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Based on a qualitative research (2012–15) this paper is concerned with the identification of concepts and constructs of knowledge in RE. It is based on participative enquiry and educational action-research methodology. Over a three-year period, the researcher, teachers and the students of a High School in one of the most difficult social, economic and pedagogic environments in Greece collaborated and the resulting data were analysed by a team of independent researchers using quantitative and qualitative techniques. Findings point to the consideration of knowledge in education as an experience in which the content (what) of education is as important as the process (how). RE teaches an additional invaluable language with different religious meanings of concepts, which facilitates students’ communication with self and others, and offers an interpretation of the world. Such religious literacy is essentially provided at school in the framework of multi-literacies and is a result of an intersubjective process of the interconnection between thinking, reflection and action on what the curriculum positions on the top of the didactic triangle (content, teacher, student). In that process, to ‘know what I know’ and to provide ‘events with meaning’ based on experiential learning and its principles, is of inestimable value.

Religious Education (RE) in Greece is a compulsory school subject according the 2011 new framework for compulsory education, entitled ‘New School’. This article focuses on two statutory documents for RE, ‘The Curriculum for RE’ and the ‘The Teacher’s Guide for RE’, and the pilot scheme of the new curriculum running in school years, 2011–2014, in 188 schools (primary and secondary education). Findings of the research demonstrate that, though the revision seems inevitable, the pedagogical and theological dimension of the RE curriculum is radical as it is based on contemporary theories and methodologies of the construction of the curriculum and RE approaches. However, the article indicates constructivist and critical approaches to RE that influenced the change to an actual non-confessional compulsory subject and also highlighted the tension between an overall constructivist approach to learning and the traditional orthodox content of much of the curriculum. The author opens a discussion on problematic aspects that need to be taken in to consideration when revising the curriculum.