Inclusive and Pluralist Approaches As Correlates of Counselling Children Towards Religious Tolerance.

Abstract

Issues of religious tolerance and intolerance continue to be current and controversial in contemporary debates around the world.  This paper discusses the various approaches that may be adopted in counselling children towards religious tolerance, with particular attention on the inclusive and pluralist approaches.  To be able to do this, relevant literatures were reviewed. Three research questions were developed for the study.  A questionnaire titled Inclusive and Pluralist Approach to Religious Tolerance was used as an instrument to collect data for the study. The instrument had a reliability of 0.89.  The data collected were analysed with linear and multiple regression to indicate the level of significance of the variables of the study at 0.05. The results of the study indicated that there is a significant correlation between child based counselling intervention strategy and religious tolerance of children.  The conclusion therefore is that to foster and encourage religious tolerance, children should be prepared through counselling to deal with activities that may suggest or encourage religious intolerance.

Keywords: Counselling, intervention, inclusive, pluralist, children, religion, tolerance