Education and Engagement
Inspirational Inter-institutional Religious Education: A Cross-course Case Study from Qatar View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Robert Bianchi, Muhammad Modassir Ali, Akintunde Akinade
In Krahtwohl’s (2002) revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy, the two highest levels of cognitive processing activities in learning are ‘analysis’ and ‘creation.’ Yet creating opportunities for this kind of deep learning (Manalo 2019) can be time-consuming and challenging for instructors. The present study posits that interdisciplinary collaboration among students from different majors in different courses at different institutions can provide opportunities for these higher levels of learning to occur in a more engaging way, more student-centered way. This dynamic pedagogical approach has been labeled “cross-course” learning (see Nwokeji & Frezza 2017) to distinguish it from the more traditional “in-course” learning where students may work collaboratively but are limited to learning interactions only with their classmates at the same institution. Specifically, in the context of Qatar, this project explored the following teaching-related questions: 1. How do students and faculty perceive cross-course, interdisciplinary approaches to learning pedagogical content in the field of religious studies (RS) when compared to more traditional in-classroom approaches? 2. How do cross-course reading activities impact the quality of student learning? Preliminary survey results from this case study involving three partner universities at Education City in Doha, Qatar show that cross-course activities create more dynamic engagement and discussion than in traditional in-course reading activities. The researchers observe that such cross-course reading activities whether done in-person or online can add a valuable and enriching component to traditional religion-themed courses.
Performing Religion in the Resounding Classroom: Dante’s Inferno, Interdisciplinary Art Education and Religion in a Post-secular World
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Morten Stene
The notion of secularism and the binary distinction between the secular and religious it presupposes has since long been subject to discussion. Post-secularism is not the disappearance of the religious but rather a shift in the consciousness of the role of religion in public life. Thus, post-secularism implies an acknowledgement of the entanglement of the religious, spiritual, and secular in our modern world, including education. Current studies in music education research point to different ways music/art, education, and religion relate, conflict and can come together, both in theory and practice. If, as these scholarly contributions suggest, music/art, education, and religion can foster a sense of community and connections between different worlds and within people, it is crucial also to be attentive to the performative art educational processes where such relations can take place. With this paper, I focus on how relations between religion and art education are explored in an interdisciplinary co-art project (music, dance, and drama) in a Norwegian upper secondary school. The paper is part of an ongoing ethnographic study following fifty students and five teachers in staging and performing “Dante’s Inferno”. Data material consists of participant and video observation, teacher- and student interviews, and field notes. A narrative thematic analytical approach is applied. I contribute to the ongoing discourse with a reading of the German sociologist Hartmut Rosas resonance theory and its relevance for understanding the role of art and religion in education.
Theology and Culture in Contemporary Greek Religious Education: The Case of the Religious Education Curricula 2011-2018
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Stavros Yangazoglou
The main task of Christian theology is to interpret and update the faith of the Church through a fruitful and creative dialogue with culture and the various achievements of humans in every place and in every age. Nowadays, Christian theology must once again creatively dialogue with the diversity of the contemporary world and culture, without retreating into its glorious past. However, in order to participate in the course of the modern world and culture, it is necessary to leave its pre-modern security and its confessional introversion and to engage in fruitful dialogue with the modern pluralistic world. This approach has led to the design of new open and flexible curricula in Religious Studies, no longer as teaching and learning of a confessionally enclosed subject that does not dialogue with the cultural and religious diversity of contemporary societies, but as a process that perceives religious education through the fascinating dialogue between theology and culture. The introduction into education in 2016-2019 gave rise to intense controversy and eventually their withdrawal. Nonetheless, these new curricula created and offered for the first time in the history of the Religious Studies course in Greece a comprehensive Teacher’s Guide, but also a large database and a digital application with a variety of artworks, monuments, texts, musical archives. In this way, religious education in the public-school domain made the most of the interactive relationship between theology and culture.
