Competence Orientation in the Field of Islamic Religious Education in Public Schools

Islamic religious education is still a young subject in Germany. It has emerged from years of socio-political discussions about its justification in public schools. This article is a summary of the dissertation entitled Competence-orientation in Islamic Religious Education. An Analysis of Selected Curricula as a Contribution to the Didactics of Islamic Religious Education (Abdel-Rahman, Kompetenzorientierung im islamischen Religionsunterricht. Eine Analyse ausgewählter Curricula als Beitrag zur Fachdidaktik des islamischen Religionsunterrichts, Peter Lang, Berlin, 2022). At present, there is still a lack of educational-theoretical foundations for Islamic religious education in Germany. Among other things, there is no set definition of what religious education means in Islamic religion education in public schools. This is recognizable in the naming of the abilities, competences, and attitudes that Muslim pupils should develop during the course of their school life in Islamic religious education. Is the teaching more descriptive in the sense of imparting knowledge about Islamic norms and content, or is it teaching that develops the Islamic religion and its potential for orientation based on the pupilsʼ lifeworld, their experience, and questions? This article summarizes the analysis of three core-curricula from the federal states of Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia, and Baden-Württemberg. The extent to which competence orientation was implemented as an instrument for effective learning was analyzed by examining which processing competences pupils should achieve in order to acquire specific competences for the subject of Islamic religion. In doing so, the areas of requirement in terms of levels of learning were taken into particular consideration, and also the perspective—the lifeworld, Islamic-theological, or socio-political—they should explore their religion from was contemplated. In order to understand the development of Islamic religious education, it is necessary to look at its framework conditions in Germany. Selected aspects of the analysis are then presented in order to reflect on the results of this study in the next step.