Drawing upon extensive ethnographic work in a range of schools across the UK, with particular reference to in-depth studies in an Integrated School in South Belfast and a school in an area of recent change and inter-racial tension in East London, this study looks at the role Religious Education can play in exposing young people to productive dialogue with members of other groups. Drawing on the work of Conroy (2004, 2009) on liminality and otherness, and on the work of Elmer Thiessen (2007) on committed openness, an ethnographically rich picture of the two schools is presented, and a critical linguistic ethnographic model used to interrogate the observed data. It may be seen that Religious Education's aims and pedagogical methods, which emerge as distinct from the wider curriculum in the important respect that they are concerned with intercultural understanding not only as means but also as ends, place the Religious Education teacher in a unique position to make a contribution through making explicit the realities and causes of otherness. A certain boldness may be observed in the pedagogical approaches of both schools in this study, which may be contrasted with certain other monocultural contexts. It is also significant that the levels of curriculum control exercised by teachers in these unique contexts of cultural conflict is much more direct than in many other schools, where greater conformity locally and nationally determined aims dominates. Drawing on the ethnographic picture, several key themes and hypotheses are presented, and compared to a wider ethnographic sample, suggesting future directions for the role, not only of RE, but of the wider school curriculum and pedagogy, in combatting extremism in these important and challenging contexts.

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