This article examines how two Finnish religious education (RE) teachers, one in Islamic and one in Lutheran RE, seek to construct openness when dealing with religious truth claims and religious commitment, the key areas in which indoctrination might take place. It also observes how these constructions work in the classroom and explains them in the…

This article focuses on the study of where mobile devices and social media tools are taken into consideration in the Finnish confirmation training entity as a new opportunity to work together. The research is based on the ethnographical method. The data was collected by observation in two confirmation training camp periods and interviewing…

Initiatives in intercultural education have frequently involved the promotion of contact between members of different groups as a means of improving intergroup relations. Experience from Northern Ireland suggests, however, that such schemes have often been organised and delivered in such a way that opportunities for sustained, high-quality contact…

In this article, we examine how narratives of religious traditions are used as resources in religious education (RE) and compare practices from Evangelic Lutheran religious education (LRE) and Islamic religious education (IRE) in Finnish public schools. The sacredness of narratives from holy books entails that there can be contestations over their…

Drawing on social and cultural perspectives of literacy, conceptualizations of religious literacies, and Gee's notion of Discourses, I develop a framework for exploring 16 Latter-day Saint and Methodist youths' religious literacies as social and cultural practice. This work grows out of the increasingly important role that religion plays…

Inclusion is increasingly understood as an educational reform that responds to the diversity of all learners, challenging the marginalisation, exclusion and underachievement which may result from all forms of "difference". Leadership for inclusion is conceptualised here as driving a constant struggle to create shared meanings of…

"Emerging: Negotiating Identity in a 21st Century American Seminary" is an ethnographic investigation involving a diverse group of students as they experience their first year of graduate-level theological education at a Protestant seminary in the United States. The study analyzes the observations and student interviews that form the core of the…

A comparative case study of integrated schools in two regions of conflict, this study addresses the potential and limitations of education to promote individual and societal processes of change and peace building. In modern societies, education is expected to play a central function in socializing young generations into their culture and the…