The relationships between RE leaders in Catholic education and their schools and their religious communities may be ambiguous. RE leaders often appear disconnected from both 'ordinary' teacher issues and 'ordinary' leadership issues because of their religious responsibilities. In this innovative research project, the authors have explored RE…

This paper examines debates over the nature, purpose, and reform of geographical education in schools in the eighteenth-century German-speaking territories. Attention is paid to contemporaries' concerns over the cognitive content of geography -- what geography was -- and, in greater detail, to their views concerning how the subject might be…

Three fundamental scientific works on the pedagogy of Comenius will be considered from new perspectives. These are the works of the East German comeniologist Franz Hofmann and the two West German comeniologists, Klaus Schaller and Andreas Lischewski. Germany has produced numerous scientific analyses of Comenius since 1945, but these three…

The primary goal of religious education (RE) in Germany is to enable students to develop a personal worldview. According to the literature, this goal can best be achieved when RE a) presents material from various worldviews and b) relates this material to the student's daily life. Denominational RE, which is the organisational format of this…

Mike Hill was concerned that his students were unable to genuinely inhabit the historical places they encountered in his lessons. Drawing on fields as varied as history-teacher research, philosophy, and literary and media theory, Hill identified ways to curate his students' constructions of 'secondary worlds' in the historical past, including…

The article addresses the special mission of Catholic schools within the educational system in Germany. The considerations centre on the fundamental mission of the Church to announce the Good News of Jesus Christ as light of nations, and hence to be itself light of the world. Consequently, the essential distinctive characteristic of Catholic…

This paper deals with the disclosure of subaltern thinking in current German-language textbooks for religious education. For the hermeneutical framing of this analysis, the approach of a postcolonial reading is particularly profitable. Obvious hierarchical relationships from clearly up and down can consequently be made visible and their presumed…

In the Kingdom of Bavaria, the capital city, Munich, created in 1873 positions as "Oberlehrer"--a head teacher in primary schools ("Volksschulen") responsible for one school for boys and one school for girls. The mere existence of these male "Oberlehrer" challenged for the first time the exclusive power of Catholic…

The historical relations of public education to the institutions of religion have been variously significant. While governmental affairs and ecclesiastical affairs have been set apart from each other in this country, the teaching of sectarian doctrines is generally excluded from the schools of the several States, an understanding of the relations…