Discovering the Big Ideas Curriculum

The first thing I need to say is that I am a non-specialist Head of RS. Yes, we exist! You might know someone similar. My specialism is actually English. At a time when I was looking to get back into teaching, having taken time out to raise my daughter, there was an urgent shortage of RE teachers in my area. Having grown up in a religious family, where my father was an elder of the Evangelical Free Church, I have always had a strong interest in religion, so I jumped at the chance. I imagined it would be ‘safer’ than diving into teaching English.  Looking back this seems like a very naive view!

As I got used to the department, I began to see limitations in the curriculum when it came to teaching about Christianity. Lessons in no way explored the wide variety of views, traditions and beliefs that I was aware of.  I wondered how far this must be the same for other faiths too.  When my head of department left I applied to become the subject lead for RS, and then my journey as an RS teacher really began.

In many ways English and RS compliment each other. Both are about observing small details and using them to make sense of the whole.  English however offers constant opportunities to explore different interpretations of a source, different arguments and is completely open to the idea that views change over time. This could be part of RS, but it is not as established as English at present. For me this would be what a shift to Religion and Worldviews could look like.

I found the multitude of conversations I had with students each day fascinating. The biggest challenge has been to distill thousands of years of history and belief, especially when there is no curriculum that supports this. I have spent my first two years on the job building a Religion and Worldviews curriculum.

When we gained out first GCSE cohort, I was delighted to discover the Big Ideas approach for AQA Christianity at GCSE on RE:ONLINE (referenced below).

The curriculum covers all the main points of the GCSE specification and is fully resourced, but what I like most is the Big Ideas approach itself. There is a big question to answer every couple of lessons, and content is framed by a mixture of philosophical, ethical, historical and theological questions. These are the Big Ideas in effect. Framing the subject content with the Big Ideas has allowed me to use examples from different Christian traditions. I found my students enjoyed the philosophical questions especially, which enhanced engagement and progress.

I have used the Big Ideas curriculum for my current Year 10s and can see already that they retain much more conceptual information than students did last year, before we adopted Big Ideas. The approach gives students an accessible way to think about religion, a subject many do not know anything about.

Inspired by this success, I am now embarking on creating my own GCSE curriculum following the same approach for Buddhism. Watch this space!

I am interested to see how this approach to teaching influences our teaching and curriculum design at KS3. We have found separating knowledge into different Big Ideas helpful for so many reasons, but mostly because it allows students to explore complexity, retain information and make connections.

Read about the Big Ideas approach and check out the GCSE Christianity and Islam curricula for yourself https://www.reonline.org.uk/teaching-resources/big-ideas-curriculum/

Find out more about the Big Ideas approach, including lessons and teaching material: https://bigideasforre.org/