ABSTRACT
The author develops recommendations for the future of religious education in schools, together with associated questions for research. The recommendations are these. Firstly, the subject should be understood as a dialogue with difference, intended to clarify issues of existential and ethical interest and matters of personal significance. Secondly, religions and non-religious worldviews should be studied in a broad, balanced, multi-aspectual way, with attention to expressions through beliefs, texts, rituals, myths, art, architecture, ethics, social and political views and practices and how these interact. Thirdly, the subject’s democratic citizenship values do not mean that differences between religions, worldviews or pupils should be avoided in the classroom. Fourthly, though consideration and respect are imperative, the degree of personal investment in religious education is a matter for pupils to decide. Fifthly, consideration needs to be given to the place of assessment in religious education.
