This article argues that crucial elements of the three most important theoretical models of twentieth-century education can be traced back to three Protestant denominations that were developed in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. First, rather than to look in depth at the Protestant Reformers' own educational ideas, the paper…

We study whether compulsory religious education in schools affects students' religiosity as adults. We exploit the staggered termination of compulsory religious education across German states in models with state and cohort fixed effects. Using three different datasets, we find that abolishing compulsory religious education significantly reduced…

The purpose of this article is to discuss the role of religious education and ethics instruction in the development of worldviews in public education using empirical data. The research question of the article is: How is the contribution of RE and Ethics in the development of worldviews perceived among 9th grade students? The study is based on…

This article reports on research into the influence of teachers' religious beliefs in religious education. Drawing on accounts from eleven teachers in Controlled Schools in Northern Ireland, it shows the contested space many of them occupy in relation to handling personal beliefs, teaching about diverse religions and articulating a public…

In the field of character education role-modelling is advocated as an important pedagogical strategy. It is supposed that students learn from "significant others" who exemplify important virtues and values. However, in these strategies it is not clear what and how students precisely can and should learn from exemplars and how the…

Much of the previous work on culture and moral reasoning development has focused on the cultural content of moral reasoning, demonstrating how moral autonomy, which emphasizes justice and individual welfare, is culturally structured. This paper investigates cultural processes of autonomous moral reasoning development by analyzing parent-child…

A century after partition, this article presents a critical reflection on efforts to address educational disadvantage in Northern Ireland using a Foucauldian genealogical theoretical framework. Beset by religious, political and cultural divisions from the very formation of the state in 1921, the article charts the history of opportunities heralded…

"What If Learning" is a pedagogical approach that allows teachers to deliver traditional content, as prescribed by national curricula, while at the same time promoting character virtues fundamental to Christian ethos. It encourages teachers to present topics from a different perspective, which shapes understanding through the lenses of…

This article examines how the process of constructing knowledge on impairment has affected the institutional construction of an ethic of disability. Its primary finding is that the process of creating knowledge in a number of historical contexts was influenced by traditions and the biases of philosophers and educators. This process was in order to…

This article examines how two Finnish religious education (RE) teachers, one in Islamic and one in Lutheran RE, seek to construct openness when dealing with religious truth claims and religious commitment, the key areas in which indoctrination might take place. It also observes how these constructions work in the classroom and explains them in the…

This article reflects on the place of RE in a pillarised education context, taking into account the fact of religious diversity and pluralisation among the school population on the one hand, and the freedom of religion and education of faith-based schools on the other. Particular attention will be given to Belgium and the Netherlands, which do not…

In Ireland primary RE is a fractured, contested, complex and changing territory devoid of a common language and characterised by a proliferation of syllabi and curricula generated for increasingly diverse school types. For centuries the dynamic decolonising process has led to a questioning of former orthodoxies and an attempted de-linking of the…

The focus of this article is on 9th grade students' (N = 9) perceptions on aspects that make them feel authentic in integrated religious education (RE) lessons among students of various faiths. All of the students had previously studied RE in segregated groups. The data was collected in a collaborative teaching experiment in Finland with student…

In this article, we examine how narratives of religious traditions are used as resources in religious education (RE) and compare practices from Evangelic Lutheran religious education (LRE) and Islamic religious education (IRE) in Finnish public schools. The sacredness of narratives from holy books entails that there can be contestations over their…

Given the volatile nature of American higher education, the need for institutions to promote a distinct purpose has become critical. For Protestant colleges and universities, the historical answer to questions of identity has traditionally been the "integration of faith and learning." Scholars have focused on this concept since its…