Discussion in religious education: Developing dialogic for community cohesion and/or spiritual development

In the UK and across Europe, rising concern about religion has impacted on religious education (RE), with a new emphasis being placed on dialogue for developing community cohesion. In this article it is suggested that the new emphasis on dialogue for community cohesion in RE also presents an opportunity to improve dialogic pedagogy for spiritual education. The article reports the author’s observations of classroom discussion in UK classrooms, and examines constraints on developing dialogic pedagogy, whether for community cohesion or for spiritual development. Considerable research is being carried out into developing dialogic pedagogy for community cohesion and, while the author argues that further research and curriculum development will be needed to transform classroom discussion into dialogic, this research should also be applied to developing transformative spiritual education.