6 Perspectives for Interreligious Education

The evaluation of the empirical material revealed different areas of tension in two different settings: the school and the university. Three areas of conflict could be identified and examined in detail in both settings. The first area of conflict in the school setting, referred to as ‘(religious) group dynamics’, covers the tense implications of asymmetric initial conditions, religious boundaries, and the formation of interor intrareligious subgroups. The second area of tension ‘themes and didactics’, focuses on the question of the themes to be dealt with and their preparation and reflects challenges and difficulties in the area of didactics and methodology. It also looks at what is possible in settings of interreligious teaching and learning. At the heart of the third area of conflict in the school setting is the theme of ‘identity and confessionality’. Among other things, the boundaries of interreligious collaboration in educational contexts are negotiated, and the extent to which encounters with the religious other are considered appropriate or counterproductive for the pupils’ identity formation is explored. The university setting revealed three areas of tension as well. The first source of conflict – ‘planning, approaches, and expectations’ – focuses on the conceptualisation and objectives of the university course and reveals different and sometimes contradictory expectations and desires in an interreligious setting. The second area of conflict concerns the ‘process, communication, and group dynamics’ and shows explicit tensions between course teachers as well as between course teachers and students, which were ignited by communication dynamics, competences and responsibilities, or by leadership issues. The third area of conflict focuses on the ‘conflict about “ideal” religious education and recognition’. Here, discrepancies and divergences between the participants were expressed regarding the questions of what constitutes successful religious education, what tasks a religion teacher has to fulfil, and which expectations of the school community need to be met. In the overview of the empirical data, themes that contain conflict potential emerge. They overlap to some extent in the settings, taking up aspects of the sources of conflict and bringing them to an abstract, general level. For the following analysis, seven complex themes were selected: – interaction in interreligious settings – teaching interreligious processes – didactic and methodological approaches – finding and developing themes – interreligious learning in a confessional context