Lessons Learned from Teaching Teachers how to Teach about World Religions
Keywords:
World Religions; Teacher Education; Field Experiences; Elementary EducationAbstract
This quasi-experimental comparative case study compared 22
elementary pre-service teachers' (PSTs') 7th-grade lessons on world religions
to the lessons developed and taught by a cohort of 26 PSTs. The PSTs from
Cohort 1 received no instruction or course readings related to teaching
about world religions; whereas, the PSTs from Cohort 2 were assigned six
articles to read and spent one hour of in-class time learning about teaching
world religions. Lesson plans, teaching observations, focus group
interviews, and reflection journals served as data sources, which were coded
for core themes. Classical content analysis was used to tabulate incidents of
PST behaviors related to the core themes. PSTs from Cohort 1 exhibited
greater lack of knowledge and awareness of world religious, used biased
language, lacked solemnity and sensitivity, made more assumptions and
generalizations, and even exhibited outright promotion of Christianity. This
study suggests that elementary social studies teacher educators, by
spending only an hour of methods class time on the topic, can help their
PSTs to avoid common missteps in their teaching about world religions.
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