discipline through texts and topics; and (4) the methods of teaching and learning employed.