The interpretive approach to religious education and the development of a community of practice

Abstract

The practitioners and researchers whose work is reported in this book have come together as a community of practice around particular principles and methods of education and research. The interpretive approach to religious education and a given model of action research provided common organising principles for the design, implementation and interpretation of the community’s diverse projects but they did not provide a rigid framework. Instead individual projects and shared reflections became testing grounds for them both. This book documents a development of thinking about the interpretive approach and action research so that the version of both presented in the later chapters will be seen to differ in some respects from the models from which the Warwick community of practice set out. It is therefore appropriate to begin this book with two chapters that explain the project’s starting points, the origins and initial formulations of those models