Post-COVID Teaching and Learning of Religious Education in the Context of School Violence in South Africa

Bekithemba Dube ORCID iD &  Jacob Segalo ORCID iD

Issue: Vol.3  No.11 October 2022 Post COVID-19 Special Issue  Article 1 pp.6-18
DOI: https://doi.org/10.38159/ehass.2022SP3112 |   Published online 26th October 2022.
© 2022 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the CCBY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

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Informed by the Bricolage theory, the authors sought to interrogate the role of religious education in combating school violence in South Africa in the post-pandemic era. While COVID, in many arguments, has been seen as catastrophic to humankind, it has evoked a religious sense among people to enable them to confront vulnerability, which can be harnessed to mitigate school violence. Located in participatory action research, a qualitative approach was used to collect data from twelve participants within the Free State province, where purposive sampling was used. The authors responded to two questions: What are the instigators of school violence? How can religious studies mitigate school violence in South African schools? The paper found that while religious education is underplayed in the South African curriculum, it has an impetus to ignite morality among teachers and learners to address school violence. Based on the paper’s findings, the article argues that despite its shortfalls, religious education remains one of the pillars of enacting the missing ingredient of morality which has made schools unsafe havens for educational stakeholders. In light of this argument, the article recommends reconsidering religious education as a core subject in South Africa from a borderless curriculum angle.

Keywords: Bricolage, Religious Studies, School violence, Morality, COVID-19, Sustainable learning and borderless curriculum

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Dr. Bekithemba Dube is currently a Senior Lecturer at the University of the Free State, South Africa. He holds a PhD in Curriculum Studies from the same institution. His research focuses on Religion, Education and Politics in Post Colonial Africa.

Prof. Jacob Segalo is currently an Associate Professor at the Central University of Technology, South Africa. His research focuses on School Violence and Education.

Dube, Bekithemba and Segalo, Jacob. “Post-COVID Teaching and Learning of Religious Education in the Context of School Violence in South Africa,” E-Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences 3, no.11 (2022):6-18.  https://doi.org/10.38159/ehass.2022sp3112

© 2022 The Author(s). Published and Maintained by Noyam Publishers. This is an open access article under the CCBY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

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