Religious didactics

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The religious teaching is the scientific discipline that deals with religious teaching and learning processes in the course of the biography. A special focus is on religious instruction in schools . Its subject area is religion, which is not viewed from the perspective of the classical theological disciplines, but specifically from the teaching-learning perspective. She tries to describe religious teaching practice analytically and descriptively and to develop targeted intervention points; As a university discipline, it tries to develop reflexive competence in students in order to enable analytical-descriptive description and targeted intervention. In this respect, it also aims to improve religious teaching and learning in practice.

Definition

Religion represents the subject area of ​​religious didactics , while didactics describes the way of dealing with the subject area. As a school-related discipline, it regards religion particularly in the context of religious instruction in schools, so that religion is a predominantly Christian tradition that is represented by the churches and reflected by theology. However, since Christianity sees itself as part of a plural society, in Germany as in all of Europe, other religious communities are increasingly present and religion is also related to other social systems, the goal of religious didactics is to enable future teachers to to tap into these diverse manifestations of religion. They should not only provide information, but also encourage dialogue and communication skills among the students.

Religious didactics sees itself as a scientifically founded reflection on religious learning and a reflection on the teaching of religious learning. In this respect, she analyzes the conditions and contexts, the possibilities and limits, the justification and responsibility of religious learning processes and the interaction between teachers and students, as well as the methods and media in religious education. As a scientific discipline, it would like to increase knowledge about this subject area and deepen insights. As a practice-oriented discipline, it would also like to provide a scientifically founded, reflective competence with regard to the planning, implementation and evaluation of religious learning processes and their educational responsibility.

Theory-practice relationship

As a practical discipline, religious didactics is in a permanent tension between theory and practice. So it is about theory building and practical relevance. Theoretical formation is necessary, as this is the only way to make generally valid statements about relationships, which in turn are important for the practice of teaching and learning. In this way, knowledge can be systematically acquired and abstracted that subsequent generations can fall back on.

The practical relevance results from the close connection between didactics and the reality of teaching and learning, which it aims to shape and improve. Didactics is not science for science's sake, but rather wants to serve the teaching and learning processes.

There are logically three positions on the relationship between theory and practice:

  1. Theory precedes practice and practice is the application of theory.
  2. Practice precedes theory and leads to theory.
  3. Theory and practice are not fully intertwined and are dialectically related to one another.

Religious didactics primarily follows the third position and tries to capture the practice of religious teaching and learning by observing and understanding them and designing models of action and scenarios. At the same time, however, she breaks up this practice by believing that she can write better theories for practice.

Scientific self-image

Religious didactics sees itself as a scientific discipline. In order to examine the subject of her research, educational activity in relation to religion as well as religious learning, she essentially goes three ways:

  1. With the hermeneutics pure theories are created, but they are practically relevant. Educational action is interpreted against the background of the Christian-Jewish tradition.
  2. The empiricism is mainly used for production of experiential science-based statements. In this respect, it tries to determine rules according to which theories can be constructed and tested.
  3. The criticism of ideology tries to initiate a process of self-reflection in order to transform unreflective awareness and self-critical awareness and to free subjects from dependencies. This emancipatory interest allows educational action to be examined for alienation and oppression.

These three approaches to research in didactic religion correspond to three knowledge-guiding interests of the subject, namely understanding meaning (hermeneutics), producing empirical knowledge (empiricism) and promoting emancipation (ideology criticism). The three perspectives partially overlap.

history

The origin of religious didactics can be found in the Catholic catechetics , which emerged in the 16th century immediately after the Council of Trent in order to systematically and continuously instruct all generations of believers in the right faith and which became an independent discipline within theology as early as 1570 . Under Maria Theresia this then became a mandatory training specialist for clergy and was together with the homiletics , liturgy and Poimenik of practical theology assigned. In 1744 it was appointed a university discipline within pastoral theology by Franz Stephan Rautenstrauch . During the Enlightenment, in which pedagogy and psychology were constituted as disciplines, methodological questions of catechetical instruction were the main focus within catechetics.

In the early 19th century, Johann Baptist Hirscher drafted catechetics that made education the goal of education rather than learning dogmatic sentence knowledge, but promoting the spiritual and religious powers. He thus designed a counterpoint to the neo-scholastic catechisms , which should begin with the central questions of life and concentrate on the central point of faith.

At the beginning of the 20th century, representatives of the so-called Munich method , such as Heinrich Stieglitz, Anton Weber or Joseph Göttler , made the first basic considerations of the actual religious didactics, which transferred the Herbart - Ziller theory of formal levels to religious learning. In doing so, they combined the didactics of religion with psychology and pedagogy for the first time in order to better understand and explain religious learning. In contrast to this, the representatives of kerygmatics , such as Joseph Andreas Jungmann , Romano Guardini and Franz Xaver Arnold , tried to strengthen catechetics in its original form and therefore turned away from the human sciences and increasingly towards theology.

Since the 1960s ( Second Vatican Council ), religious education has developed as a modern, interdisciplinary science that replaced the old understanding of catechetics as a purely internal church science. Her interest relates to religious learning processes in the course of life, while religious didactics as a sub-science has focused on religious instruction in schools, but does not ignore other age and life areas.

More recent developments are partially summarized under the term performative religious didactics.

Relationship to other sciences

theology

For a long time, religious didactics was understood as the stooge of systematic theology , which was supposed to implement the teaching of the church in learning processes and was thus conceived as an application discipline. Today, however, it is viewed as a subdiscipline of practical theology which, with its approach, makes its own contribution to theology.

As an independent discipline, religious didactics draws on findings from the other disciplines, for example

Within religious didactics, it is disputed which theological content should be processed; for a long time exegesis or systematics dominated. In contrast, church history played a lesser role.

Human sciences

As a science that deals with learning, education and socialization, religious didactics is also in close contact with the human sciences. This particularly concerns the

  • Psychology , which researches the psychological side of ethical and religious learning and upbringing processes and provides insights for the explanation of school learning.
  • Sociology , which provides complementary results to the empirical studies of religious didactics and provides insights into forms of human (and thus also religious) existence.

The disciplinary relationship between religious didactics and pedagogy and theology is not uniform worldwide. There are essentially four models for this:

  • Autarky model : Theology / church teaching post determine the field of activity in didactic religion alone
  • Dominance model : Didactics of religion is understood primarily as an applied science of theology
  • Convergence model : pedagogy and theology are on an equal footing and are related to one another in discourse
  • Exodus model : religious didactics is determined purely by pedagogy and no longer belongs to theology.

In Germany, religious didactics in the sense of the convergence model sees itself as an educational-theological discipline.

Internal differentiation

Religious didactics has two sub-areas: didactics in the narrower sense and methodology. The didactics sees itself as a theory, but empirically oriented, since it refers to the practice. In addition, it is also hermeneutical in order to explain the processes in practice and is also critically oriented. The methodology , on the other hand, reflects how learning can be conceived.

Religious didactics is often differentiated according to the place of learning. These can be, for example, religious instruction, community catechesis, youth and kindergarten work, adult education or family work. Depending on the place of learning, the related sciences of religious didactics change as subject didactics. At the universities, however, the focus is currently on school as a place of learning, so that school pedagogy is the most important reference discipline here .

literature

  • Christoph Bizer: Didactics of Religion. Neukirchen-Vluyn 2002.
  • Georg Hilger / Stephan Leimgruber / Hans-Georg Ziebertz: Religious Didactics: A Guide for Study, Training and Work . Kösel, Munich, 6th edition 2010. ISBN 3466368863 .
  • Godwin Lämmermann: Outline of religious didactics. Kohlhammer Verlag, Stuttgart u. a., 2nd edition 1998.
  • Stephan Leimgruber : Religionsdidaktik , St. Ottilien 2000.
  • Manfred L. Pirner / Andrea Schulte (eds.): Religious Didactics in Dialogue - Religious Education in Cooperation. IKS Garamond, Jena 2010. ISBN 978-3-938203-96-5 .
  • Heinz Schmidt: didactics of religion. Aims, content and methods of religious education in schools and lessons. 2 vols., Stuttgart 1982.
  • Hermann Pius Siller : Handbuch der Religionsdidaktik. Freiburg 1991.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ As presented in an anthology by Stefan Bork, Claudia Gärtner: Kirchengeschichtsdidaktik. Locations between religious education, church history and history didactics. Stuttgart 2016 (an overview in the AfeT reviews ).