Opportunities and Actual Use of Digital Resources in Editorial Proposals for the Teaching of Religion in Italian Schools

In this paper, the author studies educational media for Catholic Religious Education in Italy and examines, to what extent these media have implemented digital options and networking opportunities; furthermore, she analyzes how far they use the chances for a content-related debate about other religions and worldviews – chances, which have increased due to digitalization. Meanwhile, all publishers, who offer educational media for Catholic Religious Education, have digital components in their programs; many of them go beyond a mere digitalization of the textbooks and include both medial extensions and individual adaptability, for example with regard to learning impairments. But the chance to bring students into a dialog with other kinds of belief in a lively way, for example by encouraging digital discussions with persons of different faith or by presenting self-portrayals of members of other religions, is used only very seldom. The author deplores this deficiency with regard to the necessity to prepare the students for their future in a multicultural and multireligious world; one of the key competences in this world is “critical thinking,” and this can, for example, be trained by a didactically supported analysis of media content, which differs from habitual ways of thinking.