Education Studies News and Events

The first symposium on “Religion and Religious Education” at the European Conference on Educational Research (ECER) took place this year in Porto, Portugal (2–5 September 2014), organised by Elisabeth Arweck (WRERU/Centre of Education Studies) at Warwick and Kerstin von Brömssen at the University of Karlstad in Sweden. Taking its cue from the theme of ECER 2014—“The Past, Present and Future of Educational Research in Europe”—the theme of the symposium was “Religion and Religious Education: Past, Present and Future in Europe”. Having attended ECER in 2013, the organisers found that the conference did not offer any focus for scholars engaged in the study of Religious Education and decided to provide such a focus. Their call for contributions elicited an encouraging number of contributions, of which eight were accepted by the ECER organisers.

The symposium thus consisted of two sessions with four presentations and a discussant per session. The contributors represented a range of institutions, including Hedmark University College in Norway, Södertörn University College in Sweden, and the Comenius Institute in Germany. The papers related to topical issues in religious education, such as the question of training teachers for a multi-faith classroom, the implications of education reform, young people’s discourses on religion, young people’s articulation of (non-)religious identities, the value of RE for citizenship education, and religious literacy practices.

The symposium is a promising start for greater engagement and visibility of Religious Education at a education research conference which is a major forum for academic exchanges at an international level. The next step the organisers of the symposium are planning to take is to produce an edited volume based on the papers presented at the 2014 ECER symposium.