Comparison of impact of religious and secular education on young children’s factuality judgments

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of religious education on Turkish children’s factuality judgments and reasoning processes. The participants consist of 55 young children, 25 of whom are enrolled in a public kindergarten that provides secular education and 30 in a private kindergarten that provides religious education in addition to a secular curriculum. During the study, teachers recite to each child the story about the Prophet Moses in which Moses performs a miraculous act. Following the story, the children respond to various questions designed to assess their judgments regarding the factuality of the events and the characters featured in the story and the reasoning behind their responses. The responses reveal that the majority of the children from the religious education group accept the miraculous act as a fact and explain it using religious reasoning. The study concludes that religious education effects children’s factuality judgments for religious texts.