Paradigm shift in religious education: a reply to Jackson, or why religious education goes to war

Abstract

This article provides a defence of my theoretical analysis of paradigm shift in contemporary religious education, particularly in light of Robert Jackson's (2015) article published in this journal: 'Misrepresenting religious education's past and present in looking forward: Author using Kuhn's concepts of paradigm, paradigm shift and incommensurability'. The core of Jackson's concerns is my adaptation of Kuhn's concepts of paradigm, paradigm shift and incommensurability to religious education. Defending in turn my use of these concepts -of paradigm, paradigm shift and incommensurability -I conclude that Jackson's critique is in and of itself an apt demonstration of the position he seeks to attack. Drawing wider parallels with the methodological 'paradigm wars' in the social sciences I argue that the paradigms are why religious education too goes to 'war'.

Religion and Education: Framing and Mapping a Field

“…Such debates are potentially better understood if framed using the proposed heuristic above, that is in the wider context of the formation (and reformulation) of a public sphere and within this the development of a public education system. It is curious, however, that researchers have only rarely considered these historical and political contingencies as relevant when debating matters of religion and education (see Osmer and Schweitzer, 2003), choosing instead to focus predominantly on debating the ideas which have shaped religious educational practises (see for example , Jackson, 2015;Gearon, 2018;Jackson, 2018).…”

Paradigm shift in religious education? A reply to Gearon, or when is a paradigm not a paradigm?

“…The following is a response to Liam Gearon's reply (Gearon 2018) to my article in the Journal of Beliefs and Values which presented a critique of his use of Thomas Kuhn's concepts of paradigm, paradigm shift and incommensurability in his analysis of religious education (Jackson 2015a).…”

The Educational Sociology and Political Theology of Disenchantment: From the Secularization to the Securitization of the Sacred

“…In European settings the Council of Europe benchmarks political principle through pedagogic practice in numerous ways (CoE 2008). Of late, as I have long noted, such political purposes served through pedagogical practices have developed a very specific and self-defined security function, and of paramount importance here is the otherwise perplexing engaging of a Cold War security agency in the teaching of religion in public schools-no lesser a body that is than the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in the Europe and its widely influential Toledo Guiding Principles on Teaching about Religions and Beliefs in Public Schools (OSCE 2007;Gearon 2017aGearon , 2017b. The facts of powerful international political agencies responding to crises of global security through education-itself entirely understandable-is perhaps nowhere better illustrated, nor anywhere more directly, than in the UN's direct organizational response to a book and an academic thesis: here Huntington (2002) Clash of Civilizations prompted a post-Madrid bombing response with the creation of a very high level political initiative with global reach and education to the fore, namely the formation of counter-thesis to Huntington in the form of the Alliance of Civilizations (UNAoC 2018).…”

“…Rousseau 1968;Bellah 1967). Where I have shown this politicization of religion in education becoming more integrated with security agendas I conceptualize this as the 'securitization of religion in education' (Gearon 2013(Gearon , 2017a(Gearon , 2017b. This has brought support as well as strong opposition (Jackson 2015;Newell 2015).…”