The traditional focus on Religious Education at school can no longer be the only guiding principle for religious education research if this research is to do justice to the reality of religious education in general. The awareness of the meaning and scope of education outside of school has clearly grown. However, systematic research on non-formal religious education still remains rare, especially on an international level.It is the intention of this volume to strengthen the awareness of educational Settings outside of school by bringing together research results and research perspectives from different European countries and by discussing the question what non-formal education means in terms of religious education.The book includes presentations on specific research projects carried out by the authors themselves as well as summary accounts of the pertinent research from different countries. The chapters take up general questions of researching non-formal religious education as well as specific references to different programs such as youth work, Sunday School, kindergarten, confirmation work.
Researching Non-Formal Religious Education in Europe makes a significant contirbution to strengthening the importance of non-formal education in the field of religious education. It is to the credit of the editors and the many authors that the book impressively draws attention to the fact that non-formal education has so far received too little attention in research within most European countries, a gap into which they directly build through their contributions. - Helena Stockinger, in: Religious Education, https://doi.org/10.1080/00344087.2020.1839160.