ABSTRACT
Andrew Wright’s Critical Realist Approach provides classroom ideas and strategies that can help curriculum planners and teachers deal sensitively, but honestly with religious diversity in Religious Education (RE). With teachers’ pedagogical skills updated and material knowledge of different religions improved, the authors suggest that RE in Malawi and Ghana can perhaps begin the necessary learning process for both teachers and students towards reinforcing interreligious dialogue rather than interreligious hostility in the classroom. RE texts, and the content of instruction, are framed in the confessional approach that naturally leads to misrepresentation and misclusion. In particular, Muslim parents were concerned by the ‘Christianisation’ of RE and felt that the religious identity of Muslim children was being undermined by a classroom discourse that sought to promote Christianity and outclass Islam. Students in Malawi and Ghana come to RE classrooms with prejudices and bias against religions other than their own.
