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ISREV 2006 – PLENARY PAPER ABSTRACTS

PLENARY PAPER PRESENTERS   Click on the date to go to the abstract below.

Professor Mualla Selçuk is Dean of the School of Divinity at the University of Ankara, and a member of the Religious High Council in Turkey.
Monday July 31 - Developing an Interfaith Dimension in Religious Education: Theological Foundations and Educational Framework with Special Reference to Turkish Experience

Dr Gabriel Moran is Director of Philosophy of Education Programmes at New York University in the USA.
Tuesday August 1 - Reforming Tradition: A Liberally Conservative Approach

Professor Siebren Miedema is Dean of the Faculty of Psychology and Education where he is Professor of Educational Foundations and Professor of Christian Education; and also Professor of Religious Education in the Faculty of Theology; both at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Wednesday August 2 - Religious Education between Certainty and Uncertainty

Professor Robert Jackson is Professor of Education and Director of the Warwick Religions and Education Research Unit in the Institute of Education at the University of Warwick, England.
Thursday August 3 - European Institutions and the Contribution of Studies of Religious Diversity to Education for Democratic Citizenship

Dr Wilna Meijer is Senior Lecturer in the Philosophy of Education at the University of Groningen; and Visiting Professor at Ghent University.
Friday August 4 - Religious Education and the Balance Between Tradition and Enlightenment: The example of Islam

PLENARY PAPER ABSTRACTS

Monday July 31 - Mualla Selcuk - Developing an Interfaith Dimension in Religious Education: Theological Foundations and Educational Framework with Special Reference to Turkish Experience

The teaching of religions in schools today is challenged to accept new responsibilities. This affects not only the teaching of Islam but of all religions. The challenge is to enable students to comprehend the fixed points in the religious tradition and the variable nature of interpretations stemming from socio-cultural history, and thereby to help students develop an understanding that is more pluralistic, peaceful, sensitive to others, and respectful to differences.

In this presentation, the theological possibility of whether Islam is open to such a religious course will be discussed. Seeking a theological foundation is significant, for it is in this way that living together and shared values and standards, and the examples of behavior that are crucial in forming a life worthy of human dignity, will be brought out. In other words, without theological foundations, it is difficult to determine the framework of a modern model of religious education that is supposed to address the emerging needs of a pluralist society. Ascertaining the epistemic ground of "the look at the other in Islam" as well as producing ideas about the way by which to convey it to the class setting will constitute the main objective of this presentation.
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Tuesday August 1 - Gabriel Moran - Reforming Tradition: A Liberally Conservative Approach

Religious education is an appropriate term when there is recognition of a world of religious diversity. Such recognition means that one group does not assume that it is the true religion and all others are false. Each religious community has its own language of intimacy which is not immediately comparable to another group's language. Religious education is a search for mutual understanding, lest differences lead to violent conflict. One way that the plurality of religious traditions can be dealt with is by declaring that all religions are basically or essentially the same. The alternative approach is to respect the differences and attempt to open dialogue in which there would be mutual transformation. One has to understand the logic of a group's language before trying to interpret it and reform it. I will use several examples of language, especially from Christian tradition, that need change in order that the tradition draw upon its own best lights and avoid conflict with other religious groups.
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Wednesday August 2 - Siebren Miedema - Religious Education between Certainty and Uncertainty

The most important impact of Modernity, according to Berger, is not secularization or antireligiousity, but plurality and the diversity of religious possibilities. This aspect of modernity must be faced even more urgently in the postmodern condition characterized by fragmentation.

Many people - adults as well as children and youngsters - experience the growing diversity as the burden of uncertainty, and make every effort to get rid of it. In its most basic forms and expressions this leads to fundamentalist religious views, positions and communities, seggregation of cultures and groups, the search for a reaffirmation of what is felt to be lost. Here the quest for certainty, to paraphrase Dewey, is a function of the idealisation of the immutable.

My perspective on the tension between certainty and uncertainty is heavily influenced by a transformative view of the aims of religious education. Crucial to this view is the pedagogical goal of trying to foster the potentialities of children, students, or learners for self-edification and development while they take part in meaningful religious practices. Their religious identity formation should, perhaps, result in the ability to adopt a stance and to respond to these practices, rites, doctrines, narratives, traditions and visons, showing in that way their own emerging religious sensitivity. To deal fruitfully in religious education with diversity in an ontological, epistemological and practical way, presupposes a processual, historical and contextual approach toward cultures and traditions in which the continuous or invariable should also be characterised by its temporality.
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Thursday August 3 - Robert Jackson - European Institutions and the Contribution of Studies of Religious Diversity to Education for Democratic Citizenship

European institutions, such as the European Union (via the European Commission) and the Council of Europe are giving close attention to issues related to the study of religious diversity in education and to education for democratic citizenship within the EU and across Europe. Various aspects of the relationship between these areas are under consideration in projects relating to policy development, pedagogy and research. However, despite these European collaborations, there remain a wide variety of national policies and approaches relating to these fields across European states. National debates and international collaborations take place in the context of plurality, which can be represented as a matrix of traditional and (post) modern elements. In terms of education within particular states, the expression of this plurality is influenced by broad contextual factors. These include historical tradition (including history of Church/State relations, the nature and degree of 'multiculturalism' in society and other cultural factors), geographical position, socio-political structure, economic system, and international/global influences, all of which interplay with structural factors such as educational values and aims and the organisation and funding of education. This paper illustrates the diversity of policy within European states and goes on to discuss various recent and current European projects relating to religious diversity and intercultural education, religious education and citizenship education, noting key issues identified, policy recommendations and views on pedagogy and practice. Findings from a broader range of European research studies are considered in relation to the refinement and development of these recommendations for policy and practice.
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Friday August 4 - Wilna Meijer - Religious Education and the Balance Between Tradition and Enlightenment: The Example of Islam

The use and communication of information on the internet encourages a characteristic 'cut and paste style' that many teachers at present will recognize in the work of their students. A new eclecticism, as Olivier Roy has called it. He observes that the many web sites on Islam and Muslims, the so-called 'virtual Ummah', induces a trivialisation of Islam. The neo-fundamentalist, Salafi doctrine is the most suitable to inform the virtual Ummah. In the public debate on Islam in the Netherlands there is a call for a 'short-cut to Enlightenment' for the Muslims among us. This is an ill-considered mirror image of the attempt of young Muslims to find pure, universal Islam. This too, as I will argue, is ultimately a 'short-cut': a direct, quick access to the sources of the religious tradition. The balance of tradition and enlightenment in education is in need of reconsideration: education is inherently traditional and therefore conservative, but critical reflection in cultural transmission is indisputably of equal educational importance. Finally, this educational balance will be demonstrated in the case of medieval Islamic education.
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