Schools and Religious Diversity: Why Teacher Professionalism Needs Diversity Awareness

Next week, the 2019 CESNUR Conference "Re-Enchanting the World: Spiritualities and Religions of the Third Millennium" will be held, taking place from 5 to 7 September at the Università di Torino.



I am very much looking forward to travelling with my Cinquecento, taking part and talking about "Schools and Religious Diversity: Why Teacher Professionalism Needs Diversity Awareness":

The rise of migration to Europe has brought ethnic and religious diversity, is reshaping the educational landscape and challenging policy makers. In populist rhetoric, religion is instrumentalised as a means of constructing a “Christian Occident” as an antithesis to immigrants and refugees mainly coming from Muslim-majority countries. Islam has more or less become Europe’s second religion, at the same time reason number one for discrimination and bullying at school. According to surveys, teachers feel ill prepared to meet the needs of students with a different religious background and helpless when confronted with islamophobia, antisemtitism, etc. Since schools play a key role in integration, supporting social changes, and building the future, it is high time university curricula and teachers‘ ongoing education were rethought.
In this paper, the field of tension is discussed between schools‘ task to educate in line with the majority’s culture and the inclusion of minorities, between stereotypes, challenges, problems and chances, between freedom to and from religion, as well as types of religious discrimination, perpetrators and victims, good practices, and latent variables hidden behind generalisations suggesting that it is not necessarily religion per se that is the problem.




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