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Japan, Religious Education And Critical inTerculturalism. Approaches from the Study of Religions and Didactics.

Project description

Rethinking religious education through a Japanese lens

How can schools teach religion without reinforcing stereotypes or privileging one tradition over others? In Europe, religious education often struggles with its Christian and Western roots, making truly intercultural teaching difficult. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the JREACT project tackles this challenge by turning to an unexpected source: Japan. With its unique religious landscape and scholarly tradition in the study of religion, Japan offers a powerful lens to rethink religious education. JREACT compares Japanese and European approaches to develop inclusive, critically reflective, and non-confessional RE models. By blending the study of religion, didactics, anthropology, and citizenship education, it aims to enrich classroom practice across Europe, moving towards a more genuinely diverse understanding of religion.

Objective

The JREACT Project wants to provide a non-confessional model for teaching about religions in schools, i.e. Religious Education (RE), that eschews ethnocentrism and promotes critically self-reflection, diversity and inclusiveness. It does so by engaging the case-study of RE in Japan from the point of view of the academic Study of Religion (SoR).
In the last 20 years debates and developments on RE and Intercultural/Citizenship Education (ICE) have increasingly intersected, especially in Europe. However, the SoR has since long criticized the modern, Christian and ethnocentric biases inherent in the concept of “religion”, thus highlighting an intrinsic intercultural weaknesses in RE.
Nonetheless, International/European research aimed at the creation of SoR-based RE didactics still lacks a thorough engagement with non-western contexts. This hinders the creation of a full-fledged intercultural and inclusive RE.
JREACT want thus to improve European SoR-based RE through a comparative analysis with the Japanese case. The reasons to choose Japan are its peculiar religious situation (which often eludes Eurocentric views on religions), its long scientific tradition (for and non-European country) in the modern study of religion, and an ongoing debate on the role of RE in schools. It will contextually compare Japanese and European SoR-based RE theories and methods, looking for unnoticed biases, mutually reinforcing points, uncharted areas and contrasting points. From this it will elaborate innovative concepts and methods for RE and articulate them into guidelines.
Its interdisciplinary approach combines SoR, Didactics, Anthropology of Education and ICE.
JREACT will establish my position as an expert in intersecting fields: comparative RE; society & religion in contemporary Japan, theoretical issue in SoR, Didactics and ICE. At the societal level, it will innovate the debate and the practices concerning RE in European schools from the perspective of critical ICE.

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HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-GF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01

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Coordinator

UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI ROMA LA SAPIENZA
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 384 915,24
Address
Piazzale Aldo Moro 5
00185 Roma
Italy

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Region
Centro (IT) Lazio Roma
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

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