Dialogue and Conflict on Religion. Studies of Classroom Interaction in European Countries

Book excerpt: Regarding teaching about religions and worldviews, there is a gap between the ambitions of educational policies and our knowledge about what really happens in the classroom. Research on classroom interaction about religion is not very far developed, either nationally or as international and as comparative research. There is a growing awareness, however, that research on pupils’ perspectives on religion in education is needed in order to develop sustainable approaches for future education, and this book is a contribution to this research. The classroom can be seen as an arena both for learning and for micro-politics. This arena is shaped, and sometimes challenged and restricted, or even curtailed, by the wider societal and political context. In this book we present studies of classroom interaction that focus on the micro-sociological level of research. The studies presented open up a rather unexplored field of international comparative research on religion in education and the role of diversity for classroom interaction, giving deeper insights into what happens in classrooms, displaying varieties of interactive patterns and relating these to their specific contexts.