Subjectification as an Educational Goal in Religious and Worldview Education in Early Childhood Education and Care

Abstract

This chapter investigates the educational purpose of religious and worldview education in the context of early childhood education and care (ECEC). This reflection stems from Gert Biesta’s three-fold conceptualization of education where different domains of qualification, socialization and subjectification provide a point of reflection to investigate the educational aims of religious and worldview education. The study will argue for this kind of purposefulness in religious and worldview education in helping children to position themselves differently in relation to the world and to open up new ways of being in and with the world. This will be regarded as subjectification. However, the conceptual analysis will be critically reflected against Emmanuel Levinas’ ideas of subjectivity, which challenge the notion of a free autonomous subject as an outcome of education and see subjectivity as emerging through relationality. In most European countries, the disciplinary background of religious education has been gradually distancing itself from theological disciplines while at the same time approaching general educational and the social sciences. This has meant a challenge for religious education in epistemologically redefining itself in the midst of secular and diversified views of educational aims. In order to contextualize the aforementioned analysis, the chapter discusses the philosophical analysis of educational purpose with the current academic debate on religion, worldviews and education, using the Finnish education and national core curriculum as one national, normative example. Moving the focus from epistemological to educational, the chapter attempts to bring children and their uniqueness as educational subjects into central focus.