Prof. Gärtner investigates how religious education strengthens environmental awareness

Religious education can help to promote environmentally conscious behavior among students because it deals with ethical and religious topics such as responsibility for creation, compassion or visions of the future. Recently, religious education for sustainable development (ESD) has become increasingly important, but neither the teaching concepts nor the corresponding learning settings - i.e. the framework conditions of the lessons such as the choice of space, materials and tasks - have been empirically investigated. Claudia Gärtner wants to close this gap with the new DFG project. "We don't want to evaluate the environmentally conscious behavior of young people," clarifies the Professor of Practical Theology. "Rather, we want to find out how different learning settings affect their planned environmental behavior."

The program deliberately works with secondary school pupils: They are often not the first target group for ESD, but their attitudes towards the topic often vary immensely. "These young people are particularly affected by environmental crises," explains Prof. Gärtner. "These pupils need social empowerment - and they can be enabled to do this through politically oriented religious education, which deals particularly intensively with questions about a socio-ecologically just future and the 'good life'."

Research takes place in cooperation with schools in Dortmund

For the project, the researchers are investigating both school and extracurricular learning settings. On the one hand, the team is analyzing religious education in 9th and 10th grades at four schools in Dortmund. To this end, the researchers are working together with the Dortmund Center for Practical Teacher Training of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia. The group also cooperates with "Kommende Dortmund": The social institute offers seminars for young people lasting several days, in which pupils are made aware of various social issues - including sustainability in a religious context - in a holistic way. The pupils' environmental awareness is recorded in advance in both settings and evaluated afterwards using tests and interviews. Finally, the researchers will compare which aspects of the different learning settings contributed to the learning success.

About the person

Prof. Claudia Gärtner has been teaching and researching as a professor of practical theology with a focus on religious education at TU Dortmund University since 2011. She is Vice Dean for Research and Diversity at the Faculty of Humanities and Theology. Her areas of specialization are religious education for sustainable development, aesthetic learning, didactic teaching and development research, dimensions of religious education hermeneutic research and religious education in all-day schools.

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