Special Religious Education is faith-based single tradition religious education taught in many Australian public schools by volunteer teachers who are adherents of the faith they are teaching. This paper derives from a qualitative study of the pedagogy of Christian Special Religious Education teachers that took place between 2010 and 2014. Love is at the heart of these Christian teachers’ pedagogy. It guides their pedagogical decisions and sustains and compels them to continue regardless of the challenges they experience. This paper discusses the place of philia, eros and agape love in SRE pedagogy and uses Buber’s concept of I-It and I-Thou relations to further explicate the nature of love in Special Religious Education.
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