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Research

What was the REDCo project and what were its findings?

Wolfram Weisse

Research Summary

This is a summary review of a very large and influential European research project on religion and education – Religion in Education. A Contribution to Dialogue or a Factor of Conflict in Transforming Societies of European Countries?’ or REDCo. The project involved specialist researchers from Germany, Holland, England, France, Norway, Russia, Spain and Estonia and ran from 2006-2009. It focused on the role of RE in European societies, especially how it might help promote dialogue between religions, in the context of citizenship education, based on Robert Jackson’s interpretive approach to RE. The article gives the background, research methodology and findings of the project; the findings especially are of relevance and use to RE teachers, helping to define and defend RE’s purpose in contemporary society and point towards the forms of teaching that serve it.

Researcher

Wolfram Weisse

Research Institution

University of Hamburg

What is this about?

  • What was the REDCo project (2006-2009)?
  • What were its research methodologies?
  • What were its findings?
  • How do they help to clarify the purpose of RE in contemporary Europe, including the UK, and what do they suggest about the forms of teaching that enable RE to fulfil its purpose?

What was done?

This article is a summary review of a major 3-year project investigating RE through a range of methods (questionnaire, interview, analysis of video-recorded lessons, etc.) in 8 European countries.

Main findings and outputs

  • Religion needs renewed attention within European education systems, in relation to promoting dialogue and handling or reducing conflict.
  • A multinational study enables comparison and highlights potentials, as do mixed research methods: participant observation, semi‐structured interviews, questionnaires (qualitative and quantitative) and videoing of RE lessons were all used. Students in the 14‐ to 16‐year age group were studied in all the countries.
  • Their views and experiences of RE were established (positive and negative).
  • From the project’s detailed findings (e.g. over 8000 pupil questionnaires were analysed), recommendations for RE were brought out. These follow:
    Education should promote active rather than passive tolerance, i.e. getting young people from different cultural and religious backgrounds to actually engage and work together.
    Religious diversity needs to be actively valued, at school and university level.
    Both religious and non-religious world-views should be included.
    These changes will not be possible without professional teacher education.
  • For school students still in the process of forming their opinions, encounters with people of different religions and philosophies can be an important step towards:
    Respecting others’ views, despite disagreements.
    Understanding how different cultures and religions can be expressed in different ways by different people.
    Helping to prevent the misuse of religion to generate political conflict.
    School students believe this form of RE to be desirable and possible; and they see school, rather than the family or peer group, as the place where it should happen.

Relevance to RE

This summary review is helpful to teachers in presenting evidence on the purpose of RE in society, as young people see it, or wish for. It is based on extensive expert research, and can be referred to by RE teachers when explaining and defending the subject’s importance in the curriculum, to parents or colleagues, for instance. For more detailed analysis of RE teaching within the REDCo project, readers are advised to consult individual REDCo studies, e.g. Marie von der Lippe’s research in Norway, which we have reported separately under the title: Talking about religion and diversity.

Generalisability and potential limitations

The findings have strong generalisability, having resulted from an international investigation characterised by high breadth and depth and including the UK. The data are about a decade ago at the time of writing and re-investigation would be useful.

Find out more

Reflections on the REDCo project, British Journal of Religious Education 33.2 pages 111-125 (published online 18 February 2011), 10.1080/01416200.2011.543589

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01416200.2011.543589

 

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