Diagnostic Competencies of Religious Education Teachers – Requirements and Challenges

Assessing and supporting are, in addition to teaching, educating and innovating, core competencies of teaching professionals. Particularly in the field of didactics of mathematics and educational sciences an increased interest in the conceptualization of diagnostic competencies of teachers has emerged in recent years. In contrast, research on diagnostic competencies of RE teachers is still limited to few conceptual approaches (Reis, 2018, 194) and requires further investigation.

This contribution sharpens domain-specific challenges of diagnostic competencies of RE teachers based on the concept of formative Assessment. In view of current research findings of educational sciences challenges of assessment in RE such as the epistemological structure of religious knowledge in assessment tasks and questions to elicit student thinking and RE teachers’ professional reflection in formative assessment processes are discussed.