In this article, I discuss the potential of developing a kind of worldview education that has the purpose of enabling teachers and students to understand how worldviews are formed. I explore how suggestions of Ann Taves can be helpful towards such an aim and pay special attention to research into self-defined 'non-religious people. It seems their…

This paper analyses how 'polarisations' in which social tensions between the religious, ethnic and socio-economic groups are believed to increase are experienced and understood by secondary school teachers in the Netherlands. Based on the idea that polarisation is present in everyday interactions, this study contributes to an everyday perspective…

How does a researcher investigate phenomena that continually emerge through, with and as various practices? This paper explores this question, drawing on transformative reflections on the unfolding process of an empirical research project investigating professional practice in Dutch early childhood education. The project initially applied an open,…

More and more, Dutch adolescents are no longer affiliated with or involved in institutionalised religious world views. This development raises questions on how religion is treated and taught in secondary schools in the Netherlands. In order to reconsider religious education within these schools, closer insights into this particular, growing, group…

Universities worldwide are beginning to counter the prevailing neo-liberal ideology by paying renewed attention to the moral development of students and fostering their life purposes. This mixed methods study investigates the life purposes of higher education students in four institutions in the Netherlands (n[subscript Dutch] = 663) and Finland…

The formation of identity in a secularized world is different from formation in a religious oriented society. In this situation, educating young people and guiding their personhood formation is even more a task of connecting to the pupils from out of your own heart. A Catholic religious teacher can be a mirror for these young people when answering…

This article discusses liberal arts college students' perceptions of environmental and ecological justice. Complementing emerging studies of education that tackles human-environment relationships, this article discusses student assignments related to the debates in social/environmental and ecological justice written as part of the course…

This article brings climate communication approaches to transformational climate learning by critically evaluating an experimental climate communication retreat that brought 20 young adults from across Europe together in Austria to co-create climate communications as a constitutive dimension of climate action. Structured around the…

This article will discuss social, environmental, and ecological justice in education for sustainable development (ESD) and Education for Sustainable Development Goals (ESDG). The concept of sustainable development and, by extension, the ESD, places heavy emphasis on the economic and social aspects of sustainability. However, the ESD falls short of…

This article presents and discusses student assignments reflecting on the documentary film If a Tree Falls, written as part of the Business Ethics and Sustainability course at The Hague University of Applied Sciences. This article follows two lines of inquiry. First, it challenges mainstream environmental education, supporting critical pedagogy…

Neo-liberal voices are still very strong in education broadly speaking and have a marginalizing impact on normative pedagogies like religious, worldview, moral and civic education. But there are clear and hopeful signs that pedagogy is coming back. After sketching the current situation and its antecedents, the author addresses the views and ideas…

One of the main questions regarding Dutch primary education in our secularised and religiously diverse society--both with regards to public and religiously-affiliated schools--is how to get students acquainted with the symbolic language of religious and worldview-affiliated life narratives. Teaching literacy in symbolic language has become less…

Religious diversity within Dutch schools has greatly increased. We carried out an empirical study to offer insights into how secondary school teachers (try to) relate to the formal Protestant Christian identity of their school, the challenges they experience in relation to their own personal worldview, and the recommendations they have to overcome…

Background: In the Netherlands, most of the academic curricula for teacher training in religious education (RE) focus on shortfalls of students, like a lack of knowledge about the plurality of worldviews and the diversity in interpretations of the Christian tradition. In our research project, the focus is not on the students, but on the university…

Secularisation is often mentioned as an explanation for changes in worldview education in modern history. Worldview education has become less preoccupied with preaching religious truths and more with developing children's personal worldviews. However, how secularisation exactly explains these changes is not clear. To get a clearer picture, we…