Are our Future Socio-Educational Agents Duly Prepared to Foster Intercultural and Interreligious Dialogue in their Professional Practice?

Interreligious Competence (IRC) in Students of Education: An Exploratory Study

“…Through the Stories that Move Project, which is a blended-learning educational resource that can be used to develop intercultural and IRC in adolescent students, we were interested in how students of educational science position themselves in relation to religion, as well as what experiences and competencies these future educators have at their disposal in order to undertake these educational initiatives involving IRD. The majority of these young university students have been raised and educated in a secular state that still retains its Catholic cultural tradition, a state that is experiencing difficulties-just like a large number of European countries-in harmonizing compliance with these guaranteed legal frameworks (freedom of worship and the right to receive religious education) while encountering the prejudices and current sociological trends that swing back and forth between an increase in radicalism and the decline in the number of followers in religious communities (Griera 2020;Lehmann 2020;Vilà et al 2020). In the absence of any educational efforts in university classrooms, these positions, beliefs, and competencies will remain unconscious, yet they will be expressed through prejudices, discriminatory behavior, and all the possible cumulative behaviors that will emerge as major barriers to developing an educational and social community in which everyone feels accepted, recognized, and involved as citizens.…”