A meta approach to texts in Religious Education: Researching teachers’ engagement with sacred text scholarship in English secondary schools

This article reports findings from a sacred text scholarship project in Religious Education / Religion and Worldviews (RE/RW) lessons. In the Texts and Teachers project secondary school teachers found that RE became more meta through a more scholarly treatment of texts, and led to leap moments with pupils who could accomplish multidimensional engagement with texts. This article contributes to an improved understanding of how classroom textual hermeneutics addresses concerns with teaching sacred texts

Nexus researching church toddler groups

The Headlines This unique research project revealed fascinating insights into the spiritual flourishing of very young children and how this is nourished within church toddler groups in England. The findings have uncovered evidence of very young children exploring self-understanding and the nurturing of relationships with others. We found that church toddler groups contribute to children’s spiritual flourishing through: • Providing an environment that fosters a non-threatening connection with spirituality and faith. • Nurturing and sustaining relationships with families. • Offering a safe place for young families to come together, play together, and feel supported in their spiritual well-being. • Enabling a sense of belonging to the church community through engagement in the church toddler group. However, we also found that: • There is a need for adults to have a deeper awareness of the significant role they play in enabling the spiritual flourishing of very young children. • A common misunderstanding of spiritual nurture in terms of faith development hampers focused attention on the spiritual nurture of very young children

Texts and teachers: the practice guide

We recommend reading this document together with the ‘Texts and Teachers Findings Report’, Opening the Door to Hermeneutical RE (available online at www.canterbury.ac.uk/nicer/ hermeneutics), as well as the linked Bible Society resources. The sections contain different kinds of information which together form a development programme for teachers who want to know more about developing a hermeneutically shaped curriculum. It could also be used by resource developers seeking to develop new materials framed by hermeneutics and could also be of use for those involved in developing examinations and questions that permit students to explore their hermeneutical knowledge and competence. Where to start sets out the broader educational case for a more hermeneutical approach in the subject. It sets out a pedagogical way of thinking about this approach and how to think about the material and the learner. Introducing hermeneutics is a concise accessible introduction to the hermeneutical aspects in the curriculum, disciplinarity,the question of meaning, and the broader educational and academic aims of hermeneutical RE. It also introduces some key ideas from Christian sacred text scholarship and a series of key questions. This sets the scene for the kind of classroom experience students will be drawn into, through questions

These are our stories: waving not drowning as we navigate Covid:19 as leadership 'professionals'

This feminist thinkpiece invites the reader to engage with the narratives of five women leading in education. In this piece we are ‘professing’; admitting openly our stories of leadership and the acute tensions experienced during COVID 19. Our provocation is that leadership can be done differently when the emotional dimension is valued; as women leaders we can be that change. Our stories are positioned within the dominant constructs of what it means to be a leadership ‘professional’. This is a leadership discourse that is resolutely masculine, to ‘man up’, to not acknowledge vulnerabilities, conflicts, and complexity. Consequently, stories like these are too often unheard. But the problem does not go away if you stop talking about it. We problematise the view that to profess leadership challenges is unprofessional – irrational, unobjective, emotional. Whilst the contexts of our stories are different, our narratives are united by our commitment to openness, honesty and reflection. Through our storying we begin to disrupt what it means to be ‘profess-ional’ in our education leadership lives

Heroin use impairs smoking cessation among Australian prisoners

Background: Prisoners have extremely high rates of smoking with rates 3-4 times higher than the general community. Many prisoners have used heroin. The aims of this study were to investigate the impact of heroin use on smoking cessation and the social determinants of health among prisoners. Methods. Secondary analysis of data from a randomised controlled trial of a multi-component smoking cessation intervention involving 425 Australian male prisoners. Inmates who, prior to imprisonment, used heroin regularly were compared to those who did not use heroin regularly. Self-reported smoking status was validated at baseline and each follow-up by measuring carbon monoxide levels. Readings exceeding 10 ppm were defined as indicating current smoking. Results: Over half (56.5%) of the participants had ever used heroin while 37.7% regularly (daily or almost daily) used heroin in the year prior to entering prison. Prisoners who regularly used heroin had significantly worse social determinants of health and smoking behaviours, including lower educational attainment, more frequent incarceration and earlier initiation into smoking. Prisoners who regularly used heroin also used and injected other drugs significantly more frequently. At 12-month follow-up, the smoking cessation of prisoners who had regularly used heroin was also significantly lower than prisoners who did not regularly use heroin, a finding confirmed by logistic regression. Conclusions: Regular heroin use prior to imprisonment is an important risk factor for unsuccessful attempts to quit smoking among prisoners and is also associated with worse social determinants of health, higher drug use, and worse smoking behaviours. More effective and earlier smoking cessation interventions are required for particularly disadvantaged groups. Trial registration. This trial is registered with the Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry 12606000229572. © 2013 Indig et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd