“Sharing Worldviews: Learning in Encounter for Common Values in Diversity” in School and Teacher Education—Contexts in Germany and Europe

Abstract

Challenges and tensions that arise in a pluralistic society with differing worldviews among its citizens must be addressed from the outset in school education. To enable social cohesion within a heterogeneous society, students must learn to harmonize their own worldviews with other interpretations of the world in a spirit of “reciprocal inclusivity” (Reinhold Bernhardt). This article argues that this task particularly falls within the responsibility of subjects in schools that address the existential “problems of constitutive rationality” (Jürgen Baumert), specifically religious education, ethics, and philosophy. In Germany and Austria, multiple subjects within denominational religious education, as well as ethics and philosophy, are offered in schools. When these subjects collaborate on projects, students learn to engage in dialogue with the various religious and secular, individual, and collective interpretations, perspectives, and worldviews they encounter. Since 2002/03, and in teacher training since 2011, such a didactically guided Sharing Worldviews approach has been implemented in school projects in Southern Germany through a four-phase concept. This concept can be flexibly applied to the local conditions of the school, contributes to internationalisation and digitalisation, and does not require additional teaching hours. By incorporating secular worldviews, Sharing Worldviews goes beyond interreligious learning and has also been realised digitally in other European countries. The following article begins by considering the educational requirements in a heterogeneous society (1), describes the prerequisites needed to positively influence students’ attitudes (2), outlines common foundational concepts for interreligious and inter-worldview dialogue (3), and recommends “Mutual Hospitality” as the basis for such dialogue in schools (4). The article then explains how “Mutual Hospitality” can be practically implemented in a four-phase concept of Sharing Worldviews both in schools and in teacher training (5 and 6) by tracing the origins of this concept (7). The Sharing Worldviews concept has been both internationalised and digitalised in schools and teacher education (8), aligns with the educational principles of the OECD (9), and demonstrates significant benefits in empirical studies (10).

Keywords

• social cohesion
• Sharing Worldviews
• interreligious learning
• inter-worldview learning
• dialogical learning
• dialogue