Doing RE hermeneutically - learning to become interpreters of religion

Have you sometimes felt that traditional - including biblical - stories have been 'tamed' through historical retelling? If so, adopting a hermeneutical approach could lead to some interesting and responses and insights

Contemporary life stances and education for sustainable development

Aims The purpose of this pack is • to examine important themes for tutors to considerwhen preparing student teachers for teaching life stances in Religious Education • to suggest ways in which tutors might encourage student teachers to look at the role Religious Education has for education for sustainable development • to identify important themes that RE tutors should refer to when supporting student teachers to teach about environmentalist life stances • to identify starting points for supporting pluralist and critically literate understandings of these topics in RE whether that be with a single religious tradition, across religious and non religious traditions or within a secular framework

What can education learn from recent thinking around the concept of dignity in the intersection between identity and protected groups?

International UN declarations link dignity to equality as foundational ideas. They then connect dignity to education in the vision of education expressed those declarations and documents. Dignity is also a concept much debated in current literature in law, medicine, philosophy and theology. It is an idea rarely explored directly in educational literature. This paper explores an application of contextual conceptual analysis to the 'dignity discourses' that offer insights and clarify challenges in navigating the intersections between key groups that have baring on educational settings. The method of contextual concept analysis was developed in a doctoral thesis in human rights education (Bowie 2011), and in this paper this method is applied to current and recent dignity literature. The focus is the work of two scholars: First, George Katab (2011) and the idea dignity links status and stature of present human life, however unequally endowed with talent, with a view to future human beings through a serious engagement with those of the past; Second, Jeremy Waldron with his 2009 Tanner lectures that argued from a juridical perspective to retain a connection between dignity and rank. Education is an exercise in hope in the future, with an enquiring eye to the learning of the past. It is frequently predicated on a presumed equality of opportunity for all rather than rank or status, though educational structures may be permeated with inequality and status. How different groups perceive future flourishing differ and this difference requires negotiation in any common educational enterprise

06. What do you do about faith at home? - Catholic version

This animation captures the reflections of children in Roman Catholic schools. It provides a unique perspective on faith-related activities within the home. Listen to children sharing their honest thoughts about various aspects of their family’s faith traditions, including faith talk, prayer time and moments of reflection with their parents, siblings, and grandparents

An integrated philosophy of knowledge in the school curriculum vision: how schools of a Christian character might respond

In the Science Religion Encounters (SRE) research project, we did not find much evidence that beginning teachers who had experience of a Christian character sensed a strong integrated philosophy of knowledge although the method and focus of enquiry did not seek to reveal this. However, in presenting the findings of the project to senior school leaders from schools of a Christian the question of how science religion encounters were made sense of brought up Christian school ethos intentions of an integrated holistic or overarching philosophy of education or knowledge. Ofsted, the English school inspectorate, require that schools express a curriculum intent and this is translated into different subjects (Ofsted September 2022). Schools may expect to be asked about their rationale for including knowledge they identify and also the sequencing of that within individual subjects. Strictly speaking, schools are not expected to articulate a bigger integrated picture of knowledge above that of subject level. (Young 2013, Billingsley 2013; Kötter and Hammann 2017; Billingsley and Nassaji 2020). However, Government policies for schools do hope schools will draw on more than one subject in certain areas. For example, in the statutory guidance on Relationships Education, Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) and Health Education (DfE 2021). Curriculum programmes addressing these ares may complement and be complemented by multiple national curriculum subjects including science and RE

07. Where do you go to reflect?

Listening to children speak about seeking out reflective spaces in this animation highlights how important the desire for peace, stillness, and time to be alone is for young people. These insights are in stark contrast to a culture of busyness, activity focussed practices and the idea that children should not be bored

How can I use questioning to explore the unexpected without losing control?

This resource investigates a recorded lesson. It is for those leading teacher education, training or development and may be used by beginning teachers as well. Researchers observing videotape of the lessons explored in Sub Project 1 of the Science Religion Encounters project found that teachers employed both visible and invisible pedagogies that limited the diversity of ideas that were considered legitimate in discussions, and which therefore restricted the scope of pupil questions and responses

The collective consciousness of an RE department during curriculum change: scripture, representation, science, fear and anger

This article reports for the first time in full, a seed corn pilot study that presents a moment of the collective consciousness of an RE department in the midst of curriculum change. It records their concerns about the impact of increased content on depth in a new exam course, and the particular consequence this has for the kind of learning happening around texts. It reveals concerns about the representation of religion in the curriculum, the distance between that representation and teacher’s perceptions of pupils’ spiritual and religious lives. It also identifies teachers sense of fear and guilt about the challenge of fulfilling their duties to pupils, the secular authorities and the Catholic authorities, and reveals insights around the question of science of religion. In this single focus group, the collective consciousness of an RE department captures many key issues of significance in RE today

The human rights Church school: a particular school for the common good?

The idea of a human rights Church school raises challenges from (at least) two opposing quarters. The ardent secularist will doubt a Church school can be a human rights school, as Church denotes a theological moral framework that does not accord with (secular) human rights. A Christian who opposes the language of human rights being drawn into the Christian ethos will oppose the human rights Church school as not being Christian enough. Ergo the human rights Church school cannot have a satisfactorily human rights ethos (for the secularist) or satisfactorily Church ethos (for the Christian). This paper challenges both of these arguments as failing to truly represent the interconnectedness of Christian and human rights thought and action, and further it suggests the human rights Church school is an example of a particular school for the common good, also disrupting some assumptions about common schooling and schools of a religious character