Effect of Dialogical Religious Education on Empathy and Civic Tolerance in Multicultural Secondary Schools

This research proposal evaluates how a non-confessional, dialogical teaching model in religious education affects secondary school students' development of cognitive empathy and civic tolerance. Addressing a critical gap—the lack of empirical data linking classroom discourse to measurable social behavior—this study transitions religious education from abstract literacy into verifiable civic action. Utilizing a mixed-methods sequential explanatory design, the project gathers pre- and post-test data across four urban schools (n = 300) combined with qualitative focus groups. Grounded in Allport’s Contact Theory, the findings will offer scalable frameworks to reduce polarization in multicultural societies.