Thinking Like a Social Scientist in the RE Classroom

If students leave secondary school knowing what religious people believe, but not how we know it, have we missed something?

This question has shaped my thinking while developing a Religion and Worldviews curriculum across a multi-academy trust. I have made a conscious effort to ensure that students do not just learn content, but are introduced to the multidisciplinary nature of RE. Alongside theology and philosophy, they learn how social sciences help us understand religion and worldviews in the real world.

Why ‘how we know’ matters in RE

Our first unit in Year 7 is What is a worldview? From the outset, students are explicitly introduced to theology, philosophy and social sciences as different ways of knowing. Crucially, they are taught the tools and methods of each discipline so that, as they move through the curriculum, they can recognise these approaches and begin to use them independently.

Learning to think like a social scientist

For social sciences, we introduce a character called Sunil, a social scientist, who guides students through the process of setting up a small-scale sociological study. We start with a familiar context: how people celebrate Christmas. Students generate questions Sunil might ask and then distinguish between those best suited to a survey and those more appropriate for an interview.

Students then design their own small study with classmates. They consider whether they need qualitative or quantitative data and how to design questions that produce reliable results. Finally, we introduce published data from Big Questions Big Answers Vol. 2 – Investigating Worldviews, which explores how people celebrate Christmas. Students compare this with their own findings, identify surprises and discuss what conclusions they can draw.

As the Ofsted Research Review: Religious Education (2021) makes clear, students need to employ disciplinary skills as well as understand how these help us know more about the lived reality of religious and non-religious people.

Exploring lived religion through data

Sunil reappears throughout the curriculum so that students recognise when they are being asked to think like a social scientist. In a Year 8 unit on what it means to be a Sikh in Britain today, students use data from the 2018 British Sikh Report (available via Investigating Sikh Worldviews). Before seeing the data, they predict which of the Five Ks are most and least likely to be worn.

Comparing predictions with the data leads to rich discussion. Why might younger Sikhs be more likely to wear a kara? Why are Sikhs often portrayed as wearing a turban when only around half of Sikh men do?

Questioning evidence and challenging stereotypes

Students are encouraged not just to use data, but to question it. They consider how survey questions might be interpreted and whether a sample can ever fully represent a diverse community. Over time, this helps students move beyond stereotypes and engage more deeply with the complexity within religious traditions.

A further example comes in our Year 9 unit What is religion and is it dying? Students analyse 2021 census data, comparing national trends with their local area. They ask critical questions: what does it mean that the religion question is voluntary? What assumptions sit behind asking, ‘What is your religion?’

We then introduce frameworks such as Grace Davie’s believing, belonging and behaving to help interpret the data. Students also consider global contexts, including Nigeria and India, where patterns look very different. Alongside this, they engage with the work of Linda Woodhead on values, spirituality and the growth of alternative worldviews.

Building confident, critical RE students

As students progress through Key Stage 3, they grow in confidence handling data, questioning sources and recognising patterns in belief and behaviour. Most importantly, they come to see RE as a serious academic subject that requires evidence, interpretation and critical thinking.

If we want students to truly understand religion and worldviews, we need to induct them into how these are studied. RE is not just about what people believe, but about how we come to understand those beliefs in the real world.