Since its establishment, Islamic religious pedagogy at German-speaking universities has primarily faced basic questions like: What kind of methodological and didactic approaches can be employed in Islamic Religious Education (IRE) and how should the structural framework be designed? Analyses concerning these questions are often drafted via…

In the long history of the Catholic school in Europe, it has taken various forms, linked to local cultures and to the history, particularly religious but also political, of each state. While it is possible to account for this diversity, it is also important to highlight common features and challenges, such as secularisation and globalisation,…

In Islamic religious education (IRE), as well as in the context of pedagogical and theological Islamic Studies at universities, Muslim educators, teachers, and learners in Germany and Austria encounter each other in a cultural, religious, theological, and ideological plurality. However, the existing intra-Muslim plurality is often neglected and…

The contribution gives insights into a comparative linguistic textbook analysis of two Austrian Catholic Religious Education (RE) textbooks for colleges for higher vocational schools ('BHS') and vocational schools for apprentices ('VocEd'). Gender constructions are still a desideratum in RE textbook research in Austria. Previous gender-oriented…

This article explores how the idea of teachers as agents of change is historically constructed through the institutionalisation, secularisation, and normalisation process of professional teacher knowledges. Authors comparatively examine eighteenth-century Habsburg Monarchy literary sources and nineteenth-century US documents on the formation and…

Nowadays, the term "interreligiosity" is well-established in discussions about religious education. This paper addresses various current approaches and concepts within interreligious pedagogy in Germany and Austria. On the one hand, it strives to bring order to the wide, impervious variety of previous approaches and on the other hand it…

There is a widely accepted consensus that religious education, together with all other school subjects, should contribute to the goals of education for sustainable development. As a result, theoretical models have been developed to profile what the specific contributions of religious education might be. However, the question whether religious…

Although Islamic religious education (IRE) has been offered in Austrian public schools since 1982, public opinion and the general opinions of several stakeholders in the school system tend to be negative. One of the main reasons is the shortage of professionals, which led to recruiting personnel from different disciplines, who often lack the…

The qualitative Early Childhood research project analyzes how children, aged five to six years, talk about the dimensions of diversity they recognize in their kindergarten and how two kindergartens in Austria deal with diversity. The children talk about age, gender, size, language, religion, different countries of origin, and skin colors. With…

Especially in Austria itself, it is estimated that in 2050 the Muslim population will be around 19.9% of the total population and the population increase will be second in Europe after Sweden with 30.6%. Interestingly again in Austria apart from being a secular country but it provides concern for Muslims to develop Islamic religious education…

The following article describes how empirical research can give new impulses to Islamic religious education. These impulses could lead to a reconciliation of the Islamic religious heritage with the fast-changing reality of Muslims in non-Muslim countries and societies. Due to the presence of Muslim children in public schools and the urgent…

This article presents analyses of curricula in religious education (RE) for public schools in Austria, Scotland, and Sweden. A curricula is the plan that outlines the goals, content and outcomes in education. A critical discourse analysis approach (CDA) is used to explore how each national RE curricula constructs (a) the aims, status and purpose…

Christianity is one of the cultural and ethical cornerstones of Europe. In the European Union (EU) there is no overarching policy on religious education (RE) in the school system. The authors use a comparative methodology to analyze the constitutions of Western European countries in relation to different aspects of RE. Specifically, it is focused…

The Eurydice network has been collecting data on instruction time for more than two decades. These data have been published in many Eurydice publications, notably all editions of the 'Key data on Education'. Since 2010, annually updated data on instruction time has been available on the Eurydice website. Since 2013, the Eurydice network has been…

The author believes that the future of learning religion and religiously learning does not primary depend on new methods or medias transferring faith or religiosity to people's lives. It depends more on a change of theological awareness and of people's ways of theologizing in the midst of cultural flow in order to get a deeper understanding of the…