Steering a path along a treacherous course: Children's voices, colonization, and religious education

There is a growing body of literature in relation to the need to reconceptualise knowledge, policy, theory and action about childhood and education. However, such notions have infrequently been given serious consideration in religious education in Catholic schools. This paper views religious education in the early years’ context of the Catholic school through a decolonizing lens, noting the way in which religious education has often privileged constructed categories of truth (in the form of doctrine), the power of which effectively silences the spiritual voices of children. In drawing upon the notion of shared vantage points, it suggests some decolonial possibilities for religious education in terms of utilizing a dispositional framework and by grounding religious education in the creative process centred on play.