Introduction to Religious Education Prof.Dr. Mualla SELÇUK

Welcome to Religious Education Course. The course is designed to help students understand and interpret Islamic Religious Education from an interfaith perspective. More recently, religious education has taken on further tasks. A rapidly diversifying student population in public schools has forced the subject to pay more attention on how to teach religion.

Taking the multiplicity of faith traditions making up the global religious landscape , the direction of religious education has moved to interreligious direction. It is essential to improve students knowledge in their own religion but also lead them to a deeper discover of the richness of their own and of the others’. At the heart of this learning in encounter is a greater knowledge and a deeper respect of the self and the other.

The course engages with the following query: “What would it mean if we transformed our religious education system so that students were empowered to know how to engage with diversity in order to find guidance to crafting meaningful lives for themselves and others?”

Structure of the Course The course is based on transformative learning model which I coined as “reflection in action”. We as, lecturer and teaching assistan, prepare” essential”questions for each lesson and share them with the students. Encourage the students to reflect on their educational background in responding the questions and read the required articles. Start each lesson with a conversation which leads to further questions and response.

Invite students at the end of each lesson for the following activities related to the content; Point to ponder Teachings to remember Questions to deepen the subject