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

Abstract

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