Siebren Miedema

Ina ter Avest

Geir Skeie

Judith Everington

The relevance of contextual perspectives in religious education has been growing for the last decade. It has been central to the European Network for Religious Education through Contextual Approaches (ENRECA) - the research network that has produced the present book. Several members of the network have contributed to the theoretical and empirical development of contextual approaches in different publications, but for the first time this has been the focus of an entire collectively produced volume. The history of the book dates back to research seminars in 2009 and 2010 and is based on the discussions in the seminar. The chapters have been developed through a process of critical examination. Through this process we believe to have produced a coherent and also comprehensively rich book, dealing with the issue of context as a challenge, and also a stimulus to religious education research and practice. The chapters are presenting both empirical research and scholarly investigation into methodological and theoretical dimensions. Taken together we hope that this book will contribute to the further development of contextual thinking in religious education research. Or aim has not been to answer all questions, but rather to pose questions and to complicate things in order to enrich the academic field of religion in education.

Empirical, Methodological and Theoretical Perspectives

Exploring Context in Religious Education Research

Alma Lanser-van der Velde

Wilna A.J. Meijer

This volume brings together a selection of papers presented at the Fifteenth Session of the International Seminar on Religious Education and Values (ISREV), which took place in 2006 in Driebergen, the Netherlands, addressing the theme ‘Religious Education in a World of Religious Diversity’. The authors were invited to combine the concept of diversity with the dimensions of temporality, of time and history in reworking their contributions for this book. This temporal aspect is in a sense inherent in educational thinking. On the one hand education as intergenerational transmission has a conservative aspect: tradition being what is actually and presently transmitted from the past and/or what is considered worthwhile to be passed on. On the other hand, acknowledging the activity of students themselves as a prerequisite for any education to happen, brings the open-endedness and therefore the future into the pedagogical arena in terms of development, learning, reflection, edification, et cetera. So, the question answered in this volume is what does this inherent historicity mean for religious education as well as for (the concept) religion and religious diversity? In answering this question the contributions represent the global character of the concern with religious diversity in relation to religious education, and originate respectively from the following countries: Canada (Bhikkhu, English), United States (Moran), Latvia (Ilishko), Russia (Kozyrev), Germany (Pirner), South Africa (Roux, du Preez, Ferguson), Japan (Omori), Australia (de Souza), Turkey (Selçuk), and the Netherlands (Meijer, Miedema).

Siebren Miedema

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