A three dimensional and four levels methodology for comparative studies in Religious Education

I will discuss problematic sides of doing comparative studies in the diverse field of Religious Education (RE), and use perspectives from a suggested methodology for such studies to argue for the usefulness of comparative efforts. Since many challenges to Religious Education are the same across national borders, I argue that comparative studies should focus on the impact of supranational influences on national contexts, while at the same time taking the depth of the national imaginaries seriously. More attention to international and comparative perspectives has potential to enhance the understanding of what is happening in RE domestically. The methodology combines two ideas, firstly that in comparative studies one should consider supranational, national and subnational processes, and secondly that in order to capture the depth of the national cases one should consider four levels of curriculum. In my argument, I will make use of examples from recent publications (Bråten 2013, 2014a, 2014b).