Religious education with team teaching
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How religious education (RE) can foster community life
“Everyday life offers pupils many opportunities to experience religious diversity. In the classroom, however, RE is taught in separate classes, even though pupils would like to know more about other religions and we are confronted as a society with increasing plurality,” says Wolfgang Weirer from the Institute for Catechetics and Religious Education at the University of Graz, as he describes the initial motivation for the FWF-funded project “Christian-Islamic religious education in team teaching”
Graz is the ideal venue for this project, as Catholic, Protestant and Islamic researchers are closely networked at university level within the context of religious education in Austria. “I hasten to say that we do not want to abolish denominational religious education and replace it with interreligious education. The idea is to have Islamic and Catholic RE teachers engage in a few hours of joint classes,” explains Weirer. Since 2012, the academic side of Christian RE has been discussing interfaith education, and expectations are high at this meta-level. At the other end of the scale, in many schools there was an emergence of bottom-up projects. The gap between these two levels gave rise to Weirer’s project proposal.
A great deal of encouragement and commitment
Islamic religious education teacher Mevlida Mešanović describes how the project proceeded with scientific support: “Five Islamic-Catholic teams of teachers at five schools designed and taught interreligious classes using a team-teaching approach. There were three to five classroom hours at each school, and a lot more time spent in terms of preparation. I was fascinated by how much encouragement we received from all sides, especially from the pupils.”
Her statement is corroborated by Weirer: “The first highlight was the very fact that such team teaching got off the ground at all. Almost everyone said: this is important and we want to support it.” For their project, the researchers needed teachers who were willing to put in the extra time and effort. They also needed the approval of the school management, education directorate and religious communities, who had to be given detailed explanations of the project objectives. Covid presented them with an additional challenge, as it cut off access to schools for some time
In a three-year research project, researchers at the University of Graz designed a teaching setting that promotes interreligious cooperation. As part of joint Christian-Islamic lessons, they developed twelve theses for modern religious education.
More of this, please
The pupils’ feedback on the interfaith lessons was 100% positive. They welcomed many things, from the fun factor to getting to know their own religion and that of others, to reflecting on values and realizing that there is a lot of common ground. “We would like to have this more often,” was the main feedback.
The research team put the focus on the teachers, exploring how they were doing in the classroom, and observing which conditions were beneficial and which were not. They devoted a lot of time to the evaluation of the extensive observations and data, and paid attention to different perspectives. The points of view of majority and minority come into play here, as the Catholic religion is the dominant one in most schools. Catholic RE is part of the regular curriculum at one school, while Islamic teachers have to teach 30 extra hours a week in the afternoons at up to 15 schools.
12 recommendations for interreligious team teaching
The analysis resulted in diverse observations from which twelve recommendations were drawn on how team teaching can be a success. Weirer considers a trusting relationship to be of paramount importance: “Success depends on the teachers involved. They have to be able to work together, which is something that cannot be imposed; it takes time and sound preparation.” Many teachers were not aware of how much of a role model they are: Their approach to the team teacher format informed the pupils' behavior. They quickly arrived at binary coding: “We do it this way, the others do it that way” – which is something that ought to be avoided. Often, the religions were compared only from a scientific perspective, while the pupils would have liked to discuss everyday experiences. There was more focus on similarities, while differences were only briefly addressed, which meant that learning opportunities were missed. “A clear structure and allocation of roles is important in the classroom: who can take care of what topic. Above all, there should be no talking at cross-purposes,” recommends Mešanović.
Successful interreligious team teaching also requires cooperation on an equal footing, which is often not the case in schools. Another thing that is missing is training for educators for interreligious cooperative processes. Greatly relevant aspects are the social and political context and what is going on in (social) media.
Research of international relevance
There is great interest in the project, also at international level. The fact that the project report was published in Religion, the largest open access journal on theology, confirmed that the project is relevant beyond the German-speaking world. “We are also proud of our book: Christlich-Islamischer Religionsunterricht im Teamteaching. We would like to publish an English version of this anthology with focused project results and the twelve recommendations as soon as possible,” added Mešanović. Moreover, the project gave rise to five doctoral theses which have been published in a peer-review process. Members of the project team have also received a total of four awards, including the Josef Krainer Preis and an award from the Integration Fund.
Interest in follow-up projects
The idea for the “Inter“ workshop ultimately emerged from the project, as Mevlida Mešanović reports: “As a supplement to religious education, a Catholic-Islamic team offers a half-day workshop on religious diversity for a whole class. Demand from schools is huge. We have held 60 workshops to date and 14 more have already been scheduled for this year.”
After the end of the FWF project, the Protestant Church approached the project team and a first team teaching effort was started in one school, with more to follow.
The need is there and Wolfgang Weirer sums up the situation as follows: “Denominational religious education should be continued, as it is the basis for interreligious learning processes. To this end, I would like to see mandatory cooperation between Catholic, Protestant, Islamic and Orthodox religious education and ethics lessons in certain phases. After all, such encounters foster mutual understanding and tolerance.”
Personal details
Wolfgang Weirer heads the Institute for Catechetics and Religious Education at the Faculty of Catholic Theology at the University of Graz, where he conducts research into fundamental questions of religious education and the further development of denominational religious education.
Mevlida Mešanović is an Islamic religious educator with a research focus on interreligious learning, dialog and diversity and discrimination; she was a colleague of Weirer and is now a researcher at the PPH - Private Pädagogische Hochschule Augustinum Graz. Their joint project Christian-Islamic Religious Education Through Team Teaching received EUR 398,474 in funding from the Austrian Science Fund FWF.
Selected Publications
Gmoser A., Kramer M., Weirer W. (Hg.): Christlich-Islamischer Religionsunterricht im Teamteaching. Beiträge zu Theorie und Praxis interreligiöser Bildung, V&R Unipress 2024
Gmoser A., Kramer M., Mešanović M., Weirer W., Wenig E., Yağdı Şenol: Shared Religious Education through Christian–Islamic Team Teaching, in: Religions 15 / H. 9, 2024
Mešanović Mevlida: Development of Interreligious Competencies Among Islamic Religious Teachers, in: Islamic Religious Education in the Current Discourse. Empirical Insights in a Plural Society, Şenol Yağdı (Hg.): Wiener Beiträge zur Islamforschung, Springer 2024
