What teachers in cooperative RE think about to take a stand and to take perspective as a requirement for the teacher in a denominational-cooperative learning settings

Abstract

This article examines how teachers of religion from North Rhine-Westphalia who are familiar with cooperative religious education perceive the prerogative to be able to take a stand and to bring in the perspective of their counterpart. For this purpose, seven group interviews, 16 letters and 45 questionnaires have been evaluated qualitatively. As a result it is stated that in the perception of the participants the ability to take a stand and the ability to take perspective are closely related to each other, whereby the ability to take a stand gets far more atten­tion. The ability to take a standpoint is addressed on three levels, namely a) as religious attitude, b) as knowledge about the denominations, and c) as behavior in the classroom. For the interviewees, only the knowledge level offers the possibility of taking the perspective of the other denomination. Furthermore, they see two points of reference for their own standpoint in their individual faith and in the collective perspective of their own church. How­ever, it is also asked whether the perspective of the church could not be in itself diverse and to what extent the emphasis on one point of view leads to a "re-ideologization" of cooperative learning.