Examining Religion's Influence in Non-formal and Informal Educational Contexts: Beliefs, Practices and Narratives

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce a call for papers for an upcoming Special Issue in Religions entitled “Examining Religion's Influence in Non-Formal and Informal Educational Contexts: Beliefs, Practices and Narratives”. Your insights and contributions will improve the general understanding of the manyfold impacts of religion in everyday educational settings beyond the school system. This Special Issue aims to provide a platform for scholarly dialogue on this broad topic, inviting contributors from many disciplines and fields to reveal the theoretical and empirical linkages between diverse religions and various non-formal and informal educational contexts.

Currently, the learning society perspective is largely widespread as a broad societal approach encouraging ongoing educational processes outside the early life stage and educational organizations (Ra et al. 2021). It mainly involves two forms of educational settings: non-formal contexts like cultural associations, sport associations, religious communities, and civic and volunteer groups and informal contexts such as family, friendship networks, peer groups, and workplaces. On a similar basis, social scientific studies emphasize how experiences with religion are generally shaped in both everyday life and societal settings untied from religious organizations (Ammermann 2021). In that respect, education studies also underline how people’s religious thoughts are primarily formed from childhood to adolescence, especially in non-formal and informal educational contexts (Goldman 2022).

Against this societal backdrop, we are pleased to invite you to sharpen beliefs, practices, and narratives of various religious traditions and faith groups affecting processes and dynamics in the two forms of educational settings mentioned above. If beliefs and practices are more common categories in both education and religion research, narratives embody a less common one. However, this last category appears suitable for disclosing religion’s contamination with societal expressions related to youth education, such as fantasy imaginaries and digital imaginations (Mangone 2022). Scholars of social pedagogy, sociology, anthropology, and history are also welcomed to contribute to this Special Issue in order to consider the growing impact of religious education in current society due to the increase in religious literacy policies and interreligious initiatives by governmental institutions (Dinham and Francis 2015).

Overall, this Special Issue aims to shed light on the nuanced role of religion in learning processes beyond the school system and especially in non-formal and informal educational settings. For this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• The dynamics of non-formal and informal educational contexts regarding socialization, learning, and cultural mediation intersecting with religion;
• The influences of religious beliefs, teachings, and thoughts in educational contexts and in their nurturing of syncretism;
• Entanglements among religious and educational practices and actions reshaping personal meanings or fostering paths of social change;
• The narratives among both religious and secular fields within educational contexts through their generation of popular, fantasy, or innovative features;
• New advancements in religious education and religious literacy in society and everyday life;
• Bottom-up and grassroots initiatives regarding interreligious dialogue in educational settings and especially outside the school system.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 250-300 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the Guest Editor—Dr. Marco Guglielmi (marco.guglielmi@unipd.it)—or the Assistant Editor of Religions—Ms. Margaret Liu (margaret.liu@mdpi.com). Abstracts will be reviewed by the Guest Editors to ensure that the papers are within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer reviews.

References

Ammerman, Nancy T. 2021. Studying Lived Religion: Contexts and Practices. New York: New York University Press.

Dinham, Adam, and Matthew Francis (Eds.) 2015. Religious Literacy in Policy and Practice. Bristol: Policy Press.

Goldman, Ronald. 2022. Religious Thinking from Childhood to Adolescence. Abingdon: Routledge.

Ra, Sungsup, Shanti Jagannathan, and Rupert Maclean (Eds.). 2021. Powering a Learning Society During an Age of Disruption. Cham: Springer.

Mangone, Emiliana. 2022. Narratives and Social Change: Social Reality in Contemporary Society. Cham: Springer.

Deadline for abstract submission: May 31, 2025

Deadline for full manuscript submission: January 31, 2025

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Andrea Porcarelli
Dr. Marco Guglielmi
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.