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Let’s start with the immediate background. The Commission on RE mounted a strong argument for retaining the parental right to withdraw from RE and monitoring it [1]. In their final report, pp63-68, the human rights arguments and precedents are sympathetically and accurately set out. Commissioners called for a code of good practice for managing the situations where parents wish to use their legal right. They report that while a significant minority of respondents wanted the right retained, and would be concerned about any move to abolish it, a majority of those submitting evidence wanted the right to withdraw to go.

Here’s why. Whatever its original intentions, the right to withdraw from RE is now a standing insult to our subject and our teachers. In former times it was referred to as the ‘conscience clause’. That is a kind phrase for what has become a malignant measure. Nowadays, most teachers and advisers know it is a bigot’s charter, a comfort for islamophobes, militant secularists and others with narrow views. The National Association of Teachers of RE sees no good reason for withdrawal to continue, and is particularly concerned about the growing rate of selective withdrawal for racist reasons[2]. To defend the right to withdraw through an appeal to the primacy of conscience is to drape an elegant fig leaf over some very nasty forms of extremism – views which have no pity or interest when it comes to the sensibilities of a liberal democracy.

On this ugly reality, it seems that withdrawal’s apologists would rather not gaze: they give scant acknowledgement to what all teachers and advisers know, because they have seen it up close, to be a symptom of bigotry. While it is true that not all withdrawals are caused by racism, xenophobia or extremism, we have to weigh up the right with the damage it does. Withdrawals, when not racist, are quite often characterised by a fierce but fearfully-held adherence to exclusivist beliefs (they can be religious or secular in content; what they have in common is exclusivism). Such beliefs drive some parents in a desperate urge to protect their young from the theological and social consequences of diversity that lie waiting for them outside the front door, on the street, in the school and community. They make any form of diversity their enemy, and they look to the state to coddle them with the right to withdraw.

Is religion a different and special category of human culture and experience, and is RE an exceptional case? After a lifetime in the subject I think this view, born of a natural and healthy pride, does us more damage than good. In reality RE is unique only in the same sense that all subjects are unique. The distance between us and geography is no greater than that between geography and maths. The wonder of a broad and balanced curriculum is its capacity to induct young minds into the disciplinary worlds of these subjects, each one a door into fascination. For decades, we in RE have claimed that our door is special; we have insisted on special locks and handles. Then we wonder why head teachers and parents sometimes decline to enter. The Commission report is, among many other good things, a call to end our exceptionalism – to come off our high horse, and humbly enter the world of learning.

Too many of us are living in the past. The imagined norms of the 1944 and 1988 era have vanished. Too many of us assume that RE’s status in law, its paraphernalia of agreed syllabuses, is even relevant now. In England, 66% of secondary schools are academies. School autonomy is a cardinal principle of educational reform. We try to stand against it, and guess what, we are swept aside.

Our current challenges are more complexly derived than withdrawal alone. Yet the right to withdraw does, among other things, damage us by introducing a scintilla of epistemological doubt about our legitimacy as a subject. That doubt is real until we agree the epistemological basis of learning about worldviews. Currently, we are far away from being able to do that; we are adrift, clinging to the flotsam of wrecked truth claims.

I look forward to a day when the epistemological basis of teaching about worldviews is clear, that it inducts children into a clear understanding of religious and worldview diversity. Such a subject would promise nothing and threaten nothing to religious stakeholders. For that reason, all pupils must study it, just as they must study maths. That historic circumstance is within our grasp, and as a society we urgently need it.

1. https://www.commissiononre.org.uk/final-report-religion-and-worldviews-the-way-forward-a-national-plan-for-re/
2. https://www.natre.org.uk/news/latest-news/withdrawal-from-re/

Mark Chater is a former teacher, trainer, researcher and adviser on RE, and is now Director of Culham St Gabriel’s Trust. He writes here in a personal capacity.

If you are reading this blog you are probably aware that religious education is different from other curriculum subjects.

Perhaps more than any other, it deals with contested issues of ultimate import. Perhaps to a greater degree, it has a diverse community of dedicated professionals and stakeholders who have reshaped its aims, scope and purpose over the years.

A further important difference is RE’s special status in law. Unlike other subjects, syllabuses are to be determined at a local level, and parents have the right to withdraw their children from RE lessons. The former anomaly has long been identified as contributing to RE’s low status, ‘the Cinderella of the curriculum’, and has contributed to the present trend for its disappearance in academies independent of local government.

In the recent responses to this threat to RE, the Commission on Religious Education Report and the New Settlement Revised have suggested that RE’s legislative framework should be revised. Rather than the present system of locally agreed syllabuses, it has been argued a nationally determined curriculum would ensure more compliance, better training of teachers and less misunderstanding of the subject’s aims and purposes.

Yet, alongside this quite sensible suggestion has been a questioning of the present statutory right of parents to withdraw their children from RE. This is sometimes referred to as ‘the conscience clause’ or the ‘Cowper-Temple clause’ after the liberal politician who advanced the private member’s amendment for this right at the inception of state funded schooling in the 1870 Education Act.

It is a relief to know that the Commission has, after due reflection and on expert legal advice, declined to recommend abolition of the right to withdraw. In my view, revoking the conscience clause would be a serious and bizarre step backwards. It would be unlikely to ever happen as fortunately human rights legislation protects the rights of parents to bring their children up freely according to their worldview. But, I am concerned that so many RE teachers and other stakeholders would ever countenance the idea that the conscience clause is anything but a necessary and laudable principle. I say this because the according to the liberal ideals of the primacy of conscience and of religious toleration (which in some respects were one of the triumphs of British social and political culture), the right of parents to withdraw their children from the state’s undue interference in religion must be an unalienable right. It should also be the right of teachers to not teach RE, as is also currently protected by law.

Understanding a little about the original purposes of the law perhaps might begin to persuade those who may disagree with me. It is likely without the conscience clause any educational legislation would have been possible in the nineteenth century. Furthermore, the undenominational principle that was advanced at the same time has been a pivotal foundation for the evolution of the subject as we know it today in non-faith schools.

To make history short, until 1870, schooling had been provided by voluntary religious organisations and was therefore patchy in its provision. The Church of England ran some schools, but Nonconformists (Christian groups outside the Established Church such as Quakers, Unitarians and Methodists) also provided many. In some areas there was no suitable provision. The Nonconformists (who formed a significant element in the new emerging middle class of industrialists and professionals) had recently been enfranchised resulting in increased political clout. They did not want to see the imposition of Anglican catechesis in new state-controlled schools. Many did not wish to see secular education either (although some also did). The result was a compromise. Non-sectarian RE of no particular ‘creedal formulary’ was to be given in new state-funded schools controlled by local boards, while the existing denominational schools of a particular religious character would be state-aided. Yet, to ease sectarian tensions, parents could write to their schools and remove their child from religious education.

We live with this historic decision today. We have state-funded faith schools and schools that teach a kind of RE suitable for those of any faith and none. We also have the right to withdraw our children from RE.

So what makes the difference between then and now? Why would the conscience clause be necessary in the nineteenth century but perceived as an irksome legal anachronism that needs to be removed today? The answer lies in important social and educational changes that have taken place over the last century.

Socially, fewer and fewer RE teachers and stakeholders have a strong religious commitment, so their appreciation of what it is to hold a particular worldview and see that as constituting all that one needs to know is much reduced. Their Victorian counterparts in contrast were well aware of sectarian differences and competition, and the impossibility of an absolutely ‘neutral’ approach to religion. This was an era before the ecumenical movement that gave way to the global pluralism we have today, which has radically altered the way many religious practitioners understand their commitments in a religiously plural society.

Educationally, in the last century, the rationale for RE has mutated from a subject designed to find a broad-based consensus founded upon common normative Christian values, to one that educates about religious diversity. These changes in the aims and purposes of the subject are often said to justify the removal of the conscience clause.

Knowing about the main religions represented in Britain is essential to live well in a multi-faith society. It follows, proponents of reviewing the conscience clause argue, that if you come from a family that does not enthuse about learning about these ‘other’ religions, then you are most likely the kind of student who most needs religiously educating in this sense.

While there could be some kind of aversion, or even hate at play in some parents’ desire to withdraw their children from RE, we can’t always attribute not wanting one’s children to learn about religions simply as racism, xenophobia or extremism. Indeed, the conscience clause is there to protect freedom of belief, not to allow for ignorance or xenophobia.

Racism, prejudice and discrimination are so insidious they need to be addressed in all subjects, and as a whole school issue. But moreover, religions transcend barriers of race and nationality and they therefore need to be understood in terms of their diversity. And really understanding their diversity means recognising their exclusivity. That is, believing in a religion usually means you don’t believe in the other ones (although there are exceptions to this, for example styles of religious belief that endorse pluralism, or religious movements such as the Unitarians or Bahá’í that see their faith as one believed in essence by others).

Moreover, religious disagreement is not misanthropy or prejudice. It’s simply taking one’s religious beliefs to their logical conclusions in the light of contrary views. And while members of all mainstream traditions would concur that theological disagreement can not only be amicable but extremely interesting and stimulating when practised in interreligious dialogue, that doesn’t mean such dialogue can form the basis for the education of one’s children.

Perhaps another important reason why some think the conscience clause should be removed is that RE today is non-confessional as opposed to just undenominational. Therefore, it makes no sense to withdraw a child on account of one’s confession to another faith.

For me, this is perhaps the most worrying of developments. There is no neutral view of religions. There can be no objective curriculum. What we see in RE is not the ‘way religions really are’, but a pedagogically expedient representation of religions as we may be able to make them of interest to students of various ages and policy makers with varying agendas.

Indeed, what we may think of religions is going to be radically altered by our worldview, and the more that may be aligned to a religious tradition, the more likelihood that we will find our own deeply held beliefs skewed by a multi-faith curriculum taught by teachers who could never know enough to teach all religions authentically, and in depth. This is particularly true for religious minorities.

Members of heterodox and close-knit religious communities are unlikely to become religious education professionals, or invest in the project of ‘educating about’ religions as a replacement to their own nurture of faith.

I do not mean to paint a bleak picture. Far from it. Good RE is possible in a diverse setting with students of all faiths and none. I am just arguing that in this situation, you need good RE and a conscience clause. The contested and diverse nature of religion is one of the reasons for RE’s unique legal status. Let’s not kid ourselves into thinking we have all the answers.

Daniel Moulin-Stożek writes here in a personal capacity – as a parent and as a firm believer in the principle of religious freedom. He has been inspired by the Christian anarchism of Leo Tolstoy who defended religious minorities from the Russian state. His monograph on Tolstoy’s educational thought is available from Bloomsbury.

To indulge in further personal biography, when he was in Year 7, Daniel’s parents used the conscience clause intermittently to withdraw him from RE on account of their identification with a minority Christian group. One vivid memory of something in which he was relieved not to partake was a homework to make a ‘witchdoctor’s mask’. This was part of series of lessons about how animism, polytheism and monotheism represented stages in the religious development of ‘mankind’ [sic]. While this may be a crass example of a bygone error, how do we know that our own current pedagogical formulations will not be seen in the future as similarly distorting, ethnocentric and historicist?

Do you know what an ensō is? Here’s one:

In Zen Buddhism the ensō is a symbol of enlightenment. The artist paints it in one single brush stroke or occasionally two. The circle can be complete or have a bit of a gap or a bump. It’s the latter I’m interested in. It denotes a lack of perfectionism, an openness to the world outside or that the wheel shouldn’t roll too easily.

You could use it as a metaphor for learning. A wheel with a bump. Or a series of wheels with bumps. You could have fun making up and illustrating your own metaphors for learning, but the wheels with bumps one suits December’s research of the month, Elizabeth L. Bjork’s and Robert Bjork’s work on desirable difficulties.

The idea of a desirable difficulty arises from Bjork’s and Bjork’s research on cognitive psychology. They talk about learning as a deep process that changes knowledge or understanding in the long term, in contrast to short term retrieval. If learners aim for short term retrieval, they can become dependent on poor learning conditions. Better learning conditions tend to interrupt normal practices, so though desirable, they’re difficult.

Bjork and Bjork argue that sites and types of learning should be varied, which is demanding. It means different rooms, different kinds of room, different kinds of space and different kinds of location such as indoor or outdoor; analytic tasks, creative tasks, individual tasks, group ones, and so on. If you’re feeling bumps but not wheels so far, consider Bjork’s and Bjork’s next point, that learning should be spaced or distributed – that is, that you should return to topics at periodic intervals rather than just cramming one topic for rapid gain. Building on this, they go on to say that topics should be interleaved with others, to develop comparison, contrast and higher-order thinking. Tests are important and can be used for learning not assessment: learners need to know what they know and take control over their future learning.

I can understand why there’s such interest in cognitive psychology amongst teachers. Ideas such as Bjork’s and Bjork’s feature frequently at conferences and I’m finding that they’re received enthusiastically when I present them. They invite teachers to plan imaginatively, offering ways to stretch and challenge learners and engage them with the richer aspects of subjects. On the Research for RE website’s report of Bjork’s and Bjork’s research we’ve said that RE teachers might apply it by, for example, introducing parallel studies of one religious tradition with another, or revisiting studies of one part-way through another. Varying the location of learning should include plenty of visits outside school. Again, this is demanding, but can be approached in an open-minded, anti-perfectionist way, where you can try out different ideas and see where they lead. If it goes too smoothly you may be missing something.

The ensō image is from http://martawoo.blogspot.com/2012/12/ensozen-circles-of-enlightenment.html

Elizabeth L. Bjork’s and Robert Bjork’s work on desirable difficulties is reported on RE:ONLINE at Boosting learning by making it desirably difficult

I was going to write this piece about questions. Asking and answering them have become central to how I’m teaching this year, but as I started writing I realised that it is not just about the questions, there’s actually a lot more going on. So, whilst I was going to have a really witty title relating to questions, you’ve got a significantly less witty title, but a blog that sums up what my lessons look like and how this could benefit you.

If you have read my previous couple of blogs (Rethinking the curriculum and Lessons to be learned) then you’ll be able to see some of the changes that I’m making, the hope being that having some insight into my lesson format will show you that a few small changes are making an enormous difference.

Stage 1: The Read-Through
I’ve moved away from pupils having exercise books which they complete notes in, I now give them notes instead. That’s not to say I hand it out, let them put it in their folder and forget all about it. Once they have a sheet of notes, they go through highlighting what they feel is key information and writing questions about the material that they want to ask. This is something that I ensure I model for them at the beginning as (in my school at least) this is not something that they are familiar in doing.

We refer back to these in other lessons and these are the pupils’ first port of call when they ask a question, if they’re stuck for where to look; I find the admin side of this much easier to help navigate them to the correct piece of paper, and importantly the definitions and information that is given to the pupils is succinct and provides a concrete example/definition. When we go on to discuss we are all ‘singing from the same hymn sheet’.

Stage 2: Starting to Question
Once they have gone through it, it is time for us to go through it as a group. This means that it is already their second attempt at processing the material. This time as we go through I make sure that we take our time – something which at first feels a little uncomfortable as we’re really approaching it differently from how I’d ever taught before.

This gives me the opportunity to ask them lots of questions like, ‘What do certain keywords mean?’ ‘What would be a good religious teaching to go with this?’ It allows me to make suggestions for notes and annotations that I feel that they might need to add in. Importantly it gives them an opportunity to ask their questions, with other pupils having the first attempt to answer them. If I need to give them an answer, I will give them some prompts or maybe a connection to something we have already studied first, if I cannot elicit an answer from them, then I’ll tell them. They would then add this detail under the question they had written.

Stage 3: Application
This will have taken around twenty minutes, and I’m starting to get a good idea of how well they are coping with the material that we are studying. Then comes the application.

Having a rough gauge with how the pupils are grasping the material then allows me to target my intervention in class, who is going to need me to guide them through the application task and who is going to need a few quick check-ins. Now this is not an exact science (once I explain the following stage, then you’ll see how it can become more accurate as lessons progress) but it does mean that you can direct support where you think it is best needed. The general idea with the application tasks would be taking the material that we have learned, applying it along with a teaching and tying this to different interpretations. For example, if we were looking at the idea of equality, the application task would require them to select appropriate religious teachings, to align these with different Christian denominations and explain how and why that denomination may interpret the teaching in that way.

During this stage, whilst I’m supporting students and circulating through the room, I am in a position to ask more questions allowing me to check understanding as well as to stretch and challenge pupils. We will then discuss this as a group, with different pupils airing their ideas and at times others challenging these interpretations. Normally I will give some final comments to wrap this up and give my judgement, with time I’m hoping they’ll start to challenge my interpretations as well.

At other times, this application task takes the form of an exam-style question. We really take our time with this and I will model whole responses, or parts of a response for them. They will answer to exam timings and afterwards we will talk through and share some answers as a class. In a different coloured pen they are allowed to ‘magpie’ ideas, but it keeps a clear record of what they originally wrote and what they have added. Giving me an opportunity to see how well they are progressing and how much effort they are putting in to try and improve their work.

Stage 4: The Reckoning
Despite the subheading, this is nowhere near as ominous as it sounds. This is where I test their knowledge on what they have learned more formally through the use of low-stakes testing. I take this as an opportunity to test them not only on what we have just learned, but on historic material from previous lessons. As time passes they will be regularly tested on material that they have learned, they will be tested on material from weeks, months and eventually years ago.

This is normally a really fun part of the lesson and takes up very little time, I tend to use technology for this to remove the workload burden from me and to allow me to give immediate feedback. This can create some amazing dialogue around topics, and if topics are selected carefully you can help the pupils to forge links between the material studied and to illustrate where different teachings can work in different contexts. This helps develop their knowledge further.

Stage 5: No Rest for the Wicked
We move through material at a really good pace, but I do not want pupils to leave a lesson never to reflect upon what they have learned again. My school uses ‘Show My Homework’ (at a basic level an online homework diary, but that also has features where you can create spelling tests or quizzes). I love this because it allows me to set lots of regular (but small homeworks), meaning that I know pupils are having to look at the material often. It also marks for me and immediately notifies me whether or not pupils have completed the homework.

Pupils also love these, the homework does not feel so onerous and it gives them instant feedback on their progress and it has, on several occasions, led to some really involved questions in the following lesson.

Review: Is it actually working?
There’s no straightforward answer to this, I started to adopt this approach last year when pupils studied the Islam component of the GCSE course, it really helped them with the precision around terms (and a religion) that they really were not familiar with.

I’ve definitely refined what I am doing this year as my school has both a Y9 and Y10 cohort (it is an option subject now) starting the course. Pupils are adapting to the material well and crucially it seems to be having an enormous impact upon their retention of religious teachings. Reading through you might be thinking that the lessons are incredibly linear, and we do the same thing five periods a fortnight. The read through part is consistent, but the discussions that arise become more varied and nuanced as time progresses with pupils displaying an ever-widening knowledge and it is the application part where the lesson takes many different forms – application to questions, quizzes, game shows, creation of revision materials, etc.

Ultimately though, what we are working towards is the GCSE exam. I’m certainly not taking a gamble here, and I believe that this approach will prepare my students perfectly for it. But right now we are a long way from that point – so I can give you an update on it in two years’ time.

Last month I was fortunate to attend the 20:20 RE conference in Crewe. The conference title was Practice, Policy and Powerful Knowledge. Every single session I went to was excellent. The variety on offer was outstanding – including a discussion of Brexit and RE, Understanding the non-religious in the classroom, and two brilliant keynotes from Joyce Miller and Mary Myatt. But the one session that has stuck with me has been Richard Kueh’s on curriculum design. Entitled The Problem of Pedagogy: Substantive, Disciplinary and Knowledge in RE Richard really got to the heart of the most pressing question surely facing any RE teacher – what exactly am I meant to teach?

Richard’s thesis was that RE pedagogy has often been preoccupied with the instrumental nature of the subject, and therefore has treated the knowledge taught as being illustrational rather than substantive. A second string of his argument was that too often those designing RE curriculums and syllabuses have shown little awareness of the academic disciplinary approaches underpinning the subject. The photograph from the talk (see below) explains the four academic disciplines that Richard believes underpin RE. I will attempt to summarise some of what Richard said about these disciplines before giving an example from my own Year 9 SOW to see a similar approach in practice.

The ongoing arguments about what to call our subject (RE, RS, Religion and Ethics, Religion, Beliefs and Values, or the Commission on RE suggestion Religion and Worldviews) is a sign of the disciplinary confusion that exists. History teaches students be historians, Geography teaches students to be geographers, RE teaches students to be… what? Part of the answer Richard provided was that RE (sorry, Religion and Worldviews) should teach students how to study what it is they are studying. This will involve them knowing important stuff but also how to approach that stuff. Making this explicit to students is important. At this point a shout out was given to the primary RE-searchers model developed by Rob and Giles Freathy and others.

But what about at secondary? Our students choose their GCSE courses in year 8, but do not start the specified material until year 10. Year 9 is a pre-GCSE year where students are prepared with the knowledge and skills that will support them at KS4.

Year 9 RS therefore begins with a simple question. What is religion? Now I’m sure many year 7 SOW also include this question, but do we revisit it as students’ capacity to understand and deal with complexity grows? This video is an excellent way in and begins by introducing students into the complexity of studying religion from an academic perspective. It highlights American scholar Ben Marcus’s model of the 3 Bs of religion which are useful hooks for students to refer back to during the rest of the year and into their GCSEs.

After dipping our toes into the Human Sciences, the next unit looks at the early History of Christianity. Using Rob Orme’s Knowing Christianity textbook, students explore the historical origins of Christianity and are introduced to key figures such as St Paul and Constantine. Students enjoy the historical arguments as to who of these formative figures had a greater influence on what we understand as Christianity today. Looking at the Council of Nicea and the Nicene Creed provides an opportunity to look at the theological beliefs of Christianity. We take a similar historical approach with Buddhism, which is our second religion at GCSE, but whose history is not on the GCSE syllabus. The question of whether Buddhism is a religion, or whether Siddhartha was rejecting certain aspects of Dharmic religiosity, again leads to much debate and reference back to the 3Bs. Students end the year with a study of inter-faith dialogue and by taking part in a video conference on religion and identity with students in another country. The 3 Bs and the knowledge they have gained from studying the history of two major world religions in depth comes in very useful to help students reflect on what religion is and how it can be studied.

Now I’m not saying this model is unique or perfect. But it perhaps shows what is possible to achieve with KS3 students who will really rise to the challenge of being presented with powerful knowledge and a curriculum designed with a strong disciplinary understanding. If you’d like to find out more please get in touch or you are welcome to come and visit the department.

Over the past 33 years I’ve witnessed a lot of conversations that followed this general pattern:

Parent: I’m amazed. Why do you want to choose this subject?
Son or daughter: It’s the way (she/he) teaches it.

It even applies to that oft-assumed bastion of boringness, the Bible. Now we find that not only does the way it’s taught determine whether it’s presented well but also young people’s interest level and gain.

I’m talking about November’s research of the month, Professor Susan Docherty’s brilliant BJRE article ‘A new dialogue between biblical scholarship and Religious Education’. Susan brings a very wide range of knowledge and ideas to our attention and I can’t reflect them all here, so I’ll concentrate on a few that were new or seemed particularly useful to me. I’m no Biblical scholar. I’m coming from the RE side of the dialogue and encourage you strongly to read the original article. Generally, Susan argues that you’ve got to pay attention to the Jewish context of very early Christianity, and to recent work on interpreting the Bible. She’s in no way trying to privilege the text – texts, that is – but to address the fact that whilst RE specifications now put more emphasis on texts, weak practices like proof-texting jeopardise the learning experience.

So, on the Jewish background, New Testament texts should be read as Jewish texts, and reference made to works outside the canon. The Dead Sea scrolls show how the Qumran community held possessions in common and celebrated a communal meal in expectation of the coming of the Messiah. Jesus’ movement was not unique in the Judaism of the time. If you’re teaching about the problem of evil, note that the extra-canonical text 1 Enoch gives an interesting theodicy, where angels rebel against God, come to Earth and mate with women to create sin. The story appears much more briefly in Genesis. Paul’s concept of original sin seems to have arisen through interpreting different texts, which offered him alternatives to sift.

Within the official Bible, there are different views on e.g. immigration. There are a range of views and no single position, something that RE teachers need to explore. This moves us on to the contemporary world, where different viewpoints are brought to bear on biblical materials, sometimes to reduce power imbalances or engage readers from outside churches. The work of Symon Hill is cited, where he discusses Jesus’ teaching on prostitution with sex workers, one of whom points out that the text in question (Matthew 21:31) does not actually say that they must give up their work to get into the Kingdom of God, in contrast to ‘traditional’ interpretations.

What’s clear is that passages in the Bible must be considered in context and different possible motives and interpretations examined. This reminds me of the idea of ‘desirable difficulties’ in cognitive psychology. It’s a lot more complicated than memorising the lines and which issue they apply to, desirably so, because it reflects the content, stretches the learner’s imagination and thus offers a genuinely memorable experience. It reduces fundamentalism and offers personal engagement to learners. How do you see it? Where do your perspectives come from? What are the points from which you view? The CORE report rightly says that interactions between individuals and traditions are influenced by a whole range of factors (page 36). I think Susan’s research suggests some ways for RE to learn to reflect that complexity. Don’t take my word for it, though. Read it and think about how you might make use of it.

Culham St Gabriel’s Trust are very grateful to Professor Susan Docherty for reporting her research What Can RE Teachers Learn From Contemporary Biblical Studies? on the ReserachforRE website.  (This has now been moved inside RE:ONLINE). We are supporting further research into hermeneutical approaches to teaching religious texts, led by Dr Bob Bowie of Canterbury Christ Church University and Dr Farid Panjwani of University College London, as part of our Research7 series.

This blog was updated in April 2021 following the moving of the research reports into RE:ONLINE

One of the most common things we are asked as Shia Muslims is “do you beat yourselves?”
I would like to answer this from my own perspective.

All human beings express themselves in different ways that are symbolic. The same applies to expressing grief – it symbolises something close to us. It is a personal choice that allows you to externally show your internal feelings. Shia Muslims strike their chests in a rhythm to poetry, in order to create a cathartic atmosphere that juggles grief, pride, relief, pain and several other contradictory emotions.

When I strike my chest, I am reminding myself that the holy chest of Imam Hussain [1] was trampled upon by the hooves of horses. I am reaffirming my loyalty to him and telling the world that my chest is worthless compared to Imam Hussain’s chest that was filled with Divine treasures. This chest torn to pieces, after all, was the chest of God’s final Messenger. When I remove my shirt to do this, I am reminding myself that the holy shirt of Imam Hussain was torn to pieces. I am saying that my body should have been violated, not Imam Hussain’s.

Muslims believe that when we are judged by God on the Day of Resurrection, our body parts anthropomorphise and bear witness for us.[2]
The tongue will testify to our lies we uttered.
The ears will testify to the vain talk we listened to.
The legs will testify to the immoral gatherings we walked to.
However, I am relying on my hands to testify that they struck my chest in grief for the beautiful son of Zahra.[3]
I want my chest to tell its Creator that a fraction of the pain of Imam Hussain was felt by it through my hands.
This way, maybe my body that I have used to disobey my Lord will salvage itself.

When we strike our chests, we are not harming ourselves. This is an unjust accusation that lacks emotional intelligence. We are creating poetic art through emotional and religious expression in its purest form. In fact, there is a paradox at play: striking my chest heals the pain and anguish I feel for Imam Hussain’s tragedy. I am healing when I do this. Ironically, when I strike my chest, it seems to hurt those who hate me more than it actually hurts me.

When someone cries, we know they are sad about something.
When someone wears black, we know they are probably mourning.
But when I strike my chest, the world knows I am expressing my love for Imam Hussain.

I will never be ashamed of beating my chest for him. It is my identity as his mourner. I am proud of my identity. It is an honour to offer this to the Messenger and Zahra as a show of love towards their beloved.

As the poet says:
“Had they any love for the Messenger’s house,
They would have joined us in striking our chests.”

1. Hussain Ibn Ali was the grandson of the Prophet, and was martyred in the Battle of Karbala in 680 CE. He is the 3rd Imam for Shia Muslims
2. “That Day, We will seal over their mouths, and their hands will speak to Us, and their feet will testify about what they used to earn.” (Quran 36:65)
3. A name of Fatima, daughter of Prophet Muhammad.

The CoRE proposal of a National Entitlement for RE, supported by newly constituted Local Area Networks for Religion and Worldviews, seems to me to be far and away the best way forward – indeed the only way forward – for our subject. Why?

1. Its comprehensive evidence-taking from all sectors with an interest in the subject

2. Its authoritative panel membership

3. Its grasp of the manifold inter-related issues needing addressing (for example, in ITE)

4. Its ethos for the subject, on which more below

One has a sense of déjà vu in the current national scene, as clearly set out in the Report: falling exam numbers, loss of status, poor Governmental support, divided approaches to the subject, shortage of teachers, low quality training, and so on. I entered RE teaching in 1976 in a London comprehensive, just out of my PGCE, the only RE teacher in the school, with a blackboard, no books and the West Riding Syllabus.

Wind forward to 1988. Colleagues on the RE world had worked very hard to improve the situation and we looked forward to the new GCSE exams to end the social distinction of CSE or O Level, and to having up-to-date specifications and resources….but the new National Curriculum omitted us (we were already, apparently, compulsory as part of that well-kept secret, the Basic Curriculum) and dedicated subject committees for all the other subjects produced massive specifications which all required enormous slices of curriculum time, the sciences especially with its new double or triple award approach. By the early 1990s we were again on the ropes.

Light dawned then through a number of initiatives – the independent sector formed its own RS association and launched a model specification with just two attainment targets – learning about and learning from – just as the Schools Examinations and Assessment Council was developing specifications with similar targets. All non-statutory of course, but expressions of hope. At the same time Philosophy was making inroads at A Level and boosting numbers with the ‘long, thin’ AS Levels. The 1990s was an era of growth for the subject as we fought back, supported later by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (replaced by OfQual), the introduction of short-course GCSEs, and the Curriculum 2000 initiative of the expanded A Level curriculum (new AS Levels alongside/part of A Levels).

Unparalleled growth in the early 2000s brought a flood of money for publications, courses and resources, and a growing respectability for the subject across all institutions, even surviving the 2009 reforms. NATRE became an influential body and, despite persistent divisions over Phenomenology vs Critical Realism, there was a real sense of success. And then 2015 happened, the Gove reforms. Leading up to this we had been kicked in the teeth, as the CoRE report makes clear, by the EBac and the Russell Group’s ‘Informed Choices’ (a little unfair here, this was not their intention), and then by a lack of interest by OfSted, as also documented in the Report. And now we are back to a pre-1988 situation, Sisyphus must push that boulder back up the hill.

This is why we must embrace this Report, we must wave it in the air, we must push it up the hill. The APPG report The Truth Unmasked in 2013 was quite rightly full of sound and fury, but arguably has signified nothing as it has fallen on deaf ears. Even the frantic last-minute consultations in late 2014 and early 2015 on the new orders for exam specifications in RS held by the DfE in response to overwhelming correspondence (2000+ responses over against 50 for the average for other subjects), failed to convince ministers of the damaging impact of their subject revisions: it was made clear by the civil servants that their ears were deaf to all but the loudest noises.

We must also promote the report because it presents the subject and its ethos as the majority of its practitioners want it: an objective, critical, informed study of worldviews and their many implications. It tacitly rejects a phenomenological approach for the realism of the classroom and school situation; it calls the children ‘pupils’, not ‘learners’; it uses the verb ‘teach’ regularly rather than ‘explore’ or ‘discover’; and the outcomes from such courses would undoubtedly command wide support. And it is right that there will be few outcomes unless there is far more support in every way, from grants for training through funded CPD to sound resourcing (including online, still below the standard of others).

Does it miss anything? Arguably so: it’s an ugly name; it curiously rejects teaching anything about Communism as a world view; it omits the critical impact of the drop in funding for resources caused by the alarming decline of exam numbers; it omits Progress 8, which has brought a little comfort; and perhaps secondary teachers faced with the chaos of prior learning by new Y7 pupils might also have merited a reference as deserving of much more coherence in the primary sector, but then this is the purpose of the Entitlement. Some will lament its proposal for the effective abolition of SACREs and their replacement with LANfR&W (Local Area Networks for Religion and Worldviews), though perhaps not many, because, as the Report indicates, with the changing nature of schools their role is significantly diminished already.

Read the report, or at least its summary findings; support the RE Council in its ambition. It’s now or, perhaps, never.

‘Twas the night before GCSE results day, when all through the flat
Mr McKavanagh sat nervous, fidgeting stroking his cat
The exams had been sat, the planning done with care;
In the hope that the results wouldn’t make him lose his hair.

I could go on but fears of plagiarism and my questionable poetry skills prevent me from doing so.

I had actually managed to switch off for most of the summer, but the day before GCSE results day the nerves kicked in. This was likely triggered by the tone of Edu-Twitter shifting towards exam worries as well (something deserving of a blog post itself), I tried distracting myself with a film – choosing Martin Scorsese’s’ Silence – a film about Jesuit Priests in Japan (a description which undersells the film, but shows that Religion must have been on my mind. Although I would welcome any direction on the historical accuracy of the film as it seems like a fascinating topic)

Well, the results are in and whilst it’ll take a bit of time to fully unpick the lessons learned, it was definitely a reassuring indication that what I’ve been working towards has been working, whilst highlighting areas in which things can be improved.

I’d decided to spend the end of my summer (or maybe I should call it the run in to the new school year – that might sound more positive) redesigning my GCSE scheme of work. If you’ve not read my previous blog Rethinking the Curriculum, then I recommend that you do, it explains the rationale behind what I’m doing.

Now, I’m sure that what I’m about to describe is nothing new, and it might be something that you’ve heard a thousand times before. This is not meant to be something revolutionary, but it builds upon some of the things that have worked well for me and my students so far.

The death of exercise books

Firstly, I’m scrapping exercise books.

I feel like that one needs a bit of space to process it. When I’ve mentioned it to other teachers it normally takes them a while to pick their jaws up and muster up some kind of response about how dreadful folders are, how they’ll end up in a big mess, things will get lost, pupils don’t know how to use them and that they’re actually the work of some evil magic.

Now, I should clarify, I’m not completely getting rid of exercise books, we’re going to have an ‘assessment book’. This is something which fits in with the wider school policy and I can see the benefit as it’ll make it clearer and easier to see the progression and development of a pupil’s work throughout the year, being able to really pick out their strengths and weakness, without having to leaf through pages of notes trying to get to the last assessed answer that they completed.

However, for notes and handouts, we’re going for folders. Now, I’m sure that it won’t be a completely smooth process and I’m sure some of my colleagues’ concerns will come true, but in the past I’ve also had pupils losing their exercise books and it was a lot more effort and work for them to copy that all out again than it will be for a missing sheet or two.

Yes, I could live to regret this choice, but I believe that with careful modelling of how to use a folder it will make the use of them far more effective. The material that pupils are collecting in their folder isn’t just to be an artefact of what happened on certain dates, it is an evolving and changing body of knowledge, folders will allow for information to be moved around, to be adapted and to be compared. I don’t want the information learnt to be static and isolationary, I want pupils to explore the knowledge, to play with it and to see how the whole body of knowledge fits together.

Take note

Now, part of my motivation for folders links to, probably, the most controversial change that I’ve made. In the new spec the Islam paper was the most difficult part for our students, they’d come through a KS3 which did not fully prepare them with the basic grounding in knowledge that they really needed.

So, I started giving them the notes. This is something I had started with the cohort that have just finished their exams and proved to be successful and popular. I can imagine the outrage that something like this would cause amongst teachers and I can appreciate some of those concerns, for example what am I teaching pupils about the skills of note-taking? Am I not just doing the work for the pupils? Am I just too concerned with exam results? These were not my motivations, I realised that note-taking was taking up much too much time and often pupils would miss some of the key points, now this could be remedied by more effective modelling of how to make notes or designing comprehension activities to focus their note taking.

Giving them notes I discovered several benefits; we saved an enormous amount of time in lessons, we were able to talk through the notes giving us time to unpick ideas, define terms and for pupils to ask questions; the time saved meant that we have been to get to terms with the knowledge and crucially I’ve been able to ask pupils lots of questions, use low-stakes testing and getting them to link and relate bodies of knowledge much more than I ever had been able to before. Given the time constraints that we have, I’ve found this approach to be a much more effective use of time than asking pupils to make notes.

Going deeper

This move towards notes fits into the wider vision of what I’m trying to do with knowledge. I want to embed a deep knowledge and understanding of the material in my pupils, moving away from a more superficial, exam focussed knowledge that the older exam specifications ‘encouraged’. I believe (and have seen) that pushing towards this deeper understanding leads to a greater enjoyment and engagement from the pupils.

This deeper understanding is coming from a greater focus on questioning and quizzing pupils, not only on the material that they are learning in that lesson, but from the previous lesson and from lessons even further in the past. I don’t pre-warn them that they’ll be quizzed, there is an expectation that they will be tested on any material that they have studied and at any point. I’m far from the only one making this kind of move, many teachers of Religious Education (or other subjects) are following the latest findings from neuroscience and there are some brilliant resources that can explain it far better than I ever could (www.learningscientists.org are one example, and have provided really clear and concise information on lots of research-informed ideas).

Sticking to the plan

If you’ve read my earlier blog, you’ll see that I posed a series of questions that I would be keeping in mind. These weren’t definitive and had no hierarchy, some you might want to disregard altogether, but I thought it important to return to these ideas to let you know how they informed what I’ve created.

What do I want pupils to know by the end of KS3, KS4 & KS5?

For this, I’ve worked backwards. I started with what pupils would be expected to know at the end of an A-Level exam in Religious Studies, I’ve then added on other skills that I want them to know, things like Critical Thinking, I then thought about how that reduces down to KS4, what would pupils need to succeed at GCSE, then what things do I need to add in, things like Biblical interpretations and the origins of Christianity and Islam and the reasons for the formation of different denominations.

How is this going to fit with the locally agreed syllabus?

I found this much harder than I thought I would, maybe it is because of the order that I tackled things in, this was the second or third thing that I tried to add in and it has certainly made things busier. I’ve currently only attempted an overhaul of KS4 where we will have GCSE Religious Studies running as an option subject as well as non-examined core Religious Studies, this has certainly helped in delivering the locally agreed syllabus, whilst complementing the examined Religious Studies. In KS3, which is a project for the future, then it the biggest frustration will be trying to fit everything in, whilst giving enough depth that pupils start to get a proper understanding of the material. Something that is not going to be easy at all.

How is it going to prepare pupils for what we will be looking at in GCSE?

The move to providing pupils with notes will really help with this, where I’ve done this before it really frees up time, that means that in a lesson we can comfortably cover the material, develop pupils recall of information on past topics, assess that they have an understanding of the new material and to apply it in an exam style question.

The extra time available in lesson means that we can do some deliberate practice of how to apply the material that we have learned. This is something that many teachers do, but some of the best application of this approach I’ve seen in sporting contexts, in a previous life I have had the opportunity to be coached and to coach alongside some really skilled rugby league coaches, and the way that they would deconstruct a piece of play or a skill to the basic parts and to create drills in which that deconstructed part of the skill was practiced in isolation before being built into the full skill and eventually game play, gives a great template for teachers. For example, in our subject, a pupil would be expected to answer questions which would require them to display several skills such as recognition of the views of different denominations, selection of appropriate religious teachings to support those views, amongst others. Instead of tackling the question as a whole, it would be appropriate to break this down into its constituent parts and therefore getting pupils to practice.

How will it prepare pupils for their GCSE exams, but avoid the subject being an exams-factory?

This is a tricky one, obviously there is an exam focus, they’re doing their GCSE, but it isn’t just about doing an exam, it’s about having students buying into what you’re doing. That’s not happening if the focus on exams is too heavy. Whilst none have happened yet and are currently only in the planning stage, I’m wanting to enrich the students as much as I can. Lots of you do this so brilliantly already, but I want to organise as many trips, talks and experiences as possible for the students, I want them to really care about this subject and for them to be lifelong learners and lovers of this subject.

How am I going to assess pupils?

Assessment is such a complex field, that it is deserving of several blogs of its own. The way I’ve structured things puts a huge emphasis on assessment, more so than I ever have before. Low-stakes testing plays an enormous role in what my classroom looks like. Almost every lesson involves a multiple-choice test of some sort, and topics will be interwoven throughout the GCSE course. To oversimplify it, that means testing pupils on the material that they have just learned, some material that they have recently learned and material that they have learned some time ago. I want to know that pupils know the material now (if not, it gives me ample opportunity to address it) and I want them to know it later on. If we can keep working on this then there won’t be the usual GCSE run-in panic or expectation of after-school intervention classes. Needs are addressed straight away and emphasis is placed on establishing a long-term knowledge and understanding of the material.

Alongside this, we will make use of assessment books. These are to keep their notes separate from their exam question practice. The idea is that the book is split into question types, that way it is easier for pupils (and myself) to quickly and easily see how they are progressing on different question types – meaning that more purposeful conversations can be had with pupils to help guide and direct them towards making improvements.

Do I try to cover more topics in the same time to give breadth, or do I cover less but give depth?

This came up in my planning but is more of a factor for my future plans for KS3, the way that I’m designing lessons has certainly meant that there is a clear move towards depth of material and not just breadth. However, the ‘breadth’ was in some ways constrained by the exam specification, but the desire to give them the fuller context behind aspects such as; why there are different denominations, or the life of Jesus has meant broadening their curriculum to ensure that depth can be provided.

How do I ensure that the lessons and teaching are research-informed, rather than just doing what we’ve always done?

This is never easy, I’ve been working towards this point for several years, one of the main obstacles is access to research and even if you do have it, it’s about having the time to understand it and then to implement it. We’re very fortunate that we now have access to websites like Research for RE (https://researchforre.reonline.org.uk/) which presents straight-forward and easy summaries of research that has been conducted.

I’ve based my practice heavily upon research relating to neuroscience, such as retrieval practice and spaced learning (coming largely from the Learning Scientists blog) and from research that I conducted during my Masters (https://www.reonline.org.uk/news/an-offer-you-cannot-refuse/) .

How do I make my life easier?

I’m certainly working less, well at the moment anyway. I’m also in a position where I’ve planned and have resources for what I’m teaching up until around Easter, including the quizzes that I intend to use with pupils. Now, I feel like this is a potentially high-risk strategy – if I decide that big changes are needed, I’ll have to redo work. I’m also finding that with this format lessons themselves are far more enjoyable to teach and the pupils seem to be getting much more out of it – due to the greater depth at which we are exploring the material and the focus on low-states multiple choice questions gives me real insight into what the pupils are getting to grips with (or not) and to provide effective feedback.

If I can find a suitable way of distributing these resources, then I’ll ensure that I distribute them (and hopefully make your lives easier as well).

How do I create something that is academically rigorous, but can still be taught by non-specialists?

Luckily at GCSE this is not an issue that we are facing, at KS3 it is and that is an obstacle that I’ve not yet been able to figure out in a satisfactory way. I’ll certainly come back to this when I tackle our KS3 curriculum fully.

So how is it working out so far?

The folders have gone down a treat, the pupils were really excited about receiving them (although some were disappointed in getting red rather than blue) and although it has only been a few lessons, the pupils are quite keen to ensure that things are in the right place. They also seem to feel a bit more grown up, a real goodbye to KS3.

It is still early days for the notes, it certainly seemed to work for those who just sat their exams, but we are starting from the beginning with our new cohorts, this approach is definitely freeing up lots of time in lessons for deeper discussion of the material and it is allowing us to build in a good grounding of the context that they need to really get to grips with the material, but isn’t on the exam specification itself.

What tops your list of priorities for RE? Good initial teacher training or CPD? A review of the EBacc so that we have parity with subjects included there? Improved syllabus or curriculum arrangements? Successful inclusion of non-religious worldviews? Perhaps, a completely renewed vision for the subject.

You might remark that all are needed and included in the final report of the Commission on RE. I want to focus on a different finding of the report, that the subject must get better at reflecting the complex nature of religion in the 21st century.

So, for example, on page 6 we read that ‘the distinction between religious and non-religious worldviews is not as clear-cut as one might think’, that we need to move ‘towards a deeper understanding of the complex, diverse and plural nature of worldviews at both institutional and personal levels’, and to ‘ensure that pupils understand that there are different ways of adhering to a worldview – you may identify with more than one institutional worldview, or indeed none at all’.[1]

Recognising and addressing such complexity sounds . . . complex. But the commissioners have captured the growing sense that accounting for the key beliefs and practices of six world religions will no longer do, if it ever did. Research backs this up.

One source they cite is Linda Woodhead on the religiously unaffiliated in Britain.[2] She reports how whilst ‘no religion’ now exceeds ‘Christian’ as most people’s self-designation, they are not straightforwardly secular. They reject religious labels and secular ones (they are not hostile to religion). A small minority believe in God whilst most are agnostic. A quarter take part in a personal religious or spiritual practice, but none take part in communal ones or join groups. ‘Nones’ share a liberal value set with many ‘somes’.

Another piece of boundary-blurring is this month’s Research of the Month, a new typology of religion from the Pew Research Center in Washington DC.[3] Their 2017 survey sorts US adults into seven groups based on the religious or spiritual beliefs or practices they share, how actively they practice and the value they place on religion. The Pew Center researchers generate categories from the data such as Sunday Stalwarts (traditionalist and highly engaged), Diversely Devout (traditionalist but also believing in e.g. psychics or reincarnation) and Solidly Secular (holding no religious or ‘new age’ beliefs). The categories cut across traditional religious and non-religious lines, and whilst some data may be unsurprising (76% of the Solidly Secular have no religious affiliation), it raises questions that 17% of the same category identify as Christian. The category of Religion Resisters, or those who think that organised religion does more harm than good, is where non-Christian religious faiths contribute their highest overall percentage (11%); by contrast, they make up 6% of the Sunday Stalwart category. The researchers recognise the problem of applying Sunday to e.g. Jews or Muslims but point out that 90% of the group belong to Christian churches: the survey questions used ‘daily’ and ‘weekly’ language.

As for holding more than one worldview, we could turn to the work of Graham Harvey, who writes of Maori and Hawai’ians who blend traditional practices with those of Anglicanism, Baha’i or Catholicism, without any sense of transgression.[4] Another of the Commission report’s angles on religious or worldview complexity is related to the point that worldviews, including religious ones, may not be primarily about holding beliefs.[5] There is a need to include the lived experience of individuals and communities.[6] Harvey’s emphasis on lived relational religion leads him to some startling conclusions: if Christianity is unique in placing belief at its centre it is not a religion (he later re-addresses the point and suggests that Christians ‘do religion like other people’).[7] I hope to return to his ideas critically in future blogs.

For now, I conclude that only research can underpin accurate portrayals of religion in the world. These reflect constant change and can only be gained through rigorous, imaginative methodology. We should remember as well that RE also needs evidence about learners and learning.

Links to research reports

We have reports of the various research sources mentioned above on RE:ONLINE.

Linda Woodhead: British ‘nones’: what do they believe in and do?

Pew Research Center: From Sunday Stalwarts to Solidly Secular

Graham Harvey: Religion is everyday life, not belief

1. The Commission on Religious Education, Final Report: Religion and Worldviews: the way forward. A national plan for RE, online material available at https://www.commissiononre.org.uk/final-report-religion-and-worldviews-the-way-forward-a-national-plan-for-re/ accessed on September 10, 2018.

2. Linda Woodhead (2016), ‘The rise of “no religion” in Britain: The emergence of a new cultural majority’, Journal of the British Academy, 4: 245–261. Available for free download at
DOI 10.85871/jba/004.245

3. Pew Research Center, ‘The Religious Typology: A new way to categorize Americans by religion,’ online material available at http://www.pewforum.org/2018/08/29/the-religious-typology/ accessed on September 1, 2018.

4. Graham Harvey, Food, Sex and Strangers: Understanding Religion as Everyday Life, Durham (Acumen) 2013: 115-16.

5. The Commission on Religious Education, Final Report: Religion and Worldviews: the way forward. A national plan for RE, page 74.

6. The Commission on Religious Education, Final Report: Religion and Worldviews: the way forward. A national plan for RE, page 76.

7. Harvey, Food, Sex and Strangers: Understanding Religion as Everyday Life, chapter 3, chapter 11).