ABSTRACT

The author integrates findings from a fifteen-month action research study of 12–14-year-old pupils’ motivation to learn in religious education into debates on the subject’s aims and values. The findings were that a differentiated set of factors boosted pupil motivation in religious education: pupils valued opportunities for dialogues with different religious traditions and with one another, in so far as these dialogues built existential or ethical interest or were personally significant. The author argues that based on these findings, religious education should adopt a multi-dimensional treatment of different religious traditions and proceed on a democratic basis where pupil response and religious materials have equal significance and pupils’ citizenship competences are built up. Religious literacy should be understood as broad and balanced knowledge and understanding of religions and worldviews, to be developed through democratic interaction.