The politicisation and securitisation of religious education in Greek–Cypriot schools

Abstract

This article is based on a year-long ethnographic research project on religious education (RE) in Greek–Cypriot schools and provides empirical evidence about the complexities emerging from teachers’ attempts to address peace and security issues in a ‘conflict-affected society’. The study shows that the reproduction of peace and security issues through RE is not the only possibility within a conflict-affected society; however, RE can be one of the tools to challenge normative ways of politicisation and securitisation by reframing pedagogical practices to instill cracks in the normative regime. These findings have two important implications. The first implication concerns teachers’ important role in creating the pedagogical conditions that address issues of peace, conflict, politics and religion in productive ways; and the second implication is that teachers need to be provided with opportunities for teacher training and institutional support, if they are going to gain a deeper understanding of the impact of politicisation and securitisation on RE.

Measuring competences for democratic culture: teaching human rights through religious education

“…(Christopher, 2020;Jackson & Everington, 2016). This external interplay changes, according to the degree of politicisation and secularisation of RE in different contexts (Zembylas, Loukaidis, & Antoniou, 2019). In conclusion, the issue for RE teachers is that contemporary conditions and educational demands, require well-equipped CDC teachers to teach EDC/HRE through RE, and this inevitably means a change of paradigm for most of them.…”

“…(Christopher, 2020;Jackson & Everington, 2016). This external interplay changes as the politicisation and secularisation of RE has a different impact in different contexts (Zembylas, Loukaidis, & Antoniou, 2019). To conclude, the issue is that both contemporary conditions and educational demands require RE teachers who are competent to transmit democratic culture.…”

Topic Shifts as a Proxy for Assessing Politicization in Social Media

“…While polarization refers to the process by which two or more political groups selectively chooses to consume opinions they already agree with and adopt increasingly extreme and antagonistic viewpoints (Layton et al 2021), politicization, the focus of our work, is the act of marking or naming something as political (Wiesner 2021). Topics recently subject to increasing politicization include climate change (Pepermans and Maeseele 2016), COVID-19 (Hart, Chinn, and Soroka 2020), religion (Zembylas, Loukaidis, and Antoniou 2019), and culture and science in general (Wright 1998;Bolsen and Druckman 2015). By adding an ideological charge to a non-political issue, politicization may lead to manipulation, increased hostility and a lack of trust to the public debate.…”