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Last term we ran a pupil competition to find out what difference an education in religion and worldviews makes to children and young people. From next week you will be able to read and listen to some of them talk about this, but here I want to give a few reflections of my own based on some of the fantastic entries we received. You can also find a list of all the winners and those highly commended at the end of this blog.

An education in religion and worldviews changes attitudes and promotes positive values

Children and young people who entered our competition spoke of the ways in which it increased their sense of empathy towards others, as well as respect and openness towards differing perspectives. Some stressed an even stronger notion that their lessons can promote social justice, dispelling stereotypes and showing that freedom of religion or belief is vital to uphold in our society. Bea and Laurie used a lovely phrase ‘treasuring people’, going beyond a sense of tolerance to deep appreciation of others.

An education in religion and worldviews increases our knowledge and understanding of the world

We live in a complex world, one which is hard to navigate. Children and young people see the value of an education in religion and worldviews in terms of understanding human beings and the world in which we live. They talk about history and meaning, understanding symbolism, learning from great minds, and exploring the nature of wisdom itself. Chloe talks about the way in which her increased knowledge and understanding led to a more enriched experience on a holiday trip where she could apply her learning practically and reflect upon it.

An education in religion and worldviews inspires young people to think critically and make a difference

A common thread through many of our entries was the idea that lessons enabled pupils to think and act in new ways. Zara says her ‘brain was about to explode’; whilst Amelie says her lesson was ’eye opening’ and ’boggled her mind’! There was a sense of emotional engagement by many pupils, particularly when lessons had an element of mystery or surprise. Some talked about the way they had been inspired by people who had made a difference to the lives of others; this had led them to consider how they might make a difference in their local community, society or the world.

I will end with a quote from Zara (Key Stage 3), who sums up for me why an education in religion and worldviews can make a real difference:

This lesson taught me the importance of asking important questions to not only have a better understanding of yourself and the nature of the world around, but to be able to use that knowledge to build a better world.

Winners

Alexander, Felton CE Primary School

Bea and Laurie, Broomwood Hall Upper School

Harriet, Felton CE Primary School

Ramya, Warren Road Primary School

Zara, Felton CE Primary School

Chloe, St James Senior Girls’ School

Joseph, Hethersett Academy

Lili, Woodford County High School

Amelie, Kings Norton Girls’ School

Zara, St James Senior Girls’ School

Highly Commended

Finley and Cole, Hethersett Academy

Shreya, Plashet School

Thank you to everyone who entered our 2022 competition. The judging teams had difficult decisions to make. Congratulations to all the winners.

The blogs will all be published on RE:ONLINE starting on Tuesday 3rd May

‘Apocalyptic thinking’ is a term that usually refers to thinking about the end of the world or a great catastrophe that completely changes the way humans live. Historically this has tended to be seen in religious terms related to the end-point of a divine plan for creation. ‘Millenarian thinking’ is linked to apocalyptic thinking but refers to a period of time when humans live in a hoped-for peaceful “Golden Age”, sometimes before a divine judgement and cataclysm takes place.

These two ways of thinking can help teachers of religion and worldviews to make sense of religion and belief. They are a fundamental but often overlooked aspect of many traditional religions, and are evident in secular and political thought. They can be helpful cross-cultural reference points for teaching about religion and belief.

To gain a better sense of apocalyptic and millenarian thinking it is helpful to look at examples. In Christianity an example would be teachings about the expectation for divine rule and perfect loving relationships between all people. In Judaism and Islam examples are the expectation of a future saviour. In more recent times, the “Y2K” bug and worries about environmental degradation can also be thought of apocalyptic ways of thinking.

In an explicit form this way of thinking seems to be more common in the Abrahamic religions, but is also identifiable in, for example, the cosmic cycles of flourishing and destruction in Hinduism and Buddhism. It is also evident in ideas about cataclysmic disasters caused by natural forces (like a devastating asteroid impact on the earth) or by humans (for example through the use of nuclear weapons), and many political and revolutionary movements include ideas about an idealised future state of society.

 The Centre for Critical Study of Apocalyptic and Millenarian Movements (CenSAMM) encourages and promotes high quality critical and academic research into apocalyptic and millenarian movements, and supports ways to extend public understanding of the field – including through our present major project the Critical Dictionary of Apocalyptic and Millenarian Movements (CDAMM).

CDAMM is an online encyclopaedia of articles about religious and secular instances of apocalyptic and millenarian thinking throughout history and across cultures. It emerged from an awareness of apocalypticism and millenarianism as important themes in religion that also have a significant presence in all sorts of ways in wider and popular culture. Despite being so common, movements and ideas in this area can often be misunderstood and it can be hard to find reliable information about them, our response to that was to produce an authoritative and accessible (and free!) resource about these themes and movements.

All our writers are emerging or established academics with research expertise in the topics they are commissioned to write on. Some, like Eileen Barker (Children of God, written with Sarah Harvey) and John Collins (Millenarianism in Ancient Judaism), are long-established distinguished professors in their fields, others like Ellie Fielding-Redpath (Far Cry) and Damian Cyrocki (Mariavites), are early-career scholars opening up new areas of research and study. Generally, articles are about individual movements (for example, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Nation of Islam) or individuals (like John the Baptist, or Kimpa Vita), but we also have articles on important themes (from Gender to UFO Religion), and broader introductory articles on fundamental topics (like Apocalypticism and Armageddon). The Dictionary presently has around 75 articles, and it will keep on growing as we commission new writers to develop new topics.

CDAMM can support teachers in their developing subject knowledge. It provides a wide-ranging (and growing) resource for information about a great diversity of movements and belief systems across time and cultures. It has a great search function and browsing topics broken down by period, tradition and geography. Every article has a clear summary introduction and then goes into detail about its topic – so it is useful for a quick refresh or a more developed read.

It is of course important to be sensitive to the fact that the topic may have direct personal relevance to pupils in ways that may not be obvious or that they have not disclosed. And, while they are very common, some of the ideas are regarded as unconventional or controversial. However, despite this warning, apocalyptic and millenarian thinking is an important strand in today’s world and well worth understanding.

The Visual Commentary on Scripture (VCS) is a freely accessible online publication that provides theological commentary on the Bible in dialogue with works of art.

Each section of the VCS is a virtual exhibition comprising a biblical passage, three high-resolution (zoomable) art works, a short commentary on each one, and a longer ‘comparative’ commentary drawing them together.

 Using visual art to help unlock and support understanding for pupils

VCS exhibitions aim to transform interaction with Scripture.  Our hope is that our users will never read the biblical passages or see the art works in the same way again.

The exhibition curators represent a diversity of disciplines, methodologies, and perspectives as they explore illuminating interactions between the text and images.  Their choice of artworks ranges from the ancient world to the contemporary: you’ll find Hans Holbein next to Banksy, and video art alongside illuminated manuscripts.

Hermeneutical principles

The VCS is a constructive contribution to living traditions of thought and practice that converse with the Bible as an authoritative resource in contemporary contexts.

Its theological hermeneutics align with the seminal defences of the role of images in Christianity advanced by theologians like John of Damascus.  Artworks are selected on grounds comparable to those that governed the choice of commentary for inclusion in Jewish Talmud or in Christian Catenae: not because they all said the same thing, but because their insight and dialogical potential were fruitful for their communities.

Interdisciplinary thinking

The VCS is a theologically driven project, informed by biblical studies and art history, with an interdisciplinary team based in the TRS department at King’s College London. Each page of the VCS is theologically ‘curated’, and each has the potential to become a dramatic event, perhaps even an ‘epiphany’ for the viewer.

The contemporary conversational engagement of art with Scripture builds mutual understanding and creative perspectives on present issues for non-religious as well as religious audiences, in our increasingly polarised times. Visual art offers an hospitable space for multiple viewpoints to be explored, and the ‘conversational’ mode of interaction fostered by groups of three artworks promotes peaceable rather than conflictual interpretative practices.

The VCS in the classroom

RE teachers are already discovering the VCS and using it in the classroom. You can search the website by book within the Old Testament and Apocrypha or New Testament  or by theme (e.g. Wisdom, Creation, Miracles…), explore a ‘spotlight’ topic (currently Coptic and Ethiopic art), use the video channel, or learn more about the hermeneutical principles behind the VCS. There are 265 exhibitions currently online, and hundreds more in the pipeline.

The VCS is working on tailored school resources to bring the Bible alive in new ways for students. If you would like to join a focus group for school resources, or pilot them in your teaching, or if you’d just like to discuss ways of using the VCS, please contact Dr Chloë Reddaway at vcs@kcl.ac.uk

You can subscribe to the free VCS mailing list at the bottom of the homepage.

I was always going to be a linguist. My Dad was a French teacher and, not wanting to be lectured on the conjugation of French verbs at home, I threw myself into every opportunity to learn languages other than French. I took German and Russian A Levels, discovering along the way a love of poetry, etymology and collecting alphabets. When it came to choosing what I wanted to do at university, I was torn between pursuing languages and RE, my other great love.

What swung it for me was the fact that most Theology and Religious Studies degrees required the study of a language associated with sacred texts – Sanskrit, Qur’anic Arabic, Hebrew, Greek. I jumped in enthusiastically, getting from zero Hebrew to the equivalent of A Level in 7 weeks. Despite the odd mistranslation, the journey of discovery into these text’s original languages opened my eyes to entirely different ways of living in and thinking about the world. For example, in Hebrew, thinking is something you do with your heart, rather than your head; so where ‘Moses thought…’ in an English Torah translation, in the original Hebrew “Moses said in his heart…”. That puts an entirely different spin on decision-making.

This was powerful: it gave me permission to step outside my own worldview and temporarily inhabit someone else’s. The impact of doing this was something that I wanted to share. I continued my studies, earning a Masters and then working on a PhD. However, life intervened, and despite reaching the writing-up phase of my PhD, ill health meant that I never completed it. I moved into teaching Secondary Religious Studies and Philosophy and *loved* it.

Writing as a postgraduate researcher was both frustrating and daunting; the audience were the experts and I was just starting out. In teaching however, my teenage audience was curious (usually) and enthusiastic (sometimes), and my job was to explain things never before encountered. My writing changed – I needed to make complex, abstract ideas accessible. It was at this point that I started blogging and through this, connecting with other RE teachers.

In my current role as an adviser to a huge range of Lincolnshire schools, my writing changed once again. I had the chance to re-engage with research in my field, considering its adaptation to the classroom. I was now writing for an audience not of academics or teenagers, but teachers, and needed to speak into their contexts in practical and useful ways. Several generous colleagues shared their time and expertise, providing collaborative writing opportunities which opened doors for me; Mark Chater, Kathryn Wright, Olivia Seymour, Jane Chipperton, and many more. Writing can feel like a lonely and isolating activity, and I was astonished by the power of collaborative writing. I can say with absolute certainty that my writing improved a hundred-fold. I have taken that lesson into my day job and intentionally seek opportunities to work collaboratively with teachers who are writing for publication, for research and for their own professional development.

I did not set out to become a writer, but throughout my professional life, writing has challenged me to present what I know to others and, perhaps most importantly, to a range of different audiences. It can often feel, at the end of a long working day when the laundry still needs doing and paperwork needs sorting and there are still 50 unread emails in your inbox, that writing is an added extra – something you’ll get round to once you’ve sorted out everything else. I would urge you to revisit that assumption. For me, writing has been a way of trying out ideas, of improving my ability to communicate effectively to different audiences; it has provided me with a space to think and to work collaboratively with others. Writing has helped me grow professionally and it has become an invaluable part of who I am.

There are lots of ways in which you can get involved in writing – why not start with a blog post for RE:ONLINE?

In my last blog I laid out my proposal for why hermeneutics should be part of any good Religion and Worldviews curriculum. It is my belief that exploring hermeneutics can start in the primary phase. Pupils can be supported to make their own interpretations of texts and consider how their own worldview impacts on their understanding. They can think about the meaning they take from text due to their own prior understanding.

What can textual hermeneutics look like in Primary? Take the Noah story, which many pupils will have encountered in several forms before studying it as a text in an RE lesson. Pupils can explore the specific historical-social context of the text, considering who wrote it and why, who they wrote it to and how it would have been interpreted and understood at the time. They can move on to consider whether the interpretation of the story is different today. They can think about the ways in which a text is interpreted.

Not sure where to access resources for hermeneutical exploration? Books such as The Lion Handbook of the Bible, websites like the British Library’s Sacred Texts or the excellent collection of materials on the Bible Project website can support teachers in locating this knowledge for hermeneutical discovery.

There is also scope for engaging KS2 pupils in philosophical discussions around where meaning lies within a text; with the author’s intention or the reader’s interpretation? Is meaning a static thing or does it evolve and change over time as texts find themselves used and read in new circumstances? Theological hermeneutics could take the form of Dawn Cox’s lenses to ask questions: How would a theologian understand this text? What about a Christian? Would it be understood differently by a Muslim and why? Is there anything of value in this text for someone with a non-religious worldview who might interpret it without religious affiliation or experience?

Primary pupils are more than capable of engaging with interpretation of sacred art in a similar way. They might explore how images represent not only theological ideas but also the contemporary worldview of the artist. For example, studying images of Jesus from different time periods, cultures and geographical regions offers pupils the opportunity to practice interpretative skills. They will consider what an artist is trying to show about their understanding of Jesus for themselves and their community. They will think about how they, as the viewer, makes meaning of the artwork, and how and why this might differ from the meaning made by their peers.

In the secondary phase, pupils can continue to hone these skills, building up their knowledge of the contexts within which sacred texts were written and the authorships and readerships of these texts, as they study more complex and sophisticated texts. They may also be introduced to the ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’, where they ask themselves what the text is not telling us at face value and for which we may have to dig a little deeper e.g. who does it benefit to interpret a text in this way? Who is harmed by such interpretations and why would that be desirable for some? This could lead to study of the Bible through the lenses of topics such as womanism or racial justice.

Not convinced? I can forgive you; maybe I am being cunning just like Hermes. But take a look at my recent article in RE Today on ‘RE Alert to Hermeneutics’, where I shared ten practical ways to bring hermeneutics into the RE classroom or dive into RE:ONLINE’s hermeneutics resource. Hermeneutics is waiting for you to discover its merits for your RE teaching! I hope you come to love it as much as I do.

Useful links:

https://retodaylibrary.org.uk/article/theologies-of-reading-ten-examples-of-re-alert-to-hermeneutics/

https://www.bl.uk/sacred-texts

https://bibleproject.com/

Note on terminology:  ‘RSE’ stands for the statutory legislation published in 2019 that has been compulsory in all schools since 2020, Relationships and Sex Education.

As a teacher in a faith school myself, I am interested to explore how RSE can be taught in faith schools. As part of an extensive training programme in RSE, I encountered other teachers from faith schools. My own faith background (and school) is Shi’a Muslim, but I met teachers from the Catholic sector who were asking the same questions as me. Through this experience I have uncovered some fascinating and useful research, with the end result that an ‘Abrahamic Commentary’ on RSE has now been produced.

I was delighted to meet Lucy Emmerson, CEO of the Sex Education Forum. The Forum provides excellent resources and clarity on all the different issues involved in RSE, such as being aware of diversity in your classroom and the community. It was a suggestion from Lucy to show non-Christian families and weddings, to embrace diversity, and that got me thinking. I wanted to represent other faiths and provide more information for parents and pupils from these faiths too. After speaking to others, I decided upon an Abrahamic model.

I sought advice and expertise from advisers, teachers, Local Authorities, the PSHE Association and scholars from the three faiths. I was particularly pleased to meet Dr Jo Sell, whose doctoral thesis explored ‘faith, relationships and sex education’. Through Jo I learnt that young people from a faith background struggle with the same issues as those from a non-faith background; consent, mental health concerns and silence. In some religious communities issues that young people experience can become hidden. Young people of faith can struggle with observing a traditional form of their faith, upholding their family expectations, and experimenting as young people will, especially as they are bombarded with an external culture that is more open and direct about matters of sexuality.

However there are many faith-sensitive ways to open up a conversation and it has been wonderful to learn more about them. A conception of being made in the ‘image of God’ for example, speaks to human dignity and respect for the body. However some principles are simply traditional village culture given a religious spin. During a discussion at an Islamic conference the issue of sex and relationships came up. It was refreshingly honest, open and balanced – the trouble was that from start to finish the whole thing could have been taking place in a secular ‘marriage guidance’ context. ‘Muslim’ only denoted the cultural context of the discussion and there was no input from Islam at all. As a Muslim myself I would like to see a thorough study of Islamic anthropology, addressing the question of what is it to be human? From there I would like to see an exploration of the dynamics of relationships, community and society from an Islamic perspective. It would be wonderful to see this for all faiths.

The Abrahamic commentary provides support for teachers when delivering RSE. They can refer to the three faith areas to further develop and explore understanding of the principles and topics, such as families, the body, marriage or respect for others. The commentary has been created for both Primary and Secondary phases, and is age- appropriate. We also hope parents from the Abrahamic faiths will also find interest and support in the commentary, as well as parents from all and no faiths; the scriptures are treasures of wisdom for all humanity to benefit from.

The commentary can be found here.

Further Resources:

Dr Jo Sell’s faith- and student- sensitive approach to RSE can be found on her website: https://realationships.co.uk/

Jo has published her thesis: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10072639/1/Sell_10072639_Thesis_sig-removed.pdf
The Sex Education Forum: https://www.sexeducationforum.org.uk/

I have been listening with interest to conversations about the shift to Worldviews. I have long wondered how far my teaching reinforces for my mostly white, largely atheist students, the impression that all followers of a religion think and do the same thing. And moreover that religious beliefs and actions exist in a place distant to my students’ lives and concerns. Worldviews thinking seemed to respond to my concern. I wanted to move away from my comfortable World Religions focus on the holy building, the holy book, the core beliefs, but how?

I have been proactive in using and emphasising a multidisciplinary approach. I have explicitly tried to achieve a balance of theology, philosophy & social sciences in my planning – using lots of the RE: Online, NATRE & RE Today CPD and resources (I’m starting to feel like Lat Blaylock’s stalker!). Awareness of these different lenses has allowed me to clarify my aims when engaged in the constant and almost overwhelming process of selection, omission and deciding, from everything that could/should/ would be great to cover, what will actually make it into each precious little lesson.  I wanted to introduce more reality, more diversity, more challenge and a nuanced understanding at KS3 but with only a 50- minute lesson a week and largely religiously illiterate (and many uninterested) young people I wasn’t sure where to start.

Into this overloaded head space came Islam as a Worldview. What caught my eye was not just the level of research and detail, but the emphasis on the personal, lived experience of different Muslims across history. This was just what I needed. I chose the Malala Yousafzai resources for Year 8 who were already looking at Islam. I had looked at Malala for a previous ‘inspirational religious people’ unit but it had felt trite and superficial. The Islam as a Worldview on the other hand really resonated with what I was looking for. It was my first attempt in exploring wider political and geographical contexts in lessons and I was keen to try!

We began with the context & background to Pashtun life- I never knew Malala’s father was such a great example. Then we moved to fundamentalism and why the Taliban gained support.  Many students commented that it challenged their ideas to consider that terrorists weren’t necessarily ‘all bad’.  My favourite lesson was looking at what Islam taught about education and the events leading up to Malala’s shooting as a ‘what would you do?’ style activity – most of us were considerably less courageous than Malala!  We rounded off with a reflection, debrief and a ‘what Malala did next’ lesson.  I really enjoyed teaching the whole unit and felt it had been a much more thorough and engaging way to cover the tricky question of religion and terrorism. The student’s feedback was overwhelmingly positive and there were many interesting questions and conversations in the classroom.

It is exciting to trial a multidisciplinary Worldviews approach. It has given me an insight into the value of real-life contextualised ‘stories’ and a way to tackle tricky, messy questions like who is a ‘real’ believer. This process illustrated to me particularly the importance of not just telling students there is religious diversity, but of really showing them the massively wide spectrum of belief and thinking (of which religion is just one strand) that can see Malala and the Taliban striving to be ‘good Muslims’ in such different ways.

Samantha Keddie has been a Secondary teacher of RE for 15 years, firstly in South London and now East Sussex.

What is Hermeneutics?

We all have our niche topics. Hermeneutics appears to be mine. Likely, this comes from a joint-honours degree in English and Theology and a teaching career spent leading English and RE at primary level. Hermeneutics is the art or skill of interpretation. Hermeneutics involves texts but also a consideration of the positionality of the reader alongside the historical-social context of the text. This could encompass the author, the recipient, the reasons for writing, or all three. The aim is to arrive at an understanding of what texts may be saying.

Hermeneutics sits squarely in the Worldviews approach as we encounter the worldviews of authors from the past through their work. It also draws upon the disciplines of both theology and history. So, in Religion and Worldviews terms, you could say it’s an ‘all the feels’ approach.

When I throw the word ‘hermeneutics’ into the CPD I lead for local RE teachers and subject leaders, I am often met with ‘herma-what?’ in response. It’s a big, fancy word from the Greek hermēneuein, meaning ‘interpret’. The word also alludes to Hermes, the cunning messenger to the gods, who often delivered messages with his own slant to manipulate interpretation. It really just means learning how to interpret and being aware that different interpretations are part of studying religious texts.  As we increasingly talk in Religion and Worldviews circles about how important it is for pupils to understand diversity and the impact your worldview has on your thinking and expression, I fully expect hermeneutics to become something all teachers will see the merit of exploring with their pupils.

Hermeneutics can be applied to art as well as text. Pupils can explore sacred art and encounter worldviews from other eras, cultures and geographical locations as they learn to interpret the beautiful things associated with diverse religious traditions. They will learn to ask themselves what an artist is trying to show them and why. In comparing different examples of religious art intended to capture the same elements of scripture, they will see for themselves how differently the same text can be interpreted by an artist and understood by a viewer.

I’d love to see hermeneutics take its place as part of disciplinary study of religion and world views in a well-thought-out curriculum. After all, it’s a classic example of what Ofsted’s Dr Richard Kueh termed ‘ways of knowing’ and it is another key way of developing critical thinking in pupils, turning them into ‘responsible readers’ and thoughtful viewers of sacred images. Through hermeneutics, pupils are confronted with their own personal knowledge that they bring to every learning experience. It naturally requires consideration of positionality and encourages the skills of reflexivity and reflectivity.

In my next blog post I will aim to share some specific examples of hermeneutics in the primary and secondary classroom, but in the meantime you may want to check out Bowie et al’s Teachers and Texts.

The Visual Commentary of Scripture is also a great starting point for finding sacred art interpreting passages of scripture.

This blog is dedicated to Andy Squires, a great boss who encouraged me in promoting an RE curriculum that includes both religious and non-religious worldviews and addresses controversial issues in the classroom. Young people need a safe space to discuss difficult questions about the benefits and challenges of living in an increasingly multicultural society and here is my argument.

If Religion and Worldviews is to remain relevant to young people this will sometimes involve discussing controversial issues that arouse strong feelings, particularly those that raise questions about authority and power. In this blog I will argue that we should not avoid these moments of complexity or uncertainty, which are a natural part of our subject matter. Helping our young people acquire the tools to make sense of complex and often emotive issues could be the most important thing we do for them.

The world is complex and there is no getting away from controversial issues. Examining an issue that arouses disagreements might take us out of our comfort zone. We can see it as akin to sex education, uncomfortable at times but absolutely crucial for students to encounter, for their future health and confidence.

I suggest that we therefore need to embrace interpretation. Instead of using short lines of text to make a point, often with no acknowledgement of context, we could consider taking more time and exploring different ways text can be interpreted. We can help our young people in their developing critical awareness by exploring with them different interpretations, including interpretations we or they may not agree with. We can show the roots of each school of thought or tradition, the claims or purpose of the text, and the context in which the text was written as well as how this particular mode of interpretation has come about.

Of course any source can be open to this process, not just text. Outlooks, practices and traditions can be traced to a way of thinking and made sense of in context, offering a more textured and complex understanding of belief, belonging and culture. In becoming more comfortable exploring different interpretations, we are halfway there to understanding the roots of ideologies at play in current controversial issues, a key part of making sense of where the controversy has sprung from.

I propose that the consequences of not allowing young people to engage critically with aspects of religion and worldviews can lead to a limited understanding of religion, history, beliefs and ethics. It is also to reduce the intellectual challenge of the subject. As well as the educational case for critical analysis, there is the moral case for preparing our pupils to make sense of, engage with and thrive in a complex, diverse world.

Teachers might feel they lack the expertise or confidence to broach controversial issues, and we do need to both do our research and tread carefully. However if we steer away from critically analysing religions to avoid any difficult conversations, this can also trivialise religion. We can hold on to an educational argument in our uncertainty; we sometimes need to address controversy for educational reasons, in other words, so our young people gain a valuable understanding. A critical engagement with religion and worldviews is a particular approach that could feel uncomfortable to some pupils, so we have to defend it educationally, while approaching certain topics with sensitivity and care. Such care does not dilute our overall aim, it is part of our professional toolkit.

This term we will be exploring the idea of ‘ways of knowing’. How do we help our pupils, of any age, to make sense of the learning material as they grow and develop? The phrase ‘ways of knowing’ is found in Ofsted’s 2021 Research Review to describe how the substance of the lesson is framed.

In my own classroom I have been experimenting with a historical ‘way of knowing’. We have reshaped a Year 9 Unit to take a deliberately historical view. We make sense of Christian theology with reference to historical contexts. Through role-play, guided stories and discussions we explore emerging Protestant concerns in the 1500s, contrasting to Catholic trust in centuries of church tradition. Pupils are in actual fact contrasting ‘faith’ and ‘works’, without using these abstracted words. Although these are theological concepts, I found that looking through a historical lens allowed me a certain amount of freedom from the precise meaning of the different visions of salvation. The broad brush strokes of the argument suffice to explain the ensuing conflict as well as identify the core, shared Christian beliefs.

Our historical timeline has taken us to the English Reformation, the European Wars of Religion, the Troubles and finally to the work of Corrymeela in the modern era. We have been able to discuss at each point how far conflict between Catholic and Protestant groups is political or religious. My students have mastered the theological disputes comfortably without even knowing it.

And the students? In our first year of teaching they were, frankly, confused. ‘Why are we learning all this history?’ was the most common objection, and, ‘when are we going to learn about religious beliefs?’ I was unsure of myself. Coming in and out of lockdown added to the sense of confusion. However students’ reflected nuance and critical analysis. A more textured understanding of the impact of religion, politics, power and community was emerging.

This year I am confident. I see how the unit flows and small pieces of information connect to a bigger whole. My current Year 9s respond to my confidence, discussing the pros and cons of biblical translations, assessing Henry VIII’s ‘true’ Catholic soul and comparing traditional Catholic to various Protestant views of the eucharist.

A concern lingers; the sheer speed at which we work. Huge chunks of history, theology and politics are glossed over in a way that doesn’t feel historically appropriate. If we are taking a historical view of theological differences, we don’t really give enough time to context and place. It was in the penultimate week of the term that my concerns suddenly resolved into a solution. When considering Corrymeela’s work in conflict resolution and reconciliation, I had it- this is an ethical unit. We are looking through an ethical lens! The various case studies of conflict between religious siblings all point to an ethical question; is conflict in the name of religion ever acceptable?

My teaching next year will therefore adopt an ethical ‘way of knowing’. We will draw on historical context, power, theology and place to make sense of this urgent question of the world.

Through blogs and resources this term on RE:ONLINE we will be considering the what ‘ways of knowing’ means in the classroom and in our development. As always we welcome your questions, blogs and comments. What changes are you making, how can you assess their success, and how will you develop in future?