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I recently had the opportunity to travel from Copenhagen, Denmark to attend my first NATRE conference Strictly RE 2020.  I attended the conference with 2 other colleagues from the same school as myself.  Since we were all first time attendees, anticipation was high and curiosity about what to expect was niggling away at all of us.

At the conference I was lucky enough to attend seminars by Julia Diamond-Conway and Lat Blaylock.  It was such a refreshing experience given the quality and attention all of the presenters gave to their topics.  What caught me even more though was something I feel is so important in this day and age and that’s the focus on both creativity and providing an experience for our students.  This can be an experience either within or outside the classroom to broaden their thoughts and ideas on different subject areas of RE.  As we know in our own lives, this is what creates memories that we cherish and hold on to.  In these times where screen time tends to be the norm along with a ‘quick fix’ lesson it was nice to see excitement and thought given to providing a quality lesson without ‘taking the easy way out’.

When I left the sessions I participated in, I came out with a pack of ideas that could realistically be applied in the classroom within the framework of what we are actually doing.  This is so important because it doesn’t mean massive changes but simple practical ideas such as Julia Diamond-Conway’s Guided Visualizations or Lat Blaylock’s Creation Story with play dough.  I left the conference feeling armed and excited (about a subject that is often not given the priority it should be) and ready to guide our children towards being the informed Global Citizens we hope they will become.

As I am sure you can understand from what I have written I, for one, have found this particular experience a memorable one that I hope will also help to challenge my own creativity!

I took a workshop called ”Helping pupils to remember what they have learnt in RE”, presented by Stephen Pett at the NATRE conference.

It started with Stephen giving a brief overview on the most recent developments in research on how the brain makes connections and stores information. He then went on to having the teachers do some activities for pupils.  These were all interactive, and many had elements of drawing or art in them. I’m looking forward to trying them all with my students.

One which I’ve already tried has worked really well, called ‘Interpreting the man in the well’. This could be adapted in many ways. It involved Stephen telling us to draw pictures of certain characters or events as he read a story involving them.  We’d have a short time to draw, as he paused telling the story. When the story was finished, we would have to try to interpret what the meaning of those characters might be, and explain that to a partner. We then went back and looked at the images we’d drawn, and heard the actual interpretation in its religious context.

This was valuable learning on many levels. Listening to a story and drawing elements of it keeps the listener directly involved.  No room to be passive! Then interpreting what each character or element of the story might represent was definitely a higher level thinking skill, along with communicating that to a partner. It actually had to do with what life is all about, so a connection was made from quick, simple drawings all the way to discussing the meaning of life, but with symbols the children would have already drawn and related to. This is a perfect example of a ‘brain smart’ lesson.  These were the elements involved:  listening, drawing, retelling, interpreting, discussing, and theorising. And all at KS2 level. I think this is an elegant way to make lessons in religion relevant, accessible, and importantly, memorable.

I am an Early Years and Key Stage 1 Phase Leader at a Primary School in Surrey. I have a real passion for RE and this year was my first experience of Strictly RE. I am currently not the RE subject leader, however things might change having had the most inspirational CPD I have had in a long time at Strictly RE.

There were so many things that I have taken away from the whole day but I especially want to share the knowledge of Katie Freeman. The title of her session was ‘Implementing effective RE for EYFS: understanding depth and creativity’. As a current Reception teacher and a part of school where we teach RE from our Nursery upwards, I felt like I needed some more ideas of how to get our youngest children having a passion for RE.

Katie spoke about how she had approached changing the teaching and learning of RE in her school and the benefits of this to create deep understanding and creativity to all her lesson. I want to share with you three gems from her approach and explain how I have used these to enhance the RE learning.

The first of these was directly linked to the curriculum Intent. What skills and knowledge do I want my children to learn? What is it, that we are expecting our children to learn and how does this differentiate from themes that are taught in later years? Katie spoke about the way in which she had set out a spiral curriculum in her school, where as a school staff they had looked at the building on the prior knowledge. Coming back to school I have revised what it is we are teaching in Nursery and Reception and now made a direct link from prior skills and knowledge to what is being taught further up the school. Making sure at all times that I wasn’t just ‘dumbing down’ the curriculum because the children are younger but actually making sure that the further up the school they are raising the expectations of skills and knowledge that is taught.

The second, was that she has implemented a benchmark assessment for the beginning of every unit taught in RE. The assessment is designed to capture what the children know already, what they want to know and what they have learnt at the end of the unit. When planning the units of RE for my phase, I have made sure that this assessment activity has been built in. It is important to show what our children have learnt not just through the content of work but also by the way in which they question and debate RE.

The third gem, was the way in which key questions were planned to ask the children during the time where children are carrying out their task. I really felt that this was something that I was missing in my RE lessons. I had always planned for key questions and used these during inputs, but why was I not thinking up key questions to ask when the children were carrying out their directed task? Part of what I am now using in my lessons is to direct key questions to the children during this time and using their responses in our class big book as evidence of the amazing responses that they have to such big questions.

I am really grateful to Strictly RE for giving me the time and space away from my busy life in school to reflect on the way in which RE is taught in my school and how I can improve it. I look forward to returning next year to meet some more inspirational people and find more creative ways to enhance to subject I love.

It was a delight to attend and give the keynote at NATRE’s Strictly RE Conference on Saturday. I enjoyed talking about the various jewels in our treasure boxes – our own worldviews, our pupils’ worldviews, our context, the intent of our school curriculum, our subject of religion and worldviews, and our curriculum content. I talked about falling in love with our subject all over again! If you are interested, you can find a link to my keynote at the end of this blog.

It was wonderful to be with so many dedicated teachers and other RE professionals all sharing their love for our great subject. The enthusiasm of so many teachers to develop their expertise and subject knowledge was evident throughout the day, and it was a pleasure to chat with so many. A few stand-out conversations for me included…. One with a Primary teacher who was so thrilled to be undertaking action research in her classroom with the University of Huddersfield, a Secondary PGCE student who wanted to immerse herself in the RE community from the beginning of her career, a secondary teacher who was now leading RE across a large MAT of over 30 primary and secondary schools, and a University tutor who is passionate about teachers undertaking their own research through Masters study.

Something I noticed this year was teachers’ desire to engage more with and in research i.e. finding out about and applying research and/or doing their own research. The presentations by Emma Raven (MSc), Anne Moseley (PhD) and Jennifer Juniper (Action research) highlighted this. We have recently published an introduction to Theologies of Reading which I spoke about in my keynote https://www.reonline.org.uk/resources/theologies-of-reading-new-perspectives-on-pupil-engagement-with-texts-an-introduction/ and some examples of application of this by Jennifer which she used in her seminar https://www.reonline.org.uk/teaching-resources/theologies-of-reading/

We are also delighted to be partnering with all the main RE Organisations and with Templeton World Charity Foundation to host a conference on Saturday 3^rd October which will bring together researchers and teachers in an exchange of knowledge and expertise. The booking for RExChange 2020 is now open https://www.cstg.org.uk/programmes/rexchange/

We look forward to continuing to resource and reimagine RE by opening up our treasure boxes together.

If you teach about Jainism, the research included in this blog will be useful to you; if you teach about religion and the environment, or environmental ethics in general, it gives a good case study. It’s by Michael Reading of Mt. St. Mary’s University, Los Angeles.

The research summarises how Jainism has been pointed to for its eco-friendly example. Jainism proclaims the equality of all life forms, emphasises nonviolent behaviour (ahimsa), and encourages limiting one’s possessions (aparigraha). Within this setting, the research looks at the Jain-inspired Anuvrat Movement, founded in 1949 by Acharya Sri Tulsi.
The main findings are these.

• Jain beliefs and practices, e.g. ahimsa (non-violence to all beings) are highly relevant to ecological problems.
• A further ideal, aparigraha, refers both to the physical limiting of one’s possessions, as well as one’s achieving a general state of spiritual detachment, also a highly eco-friendly stance.
• The Anuvrat Movement, launched in 1949 by Acharya Sri Tulsi, revolved around what he perceived to be a moral deterioration within Indian society. To remedy this, he encouraged all people to take a set of vows (not only Jains but also Hindus, Muslims, Christians and Sikhs have participated).
• The vows are based on traditional Jain and Yoga vows, and also include one (the eleventh) of particular ecological relevance: I will do my best to refrain from such acts as are likely to cause pollution and harm the environment. I will not cut down trees. I will not waste water.
• There are others of relevance, e.g. the seventh enjoins limiting one’s possessions – and 42% of greenhouse gas emissions is caused by consumer goods production.

The full article is fascinating and freely available (access details are at the end), and you can use it to develop your knowledge of Jainism. As for teaching, it offers useful, challenging discussion questions. You could:

1.Begin by watching the short clip at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWhZN9fiLSM , then asking the class what they noticed most, which is likely to prompt discussion of the gauze face masks and thin white robes worn by the Svetambara monks. This can lead into explanation of ahimsa and aparigraha.

2. You could then introduce a power-point presentation based on the other three key research findings above, checking that students understand and can themselves explain such points as the link between aparigraha, greenhouse gas emissions and consumer goods production.

3.Underline how Tulsi placed emphasis on individual conduct. Ask students to discuss in pairs: to what extent are we responsible for environmental problems? How important or difficult are the lifestyle changes needed? How effective can vows be, and to whom or what might a non-religious person vow?

4.Finally, ask the students to write individual summary statements for brief plenary sharing. The researcher says that Jainism gives a solution to environmental problems. Do you agree or disagree? The task is to write as much as you can with as many reasons as you can in ten minutes.

The original article is Michael Reading, The Anuvrat Movement: A Case Study of Jain-inspired Ethical and Eco-conscious Living, Religions 2019: 10 (11), 636, available open-access at https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10110636

We’ve reported the research on RE:ONLINE at Do Jain teachings solve the ecological crisis?

In September, I began a PhD. It was, and is, the second most daunting task of my life to date (the first was having children!).

I started my career as a RE teacher in a delightful secondary school in Sussex, where I taught for a number of years. I liked teaching all year groups, but there was something about my year 11 and sixth form classes that got me buzzing. I loved the discussions, trying to get our heads around tricky issues and watching pupils grow in confidence. But most of all, I loved the journey that I went on with my classes as we tried to understand, appreciate and learn from different religions and worldviews that were often so different from our own.

However, I was so busy with the everyday ‘life’ of a teacher that research in RE was something I rarely encountered (apart from the odd CPD session). It definitely wasn’t something that I had thought about doing myself. Yet, the more time I spent teaching, the more I came to realise that there was a particular area that I felt ill-equipped to deal with – how to best handle controversial and ethical issues that crop up on the syllabus like abortion and euthanasia. Upon talking to colleagues, I found that some of them also struggled with issues that have the potential to be exceptionally sensitive. So, I dived in and decided that more research needed to be done in this area, and that I was the person to do it!

That’s when the Research for RE website came in so much use. On a quick glance, I was able to gain a good overview of some of the key research that is happening in RE at the moment, all in one place. Each of the research reports provides an overview of the project along with key findings and how they might be useful for teachers of RE. I can then provide feedback on how useful and relevant that I think the project is. There’s also space for people to suggest new areas of research, or opportunities to get involved in a project.

For me, the best bit about Research for RE is that it opens up a dialogue between research and practice. The world of academia is still relatively new to me but (much to my surprise) I have found that the majority of RE research is done by teachers, for teachers. The ability to connect with other researchers and teachers who are working in a similar area has been immensely encouraging. One thing that I love about the online RE community is that it is supportive, uplifting and reassuring. The same is true for the research community and I’m looking forward to getting more stuck in in the following months.

So, why not log on Research for RE and have a nose around to see if there’s something that would help your own teaching practice? Or whether there’s a project that you would be interested in helping out with?

Note: Since this blog was published all the research reports have been brought into RE:ONLINE and can be found at www.reonline.org.uk/research/

This academic year, I took the leap. I moved schools in order to become head of RS. In my interview I was told that there were no KS4 or 5 RS classes, but I shared KS3 with citizenship (termly rotation).  I went away planning how could I encourage SLT to bring us in line with requirements, and how I could enthuse students enough to pick it.

Then came my induction day. The assistant headteacher who was running part of the program said to me ‘your year 11s are going to love you’. My line manager had forgotten about the year 10 class who, for two years have had any teacher they could throw into the classroom. The exact wording was ‘they need a lot of love’. Two whole years of learning lost. After a rant to my husband, I realised I had to put a plan together for the students and this is how I did it:

1. I went back to the specification. This school does AQA, my old one does Edexcel. I needed to learn the technique and recap the content before I taught it to the students.
   I then made a booklet out of the specification. For each section there is: the spec, RAG table (Red, Amber and Green denoting their confidence or lack of in the topic) key word table, 20 questions and 10 exam questions. That booklet is now made, so I can use it from now on.
2. I planned the first term – lesson 1 – RAG the whole specification. Lessons 2 and 3 – completed a whole exam paper. Lessons 4 and 5 – went through the exam papers. Lesson 6 – started the beginning (literally, Genesis)
3. I created a lesson routine. First ten minutes are key words. Students know that our lessons start with 10 key terms, and we pick up where we left off last lesson, (an examiner recently told me that the students who get 1 – 3 in the exam clearly don’t know the key terms). Their homework is always 20 questions. Students know what they’re coming into, and what is expected of them.
4. Spreadsheets, spreadsheets, spreadsheets. Some people’s worst nightmare. I’ve got all their marks logged. No grades, just marks. I’ve had them a full term now and they’ve completed three whole exam papers. I can see which topics they’re not as strong on, which questions they struggle to access. This then allows me to target intervention and work.
5. Finally, contact home. I haven’t got the time to mess around. 15 of them decided to do very little work last week, I emailed every parent with how much they did (child X did two bullet points and four sentences instead of two 12-mark questions). But also to praise, students love to hear nice things about them!

I’m not saying they’re going to all get 9’s, or even all get 4’s, but I know that they now have access to the knowledge and exam skills, more than they did six months ago.

If you’re new to a school, or worried about moving to a new school, that’s fine. Have your panic then move forward. Those students need you to guide them in the right direction!

In the summer of 2019 I was made Associate Professor of Religious Education at the University of Chester, and gained the right to use the title Professor. This fact blows my mind- how did I get from there to here? From someone who hated RE until the age of 14 and only took it at GCSE because I hated Geography more. Mr Banks was the man who instilled a love of RE within me and focussed my desire of being a teacher onto RE.

After leaving University with a BA in Theology and History, and then a Secondary PGCE I got a job in my PGCE placement school because they had just been told that RE needed improving by Ofsted- they knew me, and I was cheap. That year was incredibly hectic- my wife and I had our first baby, I was made Head of Department (in a department of one and fifteen non-specialists), and I began my first Masters degree. Ruth and I rationalised this because since we’d been married I’d always studied, worked and completed teaching placements so that it just seemed natural to carry on studying alongside teaching. My school funded the study even though the focus was Military Studies (don’t ask!).

RE is my passion and I loved working in my first school- I got so many opportunities to develop courses from scratch and work with supportive staff and amazing pupils. After finishing my first Masters I had an itch to do a PhD, but was a minister in my local Church in my spare (?) time so put it off, and began a second Masters, this time in Religious Education and again school agreed to fund my studies.

By the time I left my first school, after seven years, I’d gained three children and two Masters degrees. At my second school, we added another child, but I also got the opportunity to begin RE work outside of my school. Having been used to advisory support, I phoned the Local Authority to ask who the contact was- there was nobody. They asked me if I would like to take on the role of Advanced Skills Teacher. That was so much fun, I got involved in SACRE, I visited lots of Primary and Secondary schools to help develop RE, and got asked to deliver training courses. I also began teaching A-Level for the first time- and had to learn Philosophy of Religion all over again.

I also got the opportunity to start a part time PhD for which I received funding from the University. This enabled me to keep learning- it focussed around religion and so the study helped with my teaching.

Life was good and I loved every aspect of my job- it seemed the best of every world. An opportunity came up to apply for the job leading the RE PGCE at Chester. Although it may seem an easy decision- it was the hardest decision of my life. I feel teaching is my vocation, and it’s something that I absolutely love, especially teaching teenagers. But I also felt I had something to say about the way RE is taught. I joke that I have only cried twice in my adult life- once when my eldest child was born (don’t know what that says about the other three!) and once when I wrote my resignation letter to my school. I was leaving the job I loved.

Teaching at Chester has been great- but I am a person who is always looking for a new challenge. After finishing my PhD, I wrote a book about teaching RE gleaned from my twenty years of teaching in a school, wrote book chapters and have just published another book. To become a Professor I had to apply to the University again and explain how I met the criteria for the bestowal of the title. I am fortunate to work in a University that recognises my time as a teacher as valuable and a consideration for the Professorial role, alongside all of the other things that I have managed to cram in.

How I became a Professor of Religious Education is an interesting question- I think it is by taking every opportunity that was offered to me throughout my 22 years of teaching, the support of amazing family and colleagues, and most of all, by not listening to the voice inside my head that tells me I’m a fraud. I suffer from imposter syndrome but recognise its irrationality. The most important qualities I have that led me to this point are that I love teaching, I love learning, I love RE, I love the impact it can have on children and on the wider community, and I have a desire to share that with everybody.

I wasn’t surprised that last September’s REChat on research raised the issue of effective teaching, and how research can be used to strengthen RE’s position as an academic subject. Currently much attention is being given to how to teach effectively about religious texts and what academic research tells us about this. I’ll go back to a 2012 article to draw out some useful pointers. [i]

The research was carried out in a variety of English schools, finding that primary teachers used the Bible more positively than did secondary ones. In secondary schools, teachers and pupils often expressed negativity about the use of books! Primary teachers seemed better equipped and more determined to help pupils to develop a love of reading.

Here are some key findings of the research:

• Good primary teachers present Bible stories as representing realities that may be different from those of their pupils, and to ask them to think about what is strange or puzzling.
• Secondary teachers could build on this unsettling process. In teaching e.g. Shakespeare they do so. In RE, pupils should be open to possible different meanings or puzzles, expanding their horizons. Secondary RE teachers might try to build on the successes of good primary practice.
  • This would include presenting stories ‘whole’, with attention to their original context, and encouraging pupils to be patient and imaginative whilst reading and thinking about them.
  • Pupils should consider different possible interpretations of stories, the perspectives and roles of different characters in stories and the questions and issues raised, including why the stories may be unsettling.

How might a good lesson look? Those of you teaching AQA GCSE specification A (Theme H: St Mark’s Gospel as a source of religious, moral and spiritual truths) will be grappling with the Parable of the Sower, and others might do so as part of general work on Christianity. There is no problem in presenting the parable as a puzzle: it already is, as Jesus indicates when quoting Isaiah at Mark 4:12, suggesting that anyone who wants to understand the parable should have to transform himself or herself first. But you could introduce the parable to the class as a puzzle or series of puzzles to solve. First read it aloud to them, perhaps, inviting any questions or comments straight afterwards and taking time to discuss these. Then get them to form groups, tasked to analyse the parable, of which they should have printed copies (a good idea is to print in the centre of an A3 sheet, leaving plenty of room to annotate around). Stress that their analysis should involve repeated reading of the parable and discussion of different possible answers to questions displayed on the IWB, including:

• Why has the crowd gathered? What do they want? How do they feel? How would you describe the atmosphere? Are they satisfied at the end?
• Imagine yourself in the farmer’s role. What does he learn from the experience of sowing the seeds in the different conditions?
• Imagine yourself in the roles of those ‘outside’ (the crowd on the shore) and then ‘inside’ (the disciples): how does each understand the parable? What is the difference?
• What about Jesus’s perspective? What is he trying to communicate? Why does he reveal this to those ‘inside’, leaving those ‘outside’ to struggle with the parable?
• What is strange or puzzling about the story as a whole (situation and parable)?

They might not have time to deal meaningfully with all of this! One option is to divide the class into five groups, give one of the above questions or question sets to each group, and let each in turn present their views in a plenary after say 20 minutes of discussion and analysis time. Another is to let each group choose one or two questions on which to focus their analysis.

The enquiry-led approach doesn’t rule out the use of teacher explanation at a different stage, or in response to pupils’ questions. An account of the background and different interpretations of the Parable of the Sower can be found at https://www.bibleodyssey.org/en/passages/main-articles/parable-of-the-sower . In the end, it stresses how the fertility of the soil should be compared to the receptivity of those who respond to Jesus’s message.

[i] We have reported this at Using the Bible – what secondary teachers can learn from primary teachers

One member of the September 9 REChat on research raised the issue of ‘official’ versions of religions contrasting with how they are lived by individuals in Britain today. Research on religion gives up-to-date detail on the latter. I’ll look at one example of this and draw out some classroom applications.

The research looked at the importance of home shrines. [i] It was a survey of 417 Buddhist teenagers of different traditions. The main findings were:

• 70% of British Buddhist teenagers had a shrine in their homes.
• Having a home shrine corresponded with heightened religiosity.
• Those with a shrine at home were significantly more likely to have a daily religious practice (22%) than those without a shrine (7%). Those with a shrine were also significantly more likely to bow to their parents (66%) than those without shrines (36%). Those with a shrine were significantly less likely to attend a temple on a weekly basis (41%) than those without (74%).
• Home shrines were significantly linked with Buddhist religiosity in female, heritage Buddhists in their late teens.
• For female, heritage Buddhists in particular, the shrine helped remind them about the Buddha and Buddhist clergy as symbols of their religion. This included feeling that life has a sense of purpose, considering oneself a ‘proper’ Buddhist, and thinking that Buddhist monks do a good job.
• For male, convert, and early teen Buddhists particularly, the presence of the shrine had more to do with identity than religiosity.

How can these data be used in teaching? Within a topic on Buddhism, you could plan a lesson on home shrines, perhaps following a more traditional one on places of worship. In the first part of the lesson, pupils could use e.g. https://www.thedhammalife.com/how-to-set-up-buddhist-altar-or-shrine-at-home/ to research what is involved in setting up a home shrine and why the different objects (and their placings) are important to Buddhists. Next, as a bridge, different pupils could feed back their findings to the class. In the second part of the lesson, groups or pairs of pupils could be given sets of the research findings, cut into individual strips, and asked to arrange these in order of interest or significance. They may wish to ask about vocabulary such as ‘heritage’, ‘convert’, or ‘religiosity’, developing religious literacy. They should note their reasons and any further questions they want to raise. The plenary would involve different pupils giving their findings and questions to the class, with the teacher also contributing questions for discussion: e.g. why might female and heritage Buddhists relate to home shrines more ‘religiously’? Why might male and convert Buddhists relate to home shrines more in terms of personal identity? Future lessons on gender in different religions might interleave back to this lesson.

[i] We have reported it at Does it matter whether Buddhists have home shrines?