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,…

This article reflects on the place of RE in a pillarised education context, taking into account the fact of religious diversity and pluralisation among the school population on the one hand, and the freedom of religion and education of faith-based schools on the other. Particular attention will be given to Belgium and the Netherlands, which do not…

The formation of identity in a secularized world is different from formation in a religious oriented society. In this situation, educating young people and guiding their personhood formation is even more a task of connecting to the pupils from out of your own heart. A Catholic religious teacher can be a mirror for these young people when answering…

This paper examines the extent to which school team members' professional relationships are affected by being part of a certain generational cohort. These professional relationships provide opportunities for intergenerational knowledge flows and can therefore be relevant for intergenerational learning. Nowadays these topics have gained more…

Religious education (RE) in secondary schools in the Netherlands is challenged to redefine the educational aims. Concerning this debate, the preference for a cognitive approach is remarkably dominant, not only among scholars but among RE teachers as well. This appeal for a cognitive turn is based upon two hypotheses: first on the presumption of…

Teaching the regulation of emotions to support parents in educating their children to come of age properly was part of a missionary movement in late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe. This movement was inspired by the belief in the power of education from the northern European Renaissance and by the emphasis on catechism by the…

Being a religious educator in Western Europe, especially in the highly secularised Netherlands, is a complicated job. There are concepts to be taught to a generation that is mostly religiously analphabetic. Religion is subject to many discussions that foremost include the media's coverage of extremist versions of religion. It has become more…

Background: In the Netherlands, most of the academic curricula for teacher training in religious education (RE) focus on shortfalls of students, like a lack of knowledge about the plurality of worldviews and the diversity in interpretations of the Christian tradition. In our research project, the focus is not on the students, but on the university…

The early history of Utrecht University (founded 1636) reflects an emerging public sphere (Habermas's "bürgerliche öffentlichkeit") of a major town in the Netherlands. This public sphere was a contested field among the different groups establishing and administering the university: university professors, town magistrates and…

When preparing students for study abroad, understanding the religious dimension of the target country/culture is generally viewed as essential for cultural competency training. What is generally left unexamined is the civil religious culture that might be operative. This essay first provides an introduction to the concept as it was introduced by…

In the Netherlands, the relation between Catholic schools and the Catholic Church was apparent during the pillarized educational system and culture of the first decades of the 20th century. In the post-pillarized decennia afterward, their connection transformed and became less recognizable. At first glance, their contemporary relation sometimes…

During the second half of the twentieth century, faithful followers of non-Western religions immigrated into Western European countries. Their children were a challenge for the respective educational system in the host countries. In the Dutch context, the educational system consists of public and private schools in which religion is the most…

In the project "Learning for Life" we developed a hermeneutical--communicative model for worldview education that answers the European challenges of worldview diversity and worldview illiteracy. We implemented the model in a participatory action research project at nine schools for primary education in the Netherlands and monitored the…

This study, part of a larger linguistic ethnographic enquiry carried out in two primary school classrooms in Flanders and the Netherlands, sheds light on the perils faced by the ethnographer caught between pupils' inventiveness and his own ethnographic naivety when dealing with these pupils' ethnolinguistic identity construction. The study first…

In the Netherlands of the late nineteenth century, primary education became one of the central issues in relation to raising political awareness and mobilising previously quiescent Dutch citizens. Protestants and Catholics alike claimed that Dutch public education left insufficient space for religious education and teamed up to struggle for…