Introduction

Starting with the words of Saint John of Damaskus (1864, p. 594A) in his Dialectic that ‘nothing is more valuable than knowledge; knowledge is the light of the soul and ignorance is the darkness’, as an author of this chapter, I have to claim in advance that I am glossing the issue of knowledge in Religious Education (RE) mostly with a lamp as Diogenes the Cynic inquiring the notion of knowledge than possessing it. I admit that I realised emphatically that when I met Michael Young in London in 2014 and he stated that he still has persisted epistemological questions. It is worth saying that I interviewed him then seeking answers about RE curriculum development, a project which I had undertaken in Greece, and was eager to find an answer to whether RE is or can be a powerful knowledge subject.

This is, however, the topic of this chapter, and since 2014, a concrete theoretical basis that is based on my research has been illustrating more what Young asked me then: What knowledge does RE in Greece deliver, and is it of cardinal importance to all students?

First and foremost in my research, knowledge is considered a valuable and high deed, acquisition and dominance over what there is to know: the knowns, such as people (acquaintance knowledge) and facts (knowledge-that), and knowing, the procedures of knowing the knowns (knowledge how) (Ryle, 1949; Russell, 1912; Dewey & Bentley, 1949). In sharing the truth, therefore, knowledge can be defined by dwelling on the origins of Greek-Byzantine philosophy (Bradshaw, 2006; Lossky, 1997; John of Damascus, 2012) or on contemporary pragmatistic theories (Putnam, 1994b; Misak, 2018). The difference between them is that the first understands the ‘sharing’ principle as an in whole- or in part-participation to what exists, actually to how God manifests himself to others (these are God’s energies/attributes) and the latter as a valuable, beneficial, and useful—practical in one word—result of inquiry which is answerable to some independent world since ‘truth is sometimes recognition-transcendent because what goes on in the world is sometimes beyond our power to recognize, even when it is not beyond our power to conceive’ (Putnam, 1994a, p. 516). Knowledge is considered an experience on one hand, and a cognitive practice on the other. Its acquisition actually is a transformative process according to Socrates. It is not just a piece of information but an energetic and drastic manifestation of what was learned. Yet despite the recognition of the different types of knowledge: factual, conceptual, procedural and meta-cognitive (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001, p. 38), the last two types have been met by a seeming scepticism when they are related to students; an experience which I think Michael Young shared to some extent in his publications on knowledge-based approach to curriculum where students’ experience is a contested issue in knowledge construction (Young, 2007, 2008, 2009a, 2009b, 2011, 2013b, 2014b, 2015, 2021; Young & Muller, 2013; Young et al., 2014).

In this chapter, I will explore the role of knowledge in the RE curriculum. I will start with Young’s notion of power knowledge, comparing it with the concepts of the Greek paideia (αγωγή/παιδεία) and the German Bildung echoing the Biesta’s education (εκπαίδευση) and his distinction between ‘cultivation humanity’ and ‘educating the human’. Then I will elaborate, firstly, with Dewey’s theory of knowing works hand in hand with substantive knowledge and its transformative power in individuals’ life where the other is more than significant and, secondly, on the nature of learning with its knowledge processes and its different ways of knowing that make available the achievement of comparable learning outcomes and of deeper and broader knowledge which connects learners with the world in purposeful ways (Kalantzis & Cope, 2012). My attention is to create a theoretical ground where the answer to the question regarding the knowledge that constitutes RE as a subject and the findings of my research will illuminate the topic and the notion of religious knowledge as experience, as a significant ‘what’ which is as important as the ‘how’ in education. Content and process are perceived here as an educational experience (thinking, reflection and action). Finally, I will discuss that within the RE curriculum context, the ‘language games’ of religion(s), in fact, the religious literacy that the school provides, facilitates students’ knowledge processes and therefore communication with self and others, provided that experiential learning teaching applies within the classroom. Thus, the RE’s content applies in ‘events with the meaning’ from which contributions to knowledge-based teaching are made possible.

Powerful Knowledge

The concept of powerful knowledge in Michael Young’s writing which answers the question ‘What is the important knowledge that pupils should be able to acquire at school?’ (Young, 2013a, p. 102) is the epicentre of this particular study. Obviously, he advocates for an open—not fixed—specialized knowledge of each discipline that has an explanatory value to those who have access to it. This means that it provides: (a) ‘more reliable explanations and new ways of thinking about the world’, (b) ‘learners with a language for engaging in political, moral, and other kinds of debates’ (Young, 2008, p. 14), it ‘helps us to go beyond our individual experiences’ (Young, 2013b, p. 196) as well as it predicts, it explains, it enables us to envisage alternatives (Young, 2014b, p. 74). Not only science but also social sciences and humanities can analyse and explain the observations of the real world and build a theoretical framework (Goertz, 2006; Epstein, 2019; Nordgren, 2017; Biesta, 2021).

Although the meaning of knowledge-based curriculum development and subject teaching has been an influential approach to education in the last decade, RE has had little influence, as the intellectual power that school religious knowledge can provide has been questioned for several decades and admittedly has not been well researched. RE not only is a subject with a contested valuable content but also needs to take into account a discontinuity between the culture of the curriculum and school knowledge and the culture that different groups of students acquire in their homes and communities that they bring to school, as well as in many RE national contexts that follow different types of RE (confessional, non-confessional, mono-religious, multi-religious, and so on (Koukounaras Liagkis, 2018)) in curriculum development, according to Young (2008, p. 13). Moreover, RE is probably the only curriculum subject in which the classroom practice depends not only on the teachers’ personal philosophical approach to knowledge, but also on the students’ religious belongings and commitments (if any) and their (ir)religious beliefs (Jackson & Everington, 2017; Arthur et al., 2019, pp. 21–22; Conroy, 2016; Heil, 2019, pp. 198–202). Apart from this, it is not totally acceptable to generalise any research on schools’ religious knowledge, as different religious traditions in different educational contexts produce different types, approaches and applications of RE (Koukounaras Liagkis, 2018; Lenganger-Krogstad, 2013).

Still, there is something common in those different contexts: the what and how of the curriculum and teaching. The how of knowledge is valuable in the production and transmission of knowledge. This means that active learning in educational environments provides concrete educational experiences of different disciplines and subjects such as RE. The school experience is the actual discipline based on knowledge which, therefore, ‘transcends and liberates children from their daily experiences’ (Young, 2013a, p. 118) as a cognitive process. What differentiates Young’s view from the realistic or pragmatistic views without provoking polarisation or cleavages, though raising a number of questions, is the emphasis on (a) the focus and the objects of study, based on the existence of boundaries between disciplines and subjects, on the one hand, and that the boundaries are not fixed but changeable, on the other hand, (b) the relationship between the school’s knowledge and the learners’ lives where, on the one hand, knowledge is a discipline-based experience which transforms students’ action and consequently transcends their everyday experiences, and, on the other hand, there are conceptual boundaries between school and everyday knowledge (Young, 2009b).

Paideia and Bildung

Attempting to identify RE knowledge that could be deemed as powerful by Young’s concept, the Greek paideia (αγωγή/παιδεία) and the German Bildung may offer compelling arguments to develop advocacy that RE can be a powerful knowledge-led subject providing power knowledge that influences students’ intellectual thinking, values and actions and takes them well beyond their own experience. Paideia is a broader concept than education, and especially, school education in the Greek language contains both intellectual and spiritual cultivation within a culture. Even if it seems that it implies a kind of civilisation or even indoctrination, it doesn’t. The word αγωγή derived from the ancient Greek verb άγω (guide) is the basis and presupposition both of paideia and of education. Primarily, αγωγή describes education as the cultivation of mentality and behaviour according to accepted norms of the community which is, first and foremost, essential for the bringing up of a child. Agency of individuals and emancipation are the criteria that differentiate paideia (παιδεία) from education (εκπαίδευση). In education, someone else may decide and guide the students (parents, curriculum, teacher), but after the Enlightenment, the scope of education in school becomes gradual such that students may not need guidance to be able to control their own learning processes and the outcomes. For this, students in schools are educated in different types of knowledge from differentiated disciplines and curriculum subjects (science, social and humanities-containing religion) which are valuable for the students’ body, mind and soul in analysing, explaining, interpreting, understanding self, others and the world, participating in dialogues and debates in the public sphere and envisaging alternative futures, and, above all, going beyond the limits of their own experience. If these preconditions do not exist in the education of the children in schools, then they will always need αγωγή even as adults. The Spartan education was αγωγή since it was a solitary lifelong training in military discipline and obedience to the laws. They were educated, but they were not lettered, erudite and multi-literate (listed religious literacy) in a pedagogical perspective (Kalantzis & Cope, 2001).

In the German context, the notion of cultivation in paideia is explained better by the concepts of Ausbildung, Bildung and Erziebung according to Biesta and his terms of qualification, socialisation and subjectification, which are education’s purposes or domains of educational purpose (Biesta, 2010, p. 21, 2021, pp. 11–14). Qualification is the acquisition of knowledge and skills, which is regarded as having religious significance and enables individuals with the capacities to act in knowledgeable and skilful ways. Their actions, however, need an orientation through traditions, cultures and practices (such as religious ones) in order for students as subjects ‘to live their lives in complex, modern societies’ (Biesta, 2021, pp. 9, 11). Socialisation and subjectification make qualification a powerful process. Knowing about religion(s) from the outside helps students to interpret and analyse themselves, others and the world. The perspective from the inside that socialisation seeks to bring gives the knowledge of traditions and practices the meaning of intellectual and existential experience that have provided students with new ways of thinking and explaining the world. The socialising dimension creates the fostering framework within which meta-narratives in the postmodern era and knowledge communities are unavoidable (Nordgren, 2017, p. 671), while on the parallel, subjectification puts the students’ everyday world in relation to specialised knowledge, as an existential and ontological process and thus important to RE. That is what distinguishes religious αγωγή from religious παιδεία, the work of Erziehung. It is very much about identification, what the students do with their identities and what they acquired in school and not about cultivation which is a problematic aspect of RE as a school endeavour. Biesta, referring to Benner’s (2015) view of cultivation, understood it better as ‘summoning the child or young person to be a self’ (Biesta, 2021, p. 15) and independent thinker with the sense of freedom and excitement that the knowledge can offer (Young, 2014b, p. 20). This is an ontological endeavour in which the essential component is the freedom to self-affirm the participation of the self in several types of relationships that the child can have with others (Zizioulas, 2007). Paradoxically, to identify the ‘self’ relies on the relationship and acquaintance of the other who can be for the Greek Fathers, the Christian theologians, the God himself.

RE in the modern world, regardless of its type and religious affiliation, contains this possibility while it should not aim to. It is a self-transformation that school’s knowledge can evoke in learners’ lives transcending students’. everyday experiences and development of the consciousness within the community (society) where religion(s) have their active role for believers and collateral consequences to the lives of all individuals regardless of their relationship with any religion. In an RE class, religion and culture are the elements of socialisation and subjectification. To learn about ‘Muslims’ is an educational process that is in itself part of a process of social classification. Redistribution goes on in the classroom (Buchardt, 2012). The others have a semantic role in this process. An understanding of what it means to be a Muslim is a power knowledge because it develops the students’ understanding of Muslims’ lives and ‘is also a way of shaping the understanding of Muslims present as well as those in the local context (‘formation’)’ (Skeie, 2012, p. 90). This means that knowledge and formation are decisively interrelated but also have different dimensions in RE in a way that knowledge depends on formation.

Thus, RE functions as paideia and Bildung, which leads to the existential identification, a self-development and agency in relation to others and the environment, and basically with reference to alterity (Masschelein & Ricken, 2013). Echoing Levinas’ thoughts, Biesta (2014a) indicated that this does not only make every human unique, but uniqueness is never in his/her possession and, therefore, there is nothing to be cultivated by any education. ‘What it means to be human is approached educationally in terms of our existence-with-others rather than in terms of a nature of essence we already carry inside ourselves’ (Biesta, 2014a, pp. 18–19). It is an individual’s responsibility to realise their uniqueness through their response to the call of the other and education to build the framework and the environment where humans gain from outside the knowledge of the other and consequently of their selves. In this regard ‘educating the human’ is possible by defining the education process that arises from the outside to individuals as the ‘power-knowledge’ than the ‘cultivating humanity’ (Nussbaum, 1997) which is underpinned by the ‘humanism of the self’ (Biesta, 2014a, p. 18).

It is worth noting that for Byzantine and Orthodox theology, the other might be the ‘Other’ God (Lossky, 1974; Zizioulas, 2007). Given that every human being is the image of God, God is much exposed to humans’ acquaintance. This might be the call to which a human being can respond realising his/her uniqueness while God, in these respects, is not ‘beyond’ the personal since ‘personal existence could even be said to constitute the way God is’ (Torrance, 2020, p. 12). This does not mean that RE has the responsibility to focus on the ways in which students might be ‘singled out’ by the call of God, when in fact God’s existence is not acceptable to many of them. Education as paideia and Bildung can arrange to keep the possibility that a person’s alterity can be reached and knowable, even God’s alterity, ‘without any guarantee, of course, that anything may emerge from this’ call (Biesta, 2014a, p. 18). This is what RE can offer to modern society: substantive knowledge that has the potential power, depending on individuals’ responsibility, to transform individuals’ lives at personal and collective levels (Koukounaras Liagkis, 2022). These are the religious perspectives, ideas and concepts that function as the ‘means’ that make possible the learner’s insights and thinking beyond common sense (Young, 2013a).

Powerful Religious Knowledge (?)

The question of whether religious knowledge of RE is powerful or maybe powerful has been lurking from the beginning of this chapter. Ι must note in advance that what makes the school’s religious knowledge powerful is its potential to be powerful as a means and end of socialisation and identification. This means that RE as a subject can be a powerful knowledge course only when it functions as a resource for recognition and identification as well as for the development of critical understanding of the self, the communication with others and the world, cultures, religions, and of analytical thinking and autonomous learning skills (Council of Europe, 2018). Such religious literacy provided in school through the curriculum and its application in teaching is not only related to what students need to know about religion(s) in order ‘to participate in conversations about the private and public powers of religions’ (Prothero, 2007, p. 14) but also related to recognise religion(s) ‘as a legitimate and important area for public attention’ (Dinham & Jones, 2010, p. 6). This knowledge provides students the powerful ability, to make informed choices about the beliefs that influence their moral understandings’ highlighting ‘the moral goods of increasing understanding, respect and tolerance, and responsible political and civic engagement’ (Richardson, 2017, p. 364). From the above, it is apparent that if religious knowledge in schools is limited to factual knowledge, it loses inevitably its dynamics that are deemed substantial in relation to life ethics and the individuals’ existential questions. Frank, in addition, pointed out that RE involves more than the development of essential competencies such as linguistic, reflective, conceptual and analytical ones. Curriculum religious literacy calls for students to acquire what allows them ‘to navigate different domains in life’ (Biesta et al., 2019, p. 25) and, therefore, it calls them to action using their knowledge to interpret ‘what a good life may be’ and what characterises someone as ‘being good’ (Frank, 2017, p. 35). These ethical and hermeneutic dynamics of religious knowledge support self-identification and communication with others ‘with understanding with/or about world opinions (the other)’ (Roux, 2010, p. 998).

Expounding on school religious knowledge, we should mention that experience, action and language are essential components of religious knowledge. In other words, they constitute religious knowledge as a human creation that depends on the cultural context of the individual. In school, it is produced through experience while it is deemed as an experience itself which is ‘useful’ for the interpretation of oneself, of others and of the world. It is an experience of what exists in the world. As a process, it is a classroom interactive, interpersonal and co-dialectical process that requires specific actions, producing new actions and interactions by reflecting on the importance of the different actions and their consequences contained in the classroom activity. Thus, education becomes transformative education on personal and collective levels (Koukounaras Liagkis, 2020; Biesta, 2014b). This process of transaction of individuals and their environments involves thinking, reflection and, of course, action, which for Dewey is ‘literally something which we do’ (Dewey, 1916, p. 331), a transformational act.

This school knowledge does not exist in some form outside of the individuals’ minds, nor does it take place at some point in space and time outside of them though it really exists as the natural truth. The natural truth really exists, according to Putnam (1994a, pp. 516–517), so students in school are called to approach in many ways different disciplines—one of them is RE. It is produced in specific ecological situations and spatiotemporal contexts by the individuals themselves, who produce it through learning and specific cognitive processes (experiencing, conceptualising, analysing and applying) (Kalantzis & Cope, 2012, pp. 238–249) and approaches to the truth. Thus, it is determined by the individuals’ environment as well as the ecological–experiential dimension of human behaviour to define their reality, the relationships with the world around them and the different meanings (functional connections) that emerge. There are also religious meanings amongst them and in fact different meanings in different religious environments. If so, then there is no question of whether or not knowledge is true, but the possibilities it has are essential (Biesta & Hannam, 2016). And this seems to be of utmost importance for education in general, and RE in particular.

To operate this process in RE practice, teaching should always serve the cognitive processes of experiencing, conceptualising, analysing and applying regardless of the duration of the lesson. A teacher plans and applies lessons accordingly with specific outcomes that can be assessed. These are behaviours that students are expected to achieve during, by the end of and after the lesson in different cognitive levels/processes (remembering, understanding, applying, analysing, evaluating and creating), in three learning domains, namely, the cognitive, affective and psychomotor (Krathwohl, 2002, p. 215), and in different types and levels of knowledge—factual, conceptual, procedural and meta-cognitive (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001, p. 38).

A research in the RE field in Greece (2017–2019) addressed that when teachers remain traditional in teaching, namely following instructional modes of teaching and preserving a hierarchical location of authority in the classroom, where responses required are more likely to involve a lower level of skills and critical thinking (Erricker, 2010, p. 44), the students perceive the knowledge they acquire in school as factual knowledge; that is, they learn the basics needed to know about a scientific field or to solve a problem that concerns this field (terminology, specific and detailed information). Besides, they identify it as knowledge about faith/religion, at the age of 13–14, and as knowledge about faith/religion or no knowledge at all, at the age of 16–17 (Koukounaras Liagkis, 2022). The answer ‘I did not learn anything’ in any case remains shocked since the students themselves verify their knowledge as powerless and weak. On the contrary, when RE offers opportunities for transformative education where the classroom experience are ‘events with meaning’ (Dewey, 1929, p. 240), which means that it establishes a productive and meaningful connection between the curriculum and the students, a transaction of them and their environments (Dewey, 1920, p. 86), not only that the emphasis is on skills and attitudes required to construct high-level knowledge, persuasive argument and new knowledge-based experience, but also students effectively identify what they learn during the lessons, ascertaining which religious knowledge (learning level and type of knowledge) contributes towards a change in their behaviour. A 15-year-old student commented in a journal on what he/she had learnt in RE in the research in Greece: ‘There are many goals this year in RE. I feel that we understand… human rights, that we are all equal, that we do not judge diversity, but also to understand other religions and be active in society and be able to help as much as we can. And I understand these through active participation and being active in any activity in the classroom…I felt that all my body, my mind and my soul were actively learnt…’ These cognitive and meta-cognitive dynamics of the RE teaching renewed rationalist Hirst’s idea of individual’s cultivation through the acquisition of knowledge (Hirst, 1974, p. 22), where religion has its position, with the transactional relationship between the knowing and the known (Dewey & Bentley, 1949), while knowings are related to the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of the visible known and the invisible parts (Carlgren, 2020). Thus, religious concepts used in certain ways are what students should acquire in RE. This means that the power derives both from theory and practice, the concepts as knowledge of known and the way they are used as knowing the known. This is central to RE and RE teaching as well where factual and procedural knowledge constitutes the content of the curriculum, the way of teaching and acquisition of knowledge and in the end what the students are capable to do with knowing the known, these are called competencies. Precious paideia-Bildung is offered to students in schools through teaching powerful disciplinary’s knowledge. What makes this paideia precious and different in comparison to other curriculum subjects is that RE as a content teaches students who already have religious or non-religious beliefs, the involvement in a religious community or any relationship to any religion, and different religions’ meanings that illustrate different aspects of the truth or how different communities and their faith believe in one truth.

What is stressed by the above is that when religions are taught in a school setting, the interplay between individuals’ previous knowledge and depictions and what the curriculum provides as a powerful knowledge that develops specific powerful ways of knowing seems quite complex but intrinsic too as RE remains an integral part of modern education in many educational systems around the world.

Religious knowledge is seen more as a language amongst other languages in the curriculum, its grammar being of benefit to the students in providing them with the hermeneutic tools to interpret the world, to communicate and to understand themselves and others. In another research (2011–2015) in a Greek high school on what knowledge students acquire in RE based on their concept and constructs of knowledge, the conclusion may help us to understand the above interplay and also the horizontal inter-disciplinary relationship of RE teaching with the other curriculum subjects. According to this conclusion (Koukounaras Liagkis, 2020), RE teaching literally functions as the knowledge of known which are the concepts with a focus on knowing which is the conceptualisation of religious concepts (e.g., sin, nirvana, etc.) and at the same time, the religious conceptualization of the concepts (e.g., love, freedom, etc.) which are the core, the big ideas of the school education ‘having great transfer value; applying to many inquiries and issues over time—horizontally (across subjects) and vertically (through the years in later courses) in the curriculum and out of school’ (Wiggins & McTighe, 2006, p. 69). These concepts and this process are beneficial to students and their lives since they help them understand and interpret themselves, others, the world and if they have any belief in God, their faith. This can then be deemed as powerful knowledge because it provides students with the key concepts in interpretation of the world and the self. Given that religious knowledge has such dynamics consequently, the research provides evidence for the value of teaching religion(s) in school. RE is an integral part of the knowledge-based curriculum as a subject, a social and pedagogic practice that teaches one more valued language amongst others in the school environment. As in any language with its own ‘language game’ (Wittgenstein, 2009), the religious notions, that differently compared to other languages conceptualise the reality of individuals’ contexts, are essential for communication and interpretation and are also seen as necessary as they are concerned with the individuals’ existence and they organically function in the real world. The knowledge of the religious ‘mother tongue’ (if is any) is essential not only because it is a basic component of the personal development (Kapogiannis et al., 2009; Day, 2017; Furrow et al., 2004) but also because it is valuable for education according to human rights.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights indicates the right to an education that promotes understanding and tolerance between national, racial or religious groups, according to the article 2 which guarantees the rights and freedoms of those of all religions, to article 18 which demands freedom of thought, religious belief and practice and to article 26 that articulates the right to education (Koukounaras Liagkis, 2013). Moreover, the European Convention of Human Rights maintains that ‘everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, and to manifest his religion or belief, in worship, teaching, practice and observance’ (article 9.1) but that ‘freedom to manifest one’s religion or beliefs shall be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.’ (article 9.2).

Discussion

In this chapter, I have explored the role of knowledge in the RE curriculum tracing evidence of how RE, which is open to ‘otherness’ and world religions, functions as a curriculum subject in a school education that offers paideia (αγωγή/παιδεία) and Bildung. These two concepts help us to understand, in relation to the position of religion in school, that religious knowledge can be a powerful knowledge provided that it is offered in a transformative educational environment. In this, the what and the how of the RE engage with knowing or knowledge processes. If this is issued, then all the students will have the right to get access to RE and RE becomes a right of all students, so to speak.

My research on what knowledge constitutes RE in the school illustrates that religious knowledge is powerful if it educates humans. The concept of education, however, is, on the one hand, based on Dewey’s theory of learning and knowledge where learning is a transactional experience between students and their environments which supports thinking, reflection and action and, on the other hand, it is based on Biesta’s curriculum theory that especially regards RE education and his elaboration on the Dewey’s pragmatism. This means that the knowledge is developed in each person according to his/her context, that is, it is a subjective and an intersubjective production that occurs in a specific environment. It affects individuals and the world around them by evoking them to change their behaviours, after thinking and reflecting on the religious notion that the concepts have. This knowledge is factual as well as procedural and relates to the ability of students to understand, apply, analyse, evaluate and create/produce/compose. In other words, it concerns the highest levels of learning and certainly the fields of knowledge of principles and ideas, especially procedural knowledge and meta-cognition. It is powerful knowledge when it supports individuals to know and understand themselves, others and the world through the lens of religion(s) which provides them with the big ideas that their acquisition is an inter-subjective hermeneutic tool to lead them to a personal formation, to a ‘good education’ with the three purposes of qualification, socialisation and subjectification. This knowledge is existentially and ontologically decisive and therefore valuable for human life.

In practice, this knowledge is produced when RE is based on the religious, the theological, content and is taught in RE lessons by experiential and transformative pedagogies as the study has shown. Then it has valuable results for a powerful knowledge-based education, especially in terms of providing learners with ‘more reliable explanations and new ways of thinking about the world’, and ‘a language for engaging in political, moral, and other kinds of debates’ (Young, 2008, p. 14), and of helping them ‘to go beyond (their) individual experiences’ (Young, 2013b, p. 196) as well as to envisage alternatives (Young, 2014b, p. 74).

The implication to RE teaching practice of a powerful knowledge RE is obvious since it is based on transformative and experiential learning principles of teaching which transcends students’ everyday experiences by facilitating students’ knowledge processes and therefore communication with self and others. Of course, I think that this study cannot be generally accepted as it starts from a basis that is developed on philosophical axioms. However, I will continue to have the Diogenes the Cynic’s lamp on, in view of the fact that more research is needed, in different educational contexts and types of RE to apply Young’s theory to the educational reality of RE.