Teaching Controversial Issues in Diverse Religious Education Classrooms

Karin K Flensner

doi:10.3390/rel11090465

Abstract

In educational contexts, certain issues are perceived as controversial, since they reflect conflicts of interest and reveal divergent views. This is especially evident in debates related to religion in societies regarding themselves as secular but whose population is multi-religious. The aim of this article is to analyse how some issues that are considered controversial in the public debate are represented in the teaching of non-denominational and integrative Religious Education in a Swedish multicultural classroom practice, where the majority of students have a Muslim cultural background. The ethnographic empirical material consists of classroom observations of Religious Education lessons in upper secondary school. The analysis is based on the debate about how controversial issues ought to be taught—as empirically or politically open/settled or in a directive/non-directive way. The results indicate that a number of issues—divergent interpretations of religious narratives and religiously motivated rules, holidays, views of forgiveness, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and abortion—were regarded as open political issues in classroom practice and these were taught in an open, non-directive way. Issues represented as settled were value-oriented issues related to female genital mutilation, forced marriage and child marriage and gender equality. The arguments supporting these values were mainly rooted in religion.

Highlights

Teacher: I want them to think for themselves
The overall purpose of this article is to analyse how some issues, that in public debates are perceived as controversial, are represented in the teaching of non-denominational and integrative Religious Education (RE) in a multicultural classroom practice where the majority of students have a Muslim cultural background, based on the debate about how controversial issues should be addressed in school—as empirically or politically open or settled (Hess and McAvoy 2015) or in a directive or non-directive way (Hand 2007)
This did not apply to teaching that addressed value issues related to female genital mutilation, forced marriage and gender equality, which were represented as settled

Summary

Introduction

We are here to shed light on things from different angles, to give possible perspectives on things, not to force an opinion on them Those who want to go on being fundamentalist may do so. Certain issues are perceived as controversial, since they reflect conflicts of interest and reveal divergent views (Ljunggren et al 2015; Stradling 1984). This is especially evident when the issues relate to religion in a secular and multi-religious society. The empirical examples are based on educational ethnographic data with classroom observations in a Swedish upper secondary school, where the majority of students have a Muslim cultural background

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion