Beyond the School Subjects. Promoting Non-religious, Trans-religious and Religious Education in Upper Secondary School

As the importance of religious education in the curricula of upper secondary school decreases, the socially relevant question arises as to where pupils in Switzerland obtain their knowledge about religious topics. Here our attention turns to the Internet: Young people come into contact with religious content of questionable quality via social media. How do they deal with this content, and which content do they critically reflect on and when? And what role do media skills and religious skills play in this? The project addresses these questions in several consecutive sub-studies.

In a first step, we investigate a hitherto little-researched but widespread phenomenon: Religious or spiritual influencers, some of whom link highly problematic messages with religious content. In media impact experiments, we explore the question of how school pupils perceive such content – and to what extent its effects depend on whether recipients attend religious education classes at school or not. We also investigate which non-religious, trans-religious and religious skills students need in order to critically scrutinize religion-related online content.

In the further course of the project, we will develop evidence-based interventions for school practice by examining teaching practices for teaching relevant skills and evaluating which methods prove to be particularly effective.