How can I foster collaboration between the RE and science departments in my school?

Participants in our online survey were asked to describe the relationship between science and RE departments/subjects in their schools by choosing one of five options: • Collaboration • Conflict • Dialogue • Independence • Integration Research shows that religion and science can often have a complementary relationship. How, then, might secondary teachers work to build more opportunities for dialogue and collaboration between two related subjects

Sharing the purpose of secondary RE in the school

Religious Education as a school subject has suffered a decline in status over recent years. An analysis from the National Association of Teachers of Religious Education in 2019 showed significant decline in RE in secondary schools with almost 40% of community schools and 50% of ‘Academy schools without a religious character’ not meeting ‘their legal or contractual requirements for the subject’ (NATRE, 2019, p.2). It is therefore important to consider how RE is portrayed as a subject across your school community. The online survey results below, from a survey completed by 949 teachers, gives some sense of the issues involved. Religious Education teachers come from a wide background of first degrees’ covering different disciplines. These different disciplines approach knowledge-building differently with different purposes. Student teachers can bring in quite different assumptions about the purposes of the subject, based on their background study or their prior experience. Religious Education as a subject might be able to help these diversities but RE itself is in a fragile condition

What are science/religion encounters and how can I prepare for them?

We conducted a survey with beginning teachers and more experienced teachers to explore what science/religion encounters they had experienced in their classrooms. The findings are shared in this module, along with some suggestions of what you might be able to do to support your teaching around science/religion encounters in the future

What role can different disciplinary knowledges play in shaping RE?

Within cohorts of student RE teachers, we found evidence of debates about the value of different disciplinary knowledges underpinning the purpose of RE as a school subject. This toolkit explores how different disciplinary lenses might be used in RE lessons

What is the purpose of RE on the school curriculum?

Secondary teachers of RE have a variety of different views on the purposes of RE. Purpose matters because it affects all the classroom and curriculum decisions. Being able to articulate purpose matters because a teacher is required to be able to explain the intentions of their subject to different audiences. Having a joint department view matters for a coherent curriculum experience

How can an interdisciplinary ITE day support student teachers of RE?

Two universities we spoke to had developed a collaborative day for science and RE secondary student teachers to come together and plan collaboratively around some big, overlapping questions. There are new challenges in ITE, but how might we give beginning teachers, especially student teachers of Science and RE, opportunities to come together and talk about the topics they have in common? Acknowledgements Our thanks go to Mark Plater and Jenny Wynn of Bishop Grosseteste University for helping us put together this resource

How can I teach about truth in a complex world?

How should a pupil make sense of what Science and Religious Education lessons offer, especially when they have aspects of shared content, but might cover different ways of knowing? This resource supports an exploration of ways of knowing, how they are currently covered in your school and how they might be explicitly taught in the future

Using video and multimodal classroom interaction analysis to investigate how information, misinformation, and disinformation influence pedagogy

Misinformation is accidentally wrong and disinformation is deliberately incorrect (i.e., deception). This paper uses the Pedagogy Analysis Framework (PAF) to investigate how information, misinformation, and disinformation influence classroom pedagogy. 95 people participated (i.e., one lesson with 7-year-olds, another with 10-year-olds, and three with a class of 13-year-olds). We used four video-based methods (lesson video analysis, teacher verbal protocols, pupil group verbal protocols, and teacher interviews). 35 hours of video data (recorded 2013-2020) were analysed using Grounded Theory Methods by the researchers, the class teachers, and groups of pupils (three girls and three boys). The methodology was Straussian Grounded Theory. We present how often participants used information, misinformation, and disinformation. We illustrate how the PAF helps understand and explain information, misinformation, and disinformation in the classroom by analysing video data transcripts. In addition, we discuss participant perceptions of the status of information; overlapping information, misinformation, and disinformation; and information communication difficulties

Multimodal classroom interaction analysis using video-based methods of the pedagogical tactic of (un)grouping

Grouping of people and/or things in school can involve challenging pedagogical problems and is a recurrent issue in research literature. Grouping of pupils sometimes aids learning, but detailed video-based analysis of how teachers (and pupils) group or ungroup (termed ‘(un)grouping’) in classrooms is rare. This multimodal classroom interaction analysis study builds on previous work by exploring how the Pedagogy Analysis Framework can help untangle complicated classroom interactions involving (un)grouping and identifies sixteen types of (un)grouping. The sample size is one class of thirty pupils (10-year-olds), their class teacher, and teaching assistant. Four research methods were used (lesson video analysis, teacher verbal protocols, pupil group verbal protocols, and individual teacher interviews). Six hours of data were video recorded (managed using NVivo). Data were analysed by two educational researchers, the class teacher, and two groups of pupils (three girls and three boys). The methodology is Straussian Grounded Theory. Data were recorded in 2019. We present how often participants (un)grouped during a lesson. We propose and use a grounded theory for (un)grouping which we call the ‘Exclusion, Segregation, Integration, and Inclusion (ESII) model’. Additionally, we discuss how misinformation and disinformation can complicate analysis of (un)grouping and examine different perspectives on (un)grouping