School of Religious Education, and Cardinal Clancy Centre for Research in the Spiritual, Moral, Religious and Pastoral Dimensions of Education.
Spiritual, Moral and Religious Education is a key area for Teaching and Research in Australian Catholic University

Journal of Religious Education EDITORIALS FROM WORD IN LIFE 1997-2004 Index for Editorials

Editor: Dr Louise Welbourne, ACU, Signadou campus, Canberra.

MARCH 1997

Reconceptualising religious education

Less than a century ago schools and churches were seen as institutions of socialisation that conserved the cultural norms of society and church. The context in which religious educators now work is one that has been rapidly changing, particularly over the last two decades, as a result of cultural, political and educational shifts. The context has been affected, too, for religious educators, by accelerated changes in the educational theory of religious education and a growing pluralism in theologies in the Catholic church. Consequently there has never been a period in religious education when there was a greater need for religious educators to deepen their understanding of society and examine the literature and research related to their discipline.

As well as changes in society and education the ecclesial-historical factors of the Australian Catholic church have influenced the content, purpose, nature and function of religious education. Since 1965 the Catholic church has experienced a period of accelerated change. The Second Vatican Council met from 1962 - 1965 at a time when there was a level of change in the social order which impacted upon psychological, moral and religious dimensions of human life. The Council stood at the crossroads of historical events and theological development when cultural Christianity was undergoing a radical change and moving towards greater maturity. The pre-conciliar church had been characterised, in the main, by members with unquestioning loyalty and non-critical conformity to the church: members who identified with the church as a subculture of society.

Many of the documents that emerged from Vatican II were visionary and courageous and testified to the conviction of the Council members that the church is continually being incarnated in a world of change and development. One of the most significant changes made by the Council was a shift in emphasis in ecclesiology which was promulgated in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church. This signalled the end of a withdrawn, defensive and counter-reformation church and gave prominence to the church as a community with principles of subsidiarity and collegiality. In this document the Council recognised the reality that the church lives out its mission in particular historical contexts; it acknowledged, too, that in a world that is constantly evolving history demands a willingness in the church to develop and renew.

As the basis of its new self-understanding, Vatican II accepted that a church that wants to be true to its concern ‘to read the signs of the times’ cannot simply preserve its past. The Council was concerned, therefore, not with promoting a new conservatism but with effecting transformation. It envisaged, in its documents, a church in which diversity could be accommodated in unity.

This vision of church is pivotal to potential change in religious education. It has set the scene for a church where religious education is characterised by a curriculum that is interactive, dialogical, interpretive, and hermeneutical – focusing on disclosure in, and transformation of, the community’s tradition. For religious educators this represents both a privilege and a responsibility to establish new criteria for reconceptualising their discipline. Word in Life would like to explore with its readers ways of constituting the criteria for this reconceptualisation.

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JUNE

Epistemological shifts in religious education

I expect it is not difficult for readers to acknowledge that within the last twenty years there have been quantum leaps in religious education. It is well to remember that changes in religious education, both now and in the past, have been neither separate from, nor different from, most general changes that have occurred in society at large and in the church. The church’s teaching has always, to some degree, reflected that its members are historically and sociologically subject to the same laws of change as society. This has resulted over the years in changing approaches to religious education.

In the early twentieth century the religion text for Catholics was the catechism that focused on revealed truth and was a digest of theology: this was taught and accepted as an authoritative statement on those doctrines and morals which were to be known and believed and practised by Catholics. In the middle of this century the traditional catechetical approach gave way to kerygmatic catechesis: this focused on the bible as its content and emphasised the faith commitment of the individual as well as an acceptance of doctrine. After the Second Vatican Council teachers embraced a new understanding of revelation in a life-centred catechesis which focused on a God who speaks in the events of life as well as through tradition and scripture: this approach was inductive and process-oriented. By 1980 the life-centred catechesis lost favour because it was judged to be theologically and educationally inadequate. Teachers of religion began to argue that religious education was a discipline in its own right which embraced other cognate disciplines such as theology. This new focus on the nature of religious education created challenges and brought significant changes in the content and methodology of religious education. The challenge was met by scholars, such as Groome (1991), Boys (1989) and Lovat (1989) who designed approaches to religious education that established an interplay between theological and educational factors. The journey from the demise of the catechism to a religious education built on praxis epistemology has been a journey of over forty years.

Most religious educators, whatever branch of Christianity they come from, whose preservice teacher preparation predated the early 1980s are not necessarily familiar with the new scholarship, in such areas as theology and scripture, that has changed the nature of religious education. However, they appear from their professional practice to know intuitively that there is a gap between the way they want to engage in religious education and the requisite knowledge and skills they need to clearly conceptualise, and knowingly act. Caught in this situation, many teachers in Catholic schools experienced cognitive conflict and found themselves without the adequate philosophical and theological background for religious education. This situation generated a need for an intellectually rigorous, upgraded preparation for the professional practice of religious educators.

In response to this need for professional development many religious educators have engaged in graduate studies in religious education. If these studies are to equip teachers, who pursue them, to be critical professionals the following questions are some that need to be raised. Are these studies an opportunity for critically remembering the past and reinterpreting it with new and authentic insights? Will they generate insights that lead religious educators to be active in reconstructing their role? Will religious educators become aware of constraints that control their operation as critical actors? Will religious educators arrive at critical knowledge that gives them a capacity to engage in their profession as critical religious educators who understand and act on new insights of truth.

The editor would welcome correspondence from teachers, about the impact of graduate studies in religious education on their professional development as religious educators.

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AUGUST

SHARED CHRISTIAN PRAXIS: A paradigm for learning

The optimum position for religious educators is to understand the philosophical and theoretical principles that underpin their teaching models. However, many teachers are familiar with approaches merely as structures for scaffolding their lesson plans because they lack an understanding of the philosophical and theoretical positions that underpin them. One religious educator who has established the philosophical and theoretical principles for an approach to religious education is Groome (1980, 1991). The contribution of Groome is a significant milestone in religious education which brings together the cumulative history of religious education and contemporary educational theory. In Christian religious education (1980) Groome presents the philosophical basis for a meta-approach that is aimed at critical consciousness and intentionality in religious education. In Sharing faith (1991) he takes up again the participative pedagogy of praxis.

Groome in his shared Christian praxis approach took up the ongoing epistemological debate, in the philosophy and practice of education, about what it means to know, and whether the emphasis belongs to transmission of past knowledge, the experiential knowledge of the learner or the needs of the society. He discerned that a polarity and tension between past tradition and present experience, existed in recent religious education and he aimed to move beyond the polarity by using an approach that would bring a balance between past knowledge and present experience. His claim was that a memory of the rituals, symbols and texts of the past tradition of a Christian people, must be critically remembered and constantly made present, recreated and developed in, and by, present experience to cause it to look forward to, and be creative of, the future. By using a framework built on what he called a present dialectical hermeneutics Groome claimed a balance could be achieved between the past knowledge of the tradition and present experience.

In essence Groome's interests could be summarised as addressing two questions. He asks, firstly: what kind of knowing do religious educators want to promote? Groome assumes, as an answer to this, that religious educators reject, as irrelevant, knowledge that is static, transmitted and ahistorical, that comes from the dichotomous theory-to-practice approach. His second question is: what paradigm of learning can religious educators use to reconceptualise their discipline and effect a radical shift in epistemology? In response to these questions he structured an approach called shared Christian praxis.

In the framework structured by Groome the epistemology is evident: it is a shift towards a way of knowing that is relational and experiential and shows that there is a dialectical unity between theory and practice which avoids the dichotomy of a theory-to-practice approach where religious education transmits dogma and doctrine as the delivery system of an essentialist metaphysical theology. The praxis paradigm inserts the learner and his/her life experiences as an ‘equal interlocutor’ with theology.

Critics perceive limitations in Groome’s approach. Some claim, for example, that the proposed model does not adequately provide for an experience of social action: this is valid to a certain extent. Admittedly Groome is not essentially concerned with political activity and power and he does not, therefore, address directly the realities of ideologies. However, it is difficult to see, from the theology of the Reign of God that is central to Groome's understanding of Christianity, and to his approach to religious education, how the experience of social action is ignored when participants decide on action/response to bring about the realities of justice and peace in a changing world.

Another of the perceived limitations, made by critics, is that making the community tradition available shows a confessional bias that could jeopardise the freedom of the learner. In response to this criticism, attention must be drawn to Groome’s stated purpose to engage in a specific kind of religious education, namely, Christian religious education. It was, however, also his intention to present and make accessible the best current understanding of the theological content for a dialectic between the community’s tradition and the individual’s experience so that, in authentic dialogue, both content for a dialectic between the community’s tradition and the individual’s experience so that, in authentic dialogue, both disclosure and discovery are involved. One assumes, therefore, that what is made accessible is not an absolutised tradition but will also acknowledge the forces that have corrupted the Christian message.

The very essence of the conceptual and operational framework of shared praxis is meant to engage the learners in shaping their individual destinies through critical self-reflection that affirms what is true in present experience, recognises its limitations and prompts them to take on both personal and social responsibilities of the Christian faith by focusing on what can be changed in self and church for the sake of the future. Groome’s aim was an integration of Christian tradition with the knowing of the learner - of integration and transformation which are constitutive of Christian literacy and praxis for each generation of Christians.

Groome has not explicitly proposed making religious education an agent of social reconstruction: he is committed to a Christianity that effects change in continuity with the past. His approach is not revolutionary and certainly not radical but offers one way, at this point in history, towards reconceptualising religious education within a specific faith tradition. The praxis approach to religious education has been structured by Groome as a means of emancipated learning that ‘enables... [religious educators] ... to be creators of ... realities and not creatures produced by it’ (Groome, 1978).

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NOVEMBER

The professional knowledge base of the religious educator

In the last volume of this journal reference was made to the link between praxis and the development of knowledge, according to the Habermasian framework of technical, practical and critical knowledge. The processes of gaining knowledge constituted by technical, practical and critical cognitive interests are not necessarily discrete from one another and, importantly, critical knowledge cannot be argued for apart from knowledge that is constituted by technical and practical interests. However in this editorial each will be examined separately for its importance in the professional knowledge base of the religious educator.

Technical knowledge focuses on the specialised substantive, empirical type of knowing that provides the facts, concepts, rules and laws of the discipline of religious education. This knowledge provides information of specialised content and control of facts for describing data. In the case of religious education there has been accelerated change in educational theory as well as a growing pluralism in theology over the past three decades. These changes have required many religious educators to operate within a philosophical framework in a world of unprecedented knowledge explosion for which they were not prepared. This has caused a gap between the knowledge religious educators had previously and the substantive content they now need for effective practice and efficiency. When the language of religious educators is characterised by an absence of technical language of its cognate disciplines it runs the risk of reducing religious education to conceptual simplicity and becoming an aberration. Freire (1972) argued that the Brazilian peasants must discover themselves as lacking in objective knowledge and become aware of what they lacked, and how it could be acquired, before they could move forward towards their liberation. Similarly religious educators need to examine knowledge that is confusing and uncomfortable and become aware of what caused distortion in their knowledge. To do this they need to acquire technical knowledge that is basic to a religious literacy that can name new understandings of Christianity.

Just as the articulation of technical knowledge generates a control of empirical type knowing so, too, practical knowledge from a hermeneutical critique of theoretical knowledge, produces a reinterpretation of experience and creates new meaning. This argues for a process constituted by a practical cognitive interest that will dialogue with knowledge in its socio-historical context to help revise the knowledge of religious educators. Such dialogue would, according to Freire (1973, p.155) result in ‘reentering the world through the entering into of the previous understandings which may have been arrived at naively because reality was not examined as a whole’. When practical knowledge is operative the religious educator is not concerned with understanding tradition as a call to repeat the past. The task becomes one of asking what such things as texts, codes and practices mean within the context of tradition and then to discern in what way tradition can accommodate the past and the present. Through critique and understanding of knowledge religious educators become aware of distortions in the discourse that had wrongly been institutionalised as authentic knowledge and come to a more rational understanding of the texts and practices of Christianity. Furthermore, implicit in practical knowledge is a recognition of the historicity of dogma and the concomitant fact that the doctrine of the Catholic church is not immutable, and that change and evolution are possible and necessary. A form of practical knowledge will increase insight and understanding and see alternative interpretative explanations for relationships between past and present knowledge.

There are criteria for establishing the validity for knowledge constituted by human interests that generate knowledge in the technical and practical domains. However, from a Habermasian perspective, it is critical knowledge, from a cognitive interest in emancipation that is the ultimate cognitive interest for religious educators. A concern for human freedom, therefore, calls religious educators to move beyond the empirical-analytical and hermeneutic paradigms to critical knowledge. Critical knowledge is characterised by a process of critique that is directed by freedom and ability and by an increased autonomy to operate from new understandings with a willingness to transform reality. The implications of this for the professional knowledge of the religious educators is that their critical knowledge would be directed to redefinition and reconstruction of the discourse of their discipline.

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RELIGIOUS EDUCATION COORDINATION: CONTEMPORARY PRACTICES AND CHALLENGES

Teaching religion can be a health hazard! This applies particularly to those who coordinate religious education in Catholic schools. There are high rates of withdrawal and promotion from this position, and there is also a measure of burnout.

Coordination of religious education can include not only responsibility for the formal religion curriculum but also varying responsibility for retreats, class and school liturgies, liturgical music, outreach, campus ministry, voluntary groups; also special concern for the Catholic ethos of the school, staff spirituality, liaison with clergy and parishes, and parish sacramental initiation programs; it can also include responsibilities as a member of the school executive with a title like Assistant Principal Religious Education.

Clarification of the role can result in two or more people taking different responsibilities. The names for the roles can say something about the way the responsibilities are divided up and the principles underpinning the division.

There is not doubt that the roles in coordinating the overall school religious education are of fundamental importance for Catholic education. These roles need periodic review and evaluation.

To help with this, Word in Life will devote a special edition to coordination of religious education in Catholic schools in June, 1998. Readers are invited to submit articles or shorter contributions, on any aspects of the role. Contributions should reach the editor before 1 March 1998.

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