How Religious Education May Foster Environmental Awareness

Religious education can help to foster environmentally conscious behavior among school students because it deals with ethical and religious topics such as responsibility for creation, compassion, and visions for the future. Recently, religious Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) has become increasingly significant, but neither the teaching concepts nor the corresponding learning settings – i.e. the teaching framework, such as choice of location, materials and tasks – have been studied empirically. Claudia Gärtner, Professor of Practical Theology, wants to close this gap with the new project funded by the German Research Foundation. “Our aim here is not to assess the environmentally conscious behavior of young people,” she explains. “Rather, we want to find out how different learning settings affect their planned environmental behavior.”

In this context, the researchers are consciously working with students at types of secondary schools which are rarely the primary target group for ESD, but their attitudes towards the topic often vary immensely. “Whereby it is precisely these young people who are particularly affected by environmental crises,” explains Professor Gärtner. “These school students need social empowerment – and politically oriented religious education, which deals particularly intensively with questions of a just socio-ecological future and a ‘good life’, can give them this empowerment.”

Research in collaboration with Dortmund schools

For the project, the researchers are looking at both school and non-school learning settings. On the one hand, the team is analyzing religious education in the 9th and 10th grades at four Dortmund schools. To this end, they are working together with the Dortmund Center for Practical Teacher Training of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia. The group is also collaborating with “Kommende Dortmund”: The social institute offers multi-day seminars for young people that sensitize school students towards various social issues – including sustainability in a religious context – in a holistic way. Their environmental awareness is documented beforehand in both settings – school and non-school – and evaluated afterwards by means of tests and interviews. The researchers then compare which aspects of the different learning settings contributed to learning success.

About Claudia Gärtner

Claudia Gärtner has been Professor of Practical Theology and a researcher with a focus on religious education at TU Dortmund University since 2011. She is Vice Dean for Research and Diversity in the Department of Humanities and Theology. Her main interests are religious Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), aesthetic learning, didactic teaching and educational development research, dimensions of hermeneutic research in religious education, and religious education in all-day schools.

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