Author: eftre

Friday, 1^st April 2022 at 4-5.30pm CET (3-4.30pm UK/IRE, 5-6.30pm FIN/GRE), on Zoom

The current challenges arising from Ukraine are affecting all of us living and working in education across Europe. As religious education teachers, you might be wondering how to take up the topic in a sensible way in your classroom, how to talk about peace as core idea of many world religions in this new setting or how to best react to fears and questions brought up by your students in this context. 

With this workshop, EFTRE would like to offer a space for exchange, which will provide the opportunity to share experiences and expertise from our various contexts and backgrounds and learn from one another. The workshop will follow these guiding questions.

• How is the current situation affecting you right now?
• Where do you encounter these issues at school? Are pupils moved by it?
• How can religions give (spiritual) shape to the longing for peace, especially in religious education classes?
• How do we learn peace? Do you have tips for materials, methods, …?

The workshop will provide time for exchange in plenary but also in small group discussion. In addition, Norman Richardson, EFTRE executive member, will share his experience from the Northern Irish context and strategies on how to teach controversial issues.

In a spirit of mutual support, ideas, practical suggestions and resources shared by speakers and participants during the workshop will be made available via the EFTRE website later on. 

You don’t need to register for this event, please simply follow this link to participate in the zoom meeting:

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us04web.zoom.us/j/9617255369?pwd=a3JwWW40Rk9YazY0REhpK3M3bVRuUT09

Meeting ID: 961 725 5369
Passcode: 613248

As we approach the end of another challenging year, I am sure we are all looking forward to a better and brighter world in 2022! I am pleased to say that EFTRE is playing its part in this by launching its revised and improved website! It has a completely fresh look and also features our brand new logo! We really hope that not only will you like it, but that you will want to interact with it and contribute to it in the weeks and months to come.

On behalf of all members and friends of EFTRE, I want to thank the whole EFTRE Executive for contributing to the process which has made this possible. In particular, I want to pay tribute to our website manager Outi Raunio Hannula and our membership manager Bianca Kappelhoff who have both given their special expertise and many hours of their valuable time to this project – their careful attention to every detail is so much appreciated. I would also like to thank our website designer Veera Lupunen – it has been such a pleasure to work with her and she has been incredibly supportive and understanding during the whole process.

Many of you reading this will be preparing to celebrate Christmas very soon – this is traditionally a time of giving, so please accept the new website as EFTRE’s little gift to you! 

We wish all our members and friends a restful and relaxing time during the holiday period and look forward to meeting you online and – we very much hope face to face – in 2022! Stay healthy, safe and well and keep in touch!

I realised recently that it is just over twenty years since I first became directly involved in the work of EFTRE!

In the late summer of 2001, I travelled to Scotland to take part in the EFTRE Conference being held that year in Edinburgh. I seem to remember that I had been strongly attracted to this event from the moment – several months before – when I had first received the initial publicity about it. On reflection, I think there were probably several reasons for this:

• first, I felt that engaging with colleagues from across Europe would offer me invaluable opportunities to consider my own work in the context of new and fresh perspectives
• second, the Conference focus on handling truth claims in RE was highly relevant to me, the programme itself offered an excellent range of lectures, seminars, workshops and other activities and the price of attendance – at least for me – seemed to offer real value for money
• and finally, I have to admit that the prospect of spending time in one of my favourite cities with interesting people I had never met before was very appealing!

On all three counts, I am delighted to say that every one of  my expectations was wholly fulfilled and what was true for me in that initial encounter with EFTRE remains true today. Through EFTRE, my work continues to be enriched and informed by collaboration and cooperation with colleagues in similar roles across Europe, EFTRE still has a strong commitment to hosting high quality conferences and other events and I have had so many wonderful times in wonderful cities with wonderful people, many of whom have become very dear friends as well as colleagues.

But much has also changed in the last two decades  – just days after the EFTRE Conference in Edinburgh came to an end, the world was reeling after the 9/11 terror attacks in the United States. Since then, we have endured many other such attacks and not least on European soil. RE, a subject which often claims to make a particular contribution to the cultivation of respect for others and the promotion of community cohesion has had to face the challenges imposed by all such attacks, whatever their motivations might be. 

RE has also had to begin to grapple with other major concerns that have emerged more strongly since this century began – issues relating to climate change, to the marginalisation of certain ethnic and religious groups, to the role and status of women in society and to attitudes to sex, sexuality and gender. More recently of course, the pandemic has had a profound influence on the way many people think, act and feel and there have been – and will be – many more matters that challenge us in our professional and our personal lives.

As religious educators, we seek to provide the means to help our children and young people to navigate their way through this complex landscape and to engage with what is serious to them and to what is serious for others. At a time when increasing religious plurality and increasing secularism are to be seen in many of the countries from which we come, our task has perhaps become more complex than ever before.

EFTRE cannot claim to provide simple and easy solutions to the difficulties we face in these respects, but as our name suggests, we do provide a forum or meeting place where we can come together – virtually and in person – with those who are in a similar position to ourselves, although our contexts are never precisely the same. Our new website will be an invaluable tool for us to use in this respect, along with our other online platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. We also plan to continue holding seminars several times a year on topics which should be of interest to all our members and friends. These will be via Zoom but we hope to conduct some of them in person when we can travel more easily and then they will coincide with Executive and Board Meetings in our various host cities and countries.

Finally, our forthcoming Conference will provide a more extended opportunity to identify, explore and evaluate some of the ways in which RE can create bridges over troubled waters, offering the spaces in which we hope every child and young person we support can receive the help they need to make sense of themselves and their place in their own country, in Europe and in the wider world. We very much hope you will want to part of that event and look forward to seeing you there!

Lesley Prior, Chair of EFTRE
London, October 2021