In recent years, schools and education authorities worldwide have been paying an increasing amount of attention to issues surrounding diversity and religious tolerance (cf. Sardoc, 2010). The need for tolerance has not only increased because of an epidemic of hate crimes committed, but also because of daily social interactions that require treating one another with respect and dignity. Tolerance, as Furedi (2012) convincingly indicated, constitutes one of the most important preconditions for social justice, fairness and democracy; without tolerance we cannot be free, we cannot live with one another in relative peace, we cannot follow and act on our conscience, we cannot pursue our own road toward seeking the truth.

Numerous attempts at defining tolerance can be found in the literature (e.g. Tobing 2013, Visanmiu, 2012). Most definitions conceptually denote certain distinctive human attributes, such as individual(-ised) attitude, capacity, action, form of behaviour or response. Most definitions also seem to cover a considerable spectrum of descriptive and illustrative values (Van der Walt, Potgieter & Wolhuter, 2010).

According to Vermeer and Van der Ven (2004) and Cush and Francis (2006), (religious) behaviour could be plotted on a spectrum. At the one end of the spectrum tolerance may be understood to reflect a permissive, laissez-faire and completely inclusivist attitude toward those whose opinions, practices, race, religion, nationality, et cetera, may differ from one’s own. At the opposite end of the spectrum, we find extremely intolerant behaviour due to extreme dogmatism and orthodoxy flowing from socially unacceptable stances such as religious extremism and exclusivism, fundamentalism and even fanaticism. Towards the middle of the spectrum, tolerance is usually understood to represent an attitude that reflects freedom from bigotry. Tolerance is an individual ability to treat someone or something with indulgence or forbearance, to bear, to put up with.

The inculcation of (religious) motives and values as well as of an attitude of tolerance begins with the home and extended family of an individual (Hitlin & Piliavin, 2004) and is continued during the period of primary, secondary and higher education (Borgonovi, 2012). Leutwyler, Petrovic and Mantel (2012) point out that teachers are central actors in education; they are expected to provide equal educational opportunities to all children, irrespective of religious or cultural orientation. According to Biesta (2011), the development of an individual lies at the intersection of the ideal to attain a certain competence, skill and / or qualification, and the processes of socialization and subjectification.

In education these processes are not only facilitated by lessons or textbooks but also by the educator’s behaviour and attitude. Beliefs and intuitions continuously seep through during the teaching and learning process, mostly without the educator being aware of them as part of the hidden curriculum. This hidden curriculum, in part an expression of the educator’s own value system, is also at work with regards to the inculcation of religious tolerance with respect to differences. The role of the educator should therefore not be underestimated in the process of guiding young people to become more or less tolerant, as the case may be.

The aim of the research reported on in this paper was the construction of a worldwide usable questionnaire regarding religious tolerance in education based on a plausible theoretical foundation. One of the preconditions adhered to in the construction of the questionnaire was that each of the items in the questionnaire should be traceable to a particular theoretical insight outlined in the conceptual and theoretical framework that we developed, thereby ensuring construct and content validity for the entire questionnaire. The research question was: How can we measure religious tolerance in education worldwide in a reliable way based on a proper conceptual and theoretical framework?

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