Interreligious education: Conceptualising a needs assessment framework for curriculum design in plural societies (with special reference to Mauritius)

Abstract

The growing debate on intercultural and interreligious dialogue has one major drawback: how to translate academic and theoretical contributions into practical tools for educators and policy makers. This paper aims to fill this gap by presenting a transferable “needs assessment model” based on five criteria and twenty measurable indicators of interreligious relations within a country. Using the example of Mauritius, a densely multilingual and multireligious country, the paper gives an inside view of the preparations which led to the launch of an innovative “Peace and Interfaith Studies” course at the University of Mauritius in 2010. The author was himself involved first as a curriculum consultant and then as a project manager of this course at the Council of Religions in Mauritius. After clarifying the differences between related concepts like multicultural education, intercultural education and religious education, the author defines “interreligious education” as being distinct from all of the above. The paper then proceeds to explain the rationale of interreligious education, followed by the identification of the critical factors which affect curriculum design and policy making. It uses these factors to highlight how each of them operates in Mauritius to create a web of complexity which makes interreligious education extremely volatile. This is followed by an overview of religious education in the Mauritian schooling system, an overview of the needs assessment framework and a description of the innovative “Peace and Interfaith Studies” course. The paper ends with a brief discussion of the main challenges of this model.