Creating a religion and worldviews curriculum framework

I was inspired you to put myself forwards as team leader for this project in two ways. Firstly, while contemplating the frankly terrifying prospect of writing the Coventry and Warwickshire syllabus, it seemed imminently sensible to align with the REC’s Handbook. My second source of inspiration came from the wonderful Dr Celine Benoit at Aston University who encouraged me to apply. I agreed, as long as she was part of our team! In the end, we were lucky enough to have Celine and Dr Tim Hutchins in our squad.
Who is the squad? I describe our team as ‘Old School’. As well as myself, an RE adviser, and Tim and Celine as academic advisers, the team comprises of primary and secondary teachers supported by two local SACREs and Coventry Diocesan Board of Education. Two members of our team have completed Farmington scholarships as part of the project. Their learning around assessment and disciplinary lenses is integral to our framework. We even have a team mascot, as one of our members had a baby during the project!

Our vision was to create something absolutely local. We have drawn on the rich social, religious and cultural contexts found here in Coventry and Warwickshire. We created a warp and weft for the framework. We weave together seven core concepts and three main disciplines, resulting in a ‘tapestry’. I even made a paper tapestry at one point to make sure it all worked. We call this one of the ‘relics’ of our framework.
We learnt that a religion and worldviews approach is hard but absolutely worth it! We realised how easy it is to slide back into a world religions paradigm despite our best intentions.

We worked collaboratively with other project leads. We took from Gillian Georgiou three principles for a religion and worldviews approach: move from the particular to the general, use local contexts and embrace hermeneutical thinking. All music to my ears. Ultimately we taught ourselves to see differently, we tried to think in a decolonised way, we constantly communicated across the primary- secondary gap.

Now, as the Handbooks and Frameworks are launched, I think we are in shock that we have done it! We all really believe in what we have created and we know that some may be shocked by the academic rigour of it and the higher expectations but we think it’s something to be aimed at.

We conceived of our whole framework as a journey and pupils as explorers of religion and worldviews. Anyone setting out on a long hike might find it hard to visualise the destination but the important thing is to take that first step. We hope we can act as traveling companions for those who want to do that.

I am now brave enough to add ‘project management’ to my CV. This was one heck of a project. There were timelines and post-it notes everywhere and more than one sleepless night but we did it and I am very proud of our team and our framework.