Engaging the work of Robert Kegan, Mary C. Boys, and John Caputo, this article explores whether disaffiliation, or more accurately deconversion, might be one possible outcome of successful religious education forming a mature religious consciousness for postmodernity's changing religious landscape. Through a presentation of deconversion literature…

This article describes how communal aspects of faith find their way back into the lives of adolescents. The communal aspects of faith within individualized societies need more attention. It seems that with the current emphasis on individual faith, the intrinsic power of communal aspects of faith has been lost. This study shows that informal…

Drawing on perspectives from sociocultural theory, this article investigates how Christian denominations are represented in Norwegian textbooks of religious education and by young believers. The main finding is that textbooks and young adherents present religion in substantially different ways. While textbooks relate religion to global and…

Teachers in Swedish schools must balance the values imposed by law while simultaneously attempting to respect freedom of religion for their pupils. This study aimed to empirically investigate how teachers handle pupils who are Jehovah's Witnesses, a minority religion. Eleven, adult ex-members were asked to reflect on their experiences during…

The article focuses on spirituality on two semantic levels: the first one analyses participants' experiences during a winter expeditionary course on snowshoes and considers the question of whether residing in the winter landscape with a community of other people may acquire a spiritual dimension in spite of the non-religious environment. The…

Participation in the arts is a form of practical reason and as such has the potential to form and transform the faith of individuals. The findings from Katherine M. Douglass's 2011 study on the role of the arts in the faith lives of young adults provides examples of the transformative potential of the arts as they foster expression,…

Since 1995, the National Department of Education has developed a number of policies to give effect to the proposed transformation outlined in White Paper 1 (Notice 196 of 1995) and in subsequent legislation. A range of Acts and policies were introduced, many of them dealing with how religion should be dealt with in schools and it culminated in the…

This article explores the place of discourse about religions in education by comparing two very different schools. It initially outlines some of the current debates around religious discourse, notably in dialogue. A theoretical frame for analysing religious discourse in schools is proposed, combining a theorisation of three levels of dialogue with…

Yeshiva high schools strive to educate and inspire their students. In addition to the formal educational curriculum, a large portion of these schools' budget is spent on various types of programs in order to achieve these goals. The purpose of this study was to determine which elements of the high school program were perceived by students as…

This research is based on an interview and survey-based case study of an Islamic "lycee", a Catholic "lycee", and two public "lycees" in the Ile-de-France region of France. The study investigated whether students in private schools receiving some form of education about religion tend to be more tolerant and…

There are many pitfalls associated with teaching about religions. One such pitfall entails the risk of presenting religions as stereotypical monolithic systems; that is, all who belong to a particular religious tradition think and act in the same way. I like to call this sort of stereotyping the "robotic tendency" because it has a habit…

Islamic fundamentalism is an extreme perception of Islam that views "the 'Other' as the enemy demonized" against the "West", which also views the Muslim "enemy within". In contrast, pluralism perceives 'others' as different people, with different values from us. While the fundamentalist seeks to engage in war with the…

This article discusses the relationship between values expressed by "Hindu children" in Norway and hegemonic "Norwegian values". The discussion is based on interviews with children from the Indian Punjabi and the Sri Lankan Tamil traditions and on observations in religious education (RE) lessons. The children emphasise the…

This article reports on some of the research findings of a major, multi-site case study of character formation in young people in England. Religion was not the focus of this research, but emerged as significant in each case study. In particular, the religious and spiritual beliefs and practices of young people were positively connected with their…

This paper focuses on teachers of secondary level religious education in England, Estonia, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Norway. It presents a study of the teachers' perceptions of and responses to the diversity within their classes, in relation to their professional role and their personal and professional biographies. The study employed…