The Paradigms of Contemporary Religious Education

Abstract

The word ‘paradigm’ appears in a number of Cornelia Roux’s published works (Roux 1998; 1998a; 2003; 2008; 2009; 2011). This article re-examines her use of ‘paradigm’ in the light of Thomas Kuhn’s (1996) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Drawing on recently published work on religion and education (Gearon 2013; 2014), I elaborate why researchers and educators alike require a more rigorous theoretical conceptualisation of the underlying paradigms of contemporary religious education. Outlining how a satisfactory understanding of the paradigms in religious education require an understanding of the epistemological grounds of each, the article presents, by way of demonstration, a critical outline of six such paradigms: the scripturaltheological; the phenomenological; the spiritual-experiential; the philosophical- conceptual; the socio-cultural; and the historical-political.

Keywords: religion, education, paradigm, philosophy, epistemology