Assessing Religion and Worldviews Part 1

Does assessment in Religion and Worldviews actually ‘assess’ students’ progress and understanding? Structured conversations with teachers through my Farmington Scholarship has shown me that there is currently no clear method of assessment in Religion and Worldviews, something I have been working towards. In the first part of two blogs, I will address the question, how does assessment show us the curriculum is effective in enabling students’ knowledge and understanding to grow?

I ask myself the question, ‘how do I know our RE curriculum is effective in enabling students’ knowledge and understanding to grow?’ I am looking for a ‘cumulatively sufficient’ (Ofsted, 2021) curriculum, with clear endpoints and goals, where students have an opportunity to bring together their knowledge, understanding and personal worldviews. Clear endpoints embedded throughout the curriculum allow teachers to assess the impact of their curriculum on students’ understanding.

A well-balanced Religion and Worldviews curriculum allows students to progress in their knowledge and understanding as they engage with more complex information. A progression curriculum deliberately builds on students’ substantive knowledge and skills in order for connections to be made and understanding to grow. Therefore, assessment of a Religion and Worldviews curriculum needs to check in with students’ knowledge and ability to make connections as they engage with successive building blocks of knowledge. This process also shows teachers what is working and what needs a rethink.

How do you know your students know more, understand more, and can do more? Becoming aware of our students metacognitive thought processes, in other words, how students think about their learning, as well as the substantive content they are learning, can give teachers valuable insights when it comes to assessment. An example of this is when students become aware of connections, they are making from previous learning topics, or when students can consider what is being asked of them and decide the right tools for the task in hand for themselves. Observing this process of growing autonomy not only supports teachers’ evaluation of what is effective in the way the curriculum is being planned and taught, but also what activities, resources and questions are effective in allowing students to unlock and explore their learning at a deeper level.

An example of a connection students can make in our curriculum is found in Year 7 and 8 where we return to the Christian creation story. We ask different questions, focusing on Theology in Year 7 and Philosophy on Year 8, but students are able to revisit the significance of creation in Christian belief and consider how far their ideas have developed.

For students to develop as independent learners we offer choices of tasks at increasing challenge. Students work independently to apply, analyse and evaluate the substantive knowledge they have learned. We encourage students to continually review and revisit their learning. Tasks range from giving 3 reasons ‘why’, to evaluating an argument. We prepare students through well-designed active learning tasks so when they come to choose their challenge, they have a good grasp of the substantive content. In asking students to choose their challenge, we are asking them to think about how they will further their learning and show their results.

Overall, through using assessment to check with students’ understanding of substantive and their ability to make connections, as well as asking students to think about how they analyse and evaluate for themselves, we are developing a coherent structure for assessing understanding in Religion and Worldviews.

Read Assessing Religion and Worldviews Part 2 of this blog, to see what happened!

References

Ofsted (2021) Research Review Series: Religious Education (12th May 2021)