Religion as a Category of Difference: Using Teacher Education to Explore the (Invisible) Curricular and Pedagogical Role of Christianity in Everyday School Practices

• In Event: Poster Session 5
  In Poster Session: Examining Teacher Research and Classroom Practice

Abstract

While it may seem, from various court decisions separating them that the relationship between religion and education has long been settled and that religion is absent from the halls of public education and its discourses, this, we argue, is not the case. This proposed conceptual paper suggests that despite the fact that religion is not taught in schools—that is, one might teach about religion in some classes (e.g., social studies) but students are not directly taught to follow a particular religion—religious understandings¬—in content and pedagogy still underlie what is done in the name of public education in the United States. We move to deliberately and specifically examine the implications and ramifications of such understandings for teacher education.

Authors

• Avner Segall, Michigan State University

• Kevin Burke, University of Notre Dame