The study of religious education is of great interest in analyzing how schools and educational authorities address the demands of multicultural and multi-religious societies and states. As diversity increases through migration, globalization and conflicts, schools are faced with equally diverse challenges, one of which is the religious and cultural diversity that characterizes schools and communities. While many studies have focused on this change and its impact in politics, school and classroom, relatively few have focused on how teachers and educators have fared. Sitting between the new policies and school demographics, teachers and educators have shaped the policy in their engagements. The study of life trajectories shows that the lines between religion and religious education are blurred in personal life histories, and that positions can shift due to personal and contextual developments. They point to the innovative and unexpected turns that individuals trace in their personal life journeys. This book reminds us that we need to pay more attention to the teachers, principals, managers and public intellectuals who shape and are shaped by the changing context of religion and religious education. This book was originally published as a special issue of Religion & Education.

Whether formally incorporated into curriculum and teacher training or informally integrated in contexts such as state or NGO initiatives dealing with resolving social, ethnic, and religious conflicts, peace education is increasingly recognized as a critical component in addressing violence in contemporary plural societies. Peace education can constructively undertake a reframing of historical narratives while inspiring practical community activities. An important, but insufficiently studied and theorized aspect of peace education is the role of religion. The challenge to peace education in today’s globalized, diverse, mobile, and religiously pluralistic world is to be able to take both complex global and distinctive local situations into account. The contributions to this integrative collection of essays provide exactly these local and global perspectives on the state of peace education and its relationship to religion across pedagogy and curriculum, state policies, and activism within societies on the front lines of resolving internal conflicts, whether historical or recent, that often reflect aspects of religious identities.

This timely book offers a critically important contribution to debates around the meeting place of religious and secular worldviews in education. Edited by five leading figures in the field, and drawing on expert international scholarship and research, the book provides cutting-edge analysis that bridges the religious and secular in global educational contexts. Considering the role of the United Nations, UNESCO, OECD and PISA in varied international contexts, the book draws on critical analysis of primary empirical research and secondary critique to offer a coherent blend of theoretically complex yet practical analysis of policy implementation. Throughout this accessible and logically structured volume, the authors assert that the meeting place of religious and secular worldviews is one of the most important and pressing issues for religion in education. As a field-defining work of research into education, religion and worldviews, the book will be essential reading for scholars, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of religious education, religious studies, philosophy of education and international education.