Call for Papers: Neues RpB-Special Issue "Climate Change in Religious Education: Agency and Collaboration“

Climate Change Education and Religious Education: Agency and Collaboration

Climate change compels educators to move beyond awareness-raising toward forms of learning that cultivate meaningful agency and collective response. Religious Education, with its concern for ethical reasoning, worldviews, and shared human responsibility, offers a distinctive space in which such agency can be nurtured. Yet the collaborative and action-oriented potential of Religious Education, whether within schools, congregations, or other religious learning environments, remains undertheo-rised and under-researched internationally.
This special issue, Climate Change Education in Religious Education: Agency and Collaboration, invites contributions that explore how Religious Education can strengthen learners’ capacity to act, to partic-ipate, and to collaborate with others in addressing the challenges of climate change education.
We seek research that illuminates how agency is formed, sustained, or impeded, and how collaborative processes shape climate learning in Religious Education. Possible topics include:

• pedagogical approaches that enable student agency, participation, and ethical action;
• collaborative practices involving teachers, pupils, families, religious communities, or crossdis-ciplinary partnerships;
• classrooms as spaces of shared decision-making, dialogue, and collective meaning-making on climate issues;
• interreligious or intercultural collaborations that foster environmental responsibility;
• conflicts, resistance, controversy or conflicting goals in learning processes;
• methodological explorations that position learners as co-researchers or co-creators of climate
   responses.

We welcome theoretical, empirical, and methodological contributions from diverse regions, religions, traditions, and disciplinary locations. This special issue seeks to advance international research on how Religious Education can become a collaborative, action-oriented space for addressing the climate crisis.
Researchers wishing to contribute are invited to submit a title and a 150-word abstract to viktor.al-drin@hb.se by 28 February 2026. Completed articles should be submitted via the Journal for Religion in Education manuscript platform by 31 August 2026. When submitting, please indicate clearly that your manuscript is intended for the special issue on the climate crisis. Authors must follow the journal’s submission guidelines. Accepted articles may be published “online first” prior to the full special issue.

Guest Editor for the Special Issue
Dr. Viktor Aldrin
Associate Professor in Practical Theology and Religious Education
Chair of the Collaborative Network for Climate Change in Religious Education (CORE)
Borås University, Sweden
viktor.al-drin@hb.se | CV: https://www.hb.se/en/research/research-portal/researchers/VIAL/