Bible Didactics and Social Inequality? Critical Considerations on the Interconnection of Religious Education and Heterogeneous Settings

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

It is difficult to know what to make of this article.  It is focusing on a German context and attempting to draw out issues around Bible ‘didactics’ and social inequality in relation to RE and ‘heterogeneous learning groups’.  I presume this article was originally composed in German and then carefully translated into English.  However, the meanings in English have become blurred.  Making sense of ‘heterogeneous learning groups’ sounds clumsy and unclear in a British educational context.  I think it is referring to what is known as ‘mixed ability’ teaching groups/classes.  Similarly the repeated use of ‘Bible didactics’ sounds ambiguous in a UK education context.  Typically ‘didactics’ refers to a teaching style or approach in which the teacher communicates in very exact terms the knowledge or information which they want to deliver to students. It is not clear if the author is referring to teaching about the Bible or a specific way of teaching the Bible.

The argument developed throughout needs further work because is dependent on old or potentially outdated sources. More seriously, there are a number of unsupported assertions  a various points.  For example: see line 58 where reference to PISA is taken to ‘demonstrate’ that German young people only have a ‘basic’ understanding of texts.  This is overstating the evidence.

Lines 83-85 assert that the Bible is ‘existentially irrelevant’ and provides a quote that agrees with this claim, however no supporting evidence is made to substantiate this opinion.

The argument developed is couched in highly pejorative terms in relation to the Bible.  For example in lines 326-328, the dismissive phrase of ‘everything fairy-tale and absurd’ in relation to the Bible.  There is an undeveloped assumption that (parts of) the Bible can be dismissed or fairly classified in these terms. What parts of the Bible are being referred to here?  In terms of literary genre there is a difference between describing a text as myth or proto-scientific and denigrating it as a mere ‘fairy-tale’. In line 334 Trible’s 1984(!) unfounded and unfair assertion about the Bible as ‘texts of terror’ is simply stated as if it is true or even defensible. There is no supporting argument.

There are instances where the sentences are too long and this distorts the meaning.  See these two examples:

However, the immense volume of Bible didactics 415 can now also be turned into an advantage or opportunity: It is inherent in Bible didactics 416 to make a very conscious fine-tuning with regard to suitable methods, contents, and focal 417 points from the enormous reservoir of possibilities, especially in the sign of heterogeneity 418 and social inequality. 419

4.2. Central Lines of Development and Focal Points 420

The multifaceted character of the Bible's didactic focuses in Germany can be seen in 421 the important religious education concepts in the German-speaking countries from the 422 middle of the 20th century onwards: While liberal and kerygmatic biblical didactics are 423 primarily interested in the dogmatic interpretation of the Bible, hermeneutical biblical didactics emphasize exegetical and epistemological perspectives (Lachmann 2013).

For an article written in English on this theme it is surprising to see no recognition of scholars (such as Bowie or Aldridge or Cooling or Wright) who have written on these themes.  It is not clear if this article is about how best to teach biblical hermeneutics in the RE classroom or if it is about biblical literacy within RE and the rest of the curriculum.

Similarly when discussing ‘overcoming social inequality’ (lines 442ff) there is no awareness that liberation theology has been happening for over forty years.  In South America and in numerous other places around the globe, the bible has been used to awaken a critical appraisal of unjust structures in society and provide a context for some of the poorest to work together to make a more just society.

A key issue is that the conclusion do not follow from the preceding discussions in the article.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your helpfull comments! We have edited them as carefully as possible!

Author Response File: author_response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This is interesting and average research article, which reflect religious diversity and religious denomination in German society for education in current. The methods of biblical studies  stimulate the interactive interpretation of biblical texts in a learning group, during which the group moves into the biblical situation described and interprets a text together. This enables students to express their own position and insights. These are hermeneutical biblical didactics, which emphasize exegetical and epistemological perspectives and it is very actual position. 

Author Response

Thank you for your efforts and your review, which requires no further revisions!

Reviewer 3 Report

This is an interesting topic with a lot of potential. Two areas need to be revised:

1. Theoretical grounding and defining of your main construct/phenomenon: "social inequality." What do you mean by this in the context of education and how is your construct in conversation with extant research in general education and religious education?
2. Methods and Research design. It's a case study study, okay. You write there were on site observations and case analysis. As empirical educational research, that's not sufficient. Was this study under IRB? What did you have permission to observe? What did you do about students who didn't give you permission to observe? Did you have audio recording? video recording? just notes? how long did you observe for- both the duration of data collection and individual observation periods? What data did you end up with? How did you analyze your data? How do I know your case studies are truly representative of your data? I need a lot more in order to be able to evaluate your empirical research design and data analysis.

Once you fix these two major areas of concern, I believe this paper shows great promise- assuming you did in fact gather a robust set of data and analyzed it in a rigorous fashion.

Author Response

Thank you for your helpfull comments. We have edited them as carefully as possible!

Reviewer 4 Report

It is an interesting research on the religious education in Bavaria (Germany). It addresses differentiated teaching of religion in schools, which now also takes into account social inequality.

Author Response

Thank you for your efforts and your review,  which requires no further revisions.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have addressed the reservations and comments raised in the initial review.  On the basis of this and the response from the authors, I am willing to recommend publication in the journal.  I think the actors should be praised for being willing to engage with the review comments.