Reading and reflecting sacred texts in the presence of the other. An empirical study on the use of ‘scriptural reasoning’ in teacher education.

In this article the method of Scriptural Reasoning (SR), a text-based approach to interreligious dialogue between participants of the three Abrahamic religions, was implemented for a teacher education setting at a German university. Not only students with an outspoken religious conviction but also agnostic and atheist students, preparing themselves to become teachers in public schools, were invited into the conversation. The article documents and discusses the qualitative-empirical research in which the SR meetings were embedded. The aim of the article is not to create a hermeneuticaltheoryfor SR but rather to explore how SR as amethod, with its specific learningtoolof text-work, can be turned into a broader didacticalmodelwhich can be transferred to other learning environments and which can in the long run provide empirical evidence on successful teacher education in multi-religious and multi-worldview societies and schools. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]