Religion and Worldviews in Education: The Subterranean Territory

The meeting place of religious and secular worldviews is one of the most important and pressing issues for religion in education. Over only the past few decades, there have been major developments in national and international educational and social policy. Religion in education has taken on an ever-intensifying multiplicity of cultural, social and political agendas. Religions and worldviews in education, in their epistemological orientations, are similarly, and ambiguously, positioned, rooted in a philosophy, and the humanities, religious and worldviews education are permeated, too, with numerous theoretical and methodological orientations from the social and psychological sciences. This chapter shows that class teachers do not perceive learning about one's own religion as a purpose of religious education.