Przyszłość nauczania religii. Kontekst kultury cyfrowej, nowa dydaktyka i wskazania dla tworzenia podręczników
Authors: Kielian Andrzej 
Published: July 2021

In a time of profound cultural change, Catholic Religious Education (CRE) is challenged to find new ways of engaging with young people. Whilst theoretical reflection is important, it is critical to disseminate good practice in didactics and in preparing textbooks for students. These two go together alongside as an effective work with didactic material entails a good teachers’ preparation. The aim of this book is to present the significance of good religious education in the creation of new social references in the global dimension. The community-building capital of the interactive media is potential that should be made use of in religious education in schools. After all, digital culture is an important “theological place” (locus theologicus). Thus, both the didactics of religious education and broadly understood theological thinking are necessarily confronted with the global culture flows that despite their ambivalence are an opportunity to make theology as well as its transmission in schools more universal, that is catholic, to a larger degree. This “new catholicity” that is achieved thanks to digital communication can effectively lead to the updating of the theological vision of the Church as well as the initiation of new forms of intercultural and interreligious dialogue. This work is analytical-synthetic in nature. The first chapter consists of a general description of the cultural and social changes brought about by technological discoveries in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. This analysis strives to search for an answer to the question about the causes of the change of surrounding in which pupils who are subject to new educational contexts grow up. Meanwhile, the second chapter presents selected elements of digital culture that generate the need for new CRE didactics. The new didactics must be multisensory and intermedial, that is, it must combine various means of expression, such as dance theater, performance, happening, or the use of Internet folklore (netlore) artifacts, especially Internet memes and artmemes on various religious issues, that are created and remixed by the students. The use of such methods in didactic work leads to the translation of the code of religious (theological) language to a more comprehensible and easily assimilated linguistic code of digital culture. The theory of the active search for information by the pupil directed by the teacher that has been elaborated by Richard E. Mayer is the recurring thought in the reflections on didactics. Finally, the last chapter contains a discussion on the adequate model of the textbook: digital or analog. An example of the creation of a religion textbook for a representative of digital culture is the pilot project of the Krakow group of authors of CRE textbooks. It can be called an open source expert model. This consists of a group of experienced teachers (catechists) writing the essential contents of the textbooks. Next, these contents are verified by selected pupils and parents. Only later are the contents proofread, analyzed with respect to their theological accuracy, and, finally, reviewed by valuers of CRE textbooks of the Commission for Catholic Education of the Polish Episcopal Conference. The involvement of students who verify the language used in textbooks and assess the activities and tasks proposed in various exercises, that should take into account multisource and multisensory approach, is an essential element of the new way of developing CRE textbooks. This book is to serve as a forum for discussion on determining topics related to the future of religious education amidst digital culture surroundings and undertaking further research on means of transitioning from the theory of the CRE didactics to living practice in the classroom.