Using Contextual Approach for Preparation of the Syllabus for Inter-religious Learning

Abstract

Today’s changing world creates new challenges for Religious Education (RE). On the one hand, in several secularised societies, where several institutionalised religious traditions lose more and more adherents, RE has the task of ‘bridge-builder’ – to help pupils to find access to the rich heritage of religious traditions. On the other hand, life in the ‘global village’ and growing plurality in the students’ lifeworld brings forth the necessity of intercultural and inter-religious learning to enrich students’ lifeworld and lay foundations for the peaceful co-existense of people with different worldviews. Facing these new RE horizons raises the necessity to re-think and re-examine the models of RE. The chapter presents a contextual approach model to the design of an RE syllabus that incorporates inter-religious learning. The approach that takes into consideration different aspects to determine the bases for RE could be used on different levels – for developing a suitable concept of RE for particular contexts, to re-think the aims and nature of the subject, to find new and fresh teaching methods and learning content. The first part of the chapter presents the theoretical framework of the contextual approach, the second one introduces the model of contextual analysis to determine the base for RE and inter-religious learning. The last part of the chapter takes a closer look at the different aspects of the contextual analysis pointing to the issues that have to be taken into consideration in syllabus design for inter-religious learning.