Religion, religious diversity and public education: Preservice teachers' attitudes, knowledge and preparation

A consensus of national leaders affirms the importance of religion as a significant part of human life and culture, and supports a constitutionally appropriate academic study of religion in the public schools. Movement toward this goal depends upon teacher education. This study examined the literature regarding the place of religion in public education, documented the consensus that has emerged, and then asked critical questions about teacher preparation for religion and religious diversity.;The Religion and Public Education Inventory (RPEI) was developed to assess preservice teachers' attitudes, knowledge and preparation regarding religion and public education. The RPEI consists of three sections. (1) The Attitude Survey uses a Likert-type scale to measure levels of agreement with 27 statements, representing four scales: "importance of religion," "teaching beliefs," "legal parameters," and "preparation." (2) The Information Survey tests knowledge on three scales: legal issues; Judaism and Christianity; and other major world religions. (3) The Demographic and Personal Information section includes questions about teaching plans and religious affiliation, and an opportunity for open-ended narrative responses.;The RPEI was administered to 225 teacher education students at four institutions to measure the extent to which they have the attitudes, knowledge and preparation needed to engage in teaching about religion and teaching religiously diverse students. Preservice teachers agree that religion is important, learning about religion is part of becoming educated, and teachers should be prepared to teach about religion in the curriculum. However, they are very uncertain about the legal parameters governing religion and believe they are unprepared. Prospective teachers' lack of preparation is evident in poor scores on questions about the law and varied religions. The mean number of correct responses was 9.1 out of 20 questions. The theme of "little or no preparation" was reiterated in narrative responses.;Multivariate analyses of variance found significant differences among the four schools on both the Attitude and Information Surveys. Students at two religiously affiliated schools agree more strongly than their peers at two public institutions that teaching about religion is permissible and that they have been prepared. They know more about Judaism and Christianity, but not about other world religions.