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We are delighted to be launching a new summer blog series called ‘Opening up conversations about religion and worldviews’. This blog series is being run in collaboration with the RE Policy Unit, a partnership between NATRE, the RE Council and RE Today. It will include contributions from a wide range of teachers, those working in initial teacher education and researchers in this field.

Death knell?

In December 2018 the then Secretary of State for Education, Damian Hinds, wrote to Dr John Hall (Chair of the Commission on RE) expressing significant reservations about the findings of the Commission’s report. In particular Hinds questioned its central focus, which advocates a shift to a worldviews approach, stating that ‘the inclusion of ‘worldviews’ risks diluting the teaching of RE’. For many this sounded the death knell for the report.

Here I explain how I believe that Hinds’ judgement betrayed a significant misreading of the roll worldviews can play in RE. I would argue that, rather than diluting the subject, the inclusion of worldviews enables young people to connect with religion(s) in a much more profound and inclusive way.

New vision

As teachers of RE, our aim is to help pupils explore what people believe and what difference this makes to how they live. Culturally we are witnessing a significant shift in the way individuals express their personal beliefs and values, with fewer people identifying their own worldview as ‘Christian’, a growing number of ‘nones’ and an increasing attraction towards ethical and lifestyle movements such as Black Lives Matter, Extinction Rebellion and veganism.

The Commission report offered a new vision for the subject, identifying the study of worldviews as a ‘critical gateway’ to our understanding of religious and non-religious perspectives (p27). To facilitate this shift the REC’s Worldview Project (to be published and consulted on in the autumn) aims to provide a robust academic underpinning for using a worldviews approach to RE[1].

Dilution?

In their paper Worldviews and Big Ideas[2], Rob Freathy and Helen John set out a number of arguments which refute the claim that a worldviews approach dilutes the subject. They explain that religions are not discrete entities, distant and separate from their surroundings. To understand religions and beliefs fully they need to be studied in the context of other perspectives and life stances. Religious traditions are fluid and porous; they shift and grow through the influence of social and cultural factors; beliefs intersect, cross-fertilise and conflict with other cultural dynamics.

As far back as the 1970s, the late John Hull advocated the inclusion of worldviews into RE (he used the phrase ‘stances for living’[3]), in order to aid our understanding of religion(s). In his view, the study of such alternative perspectives serve a valuable purpose in shedding light onto the subject.

By adding the term worldviews, we are reframing the study to emphasise a more far-reaching programme. Far from watering down or weakening RE, this approach gives added depth and relevance to the subject, helping pupils make vital connections and setting topics in a context which enhances the way they are understood.

Don’t exceptionalise religions

There is a danger that a predominant focus on the ‘Big Six’ religions, can lead to the exceptionalising and essentialising of religion, as if other forms of belief are less coherent or of lesser value. It is important for teachers of RE to represent the fact that religions are themselves worldviews, not fixed and boundaried, but with diverse forms and expressions. If they are studied in separation from other ways of seeing the world, we risk making them stand out as isolated oddities, idealised or objectified, disconnected from everyday experiences and concerns.

Connecting the concepts

From my perspective as a teacher and educator, I find the notion of including worldviews into the subject a powerful teaching tool. For example, by giving pupils a brief introduction into the worldviews of hedonism (do whatever makes you happy) and existentialism (we are free to make our own choices), we equip them much more fully to understand religious concepts like sacredness, duty, commitment and divine guidance.

One of the few moments of direct insight I can clearly remember experiencing at university was in making the realisation that for learning to be truly embedded it has to have context. According to Piaget we form meaning through connecting new ideas to our own experiences and patterns of thinking, assimilating them into existing frames of reference. A worldviews approach enables pupils to explore and gain ownership of their own perspectives, fitting new understanding into their existing mental framework. We learn about religion and beliefs through connecting and contrasting them with our own way of seeing the world. There is no true form of any religion, separated from other competing worldviews. All human beings construct their belief systems through a mixture of personal and institutional perspectives. It’s just that some people identify more closely to established descriptions and designations they like to call ‘religion’, and others do not.

Worldviews: a foundation for classroom practice

Damian Hinds’ response was far from a death knell. Since the report’s publication, nearly two years ago, it has become apparent that in practice, teachers are finding a worldviews approach attractive[4], and work is continuing apace to establish a firm academic foundation, enabling this approach to become embedded into classroom practice.

[1] https://www.religiouseducationcouncil.org.uk/news/coreupdate/

[2] Worldviews and Big Ideas https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/handle/10871/40513

[3] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10567224.1985.11487887?journalCode=urel19

[4] https://www.reonline.org.uk/blog/worldviews-from-a-primary-perspective-self-detectives/

The Commission on RE (2018) was an eagerly awaited report by many in the RE world. One of the highlights of this report was the way in which the commissioners carried out their investigations into RE. My previous school was lucky enough to be a part of this process. Juliet Lyal, one of the commissioners, came to visit us to talk about what the children thought RE was and should be. I remember part of this discussion was about ‘worldviews’. At the time, we had been using language such as ‘non-religious worldview’. Juliet and I talked about how the term ‘worldview’ could be, and was potentially, confusing for our children in school as it could lead them to thinking only about beliefs that were not related to religion. Later that evening, Juliet came to talk to our Plymouth Hub about the commission’s work and, again, we realised that there was some confusion amongst teachers over the use of ‘worldviews’.

Many people have written in the past about the purpose of RE and it seems that there is still confusion about this in the RE community. There have also been many arguments about changing the name of RE to Religion and Worldviews. I have no problem with changing the name of the subject but my concern is that, if we have pupils and teachers who aren’t sure what we mean by the name of the subject or the reasoning behind using ‘worldviews’, how can we ever really move forward as a subject community?

After moving schools eighteen months ago, I was in the very fortunate position of being able to work alongside the rest of the Senior Leadership Team to redesign our RE curriculum. This also coincided with Devon SACRE launching the new Agreed Syllabus, a perfect time to consider change. It was initially tempting to change the name of the subject straight away, especially as I was hearing that many talented colleagues in our subject community had already done this. As a teacher and subject lead, I was eager for the children to take ownership of this journey towards ‘Religion and Worldviews’, so that they really understood the vocabulary that we were using and also the subject that we were teaching.

A few years ago, I attended ‘Strictly RE’ and listened to Stephen Pett (RE Today Services) talk about where we stand when we enter the RE classroom as professionals. Although I had always been aware of this when I was teaching RE, Stephen’s seminar had a huge impact upon my thinking. I have repeatedly thought back to this seminar and the way in which it clearly explained what we do as professionals. This got me thinking not only about where we as professionals stand but also where the children stand when they enter the RE classroom. I felt that this was a clear way to start explaining the term ‘worldview’ with even our youngest children at our school. I started by asking the children questions like, ‘Are there people in the world that influence the way that you think about things (we linked this to celebrities and sports personalities)? Do you have thoughts and ideas about the beyond? Do you talk about what we have studied after our RE lessons and do these discussions change your mind about the things that we have learnt?

We were then able to link these discussions with the Andrew Ricketts’ Spirituality grids (The Diocese of Salisbury 2015). The children used these grids with their class teacher to consider big questions linked to themselves, the world, the beyond and creation. These ideas are all recorded in class that move with the children through the school so we reference these as being the development of understanding their own worldviews.

During our RE lessons we are careful to talk in-depth about diversity within religion and belief even with our very young children. This helps pupils to understand that even within religion there is a diversity within an organised worldview and although two people may follow a belief they can have a different worldview. We have invited visitors into school to discuss their worldviews within our RE lessons and most recently hosted a debate about science and creation with two Christians from different denominations and a Buddhist. This enabled our children to see diversity first-hand between one worldview but also how people with different worldviews talk, share, debate, discuss and learn from each other.

Our next steps are to continue to develop children’s understanding of what ‘worldview’ means and what it means for RE. These next steps will include having some pupil voice discussions about whether we change the name of our subject. As a school, we want to ensure that the children understand the concept of a worldview and also use key vocabulary to share their understanding of this in relation to their study of RE.

In my opinion, changing the name is only right if we know and understand the reasons for doing so. We also need to ensure that the children have ownership and understanding of it; this needs to be a journey because otherwise the children won’t understand what the subject is about. This will result in us coming full circle back to debating the purpose of RE and changing the name of the subject .

I recently attended an online event on ‘Religion and Worldviews’ and was struck by some of the concerns: Can worldviews be included at primary level? Is this not adding more to an already overburdened curriculum?

Yet, examining worldviews can be incredibly helpful. Many trainee teachers are concerned about teaching RE, particularly if they do not personally follow a religion. For some this contributes to the ‘otherness’, or exotic nature, of religion and they struggle to see where to begin with teaching about a religion. Examining personal worldviews can

Bridge the gap
Assist in identifying what new subject knowledge is key
Increase confidence
Help religion(s) seem less ‘exotic’

Identifying

‘Personal worldviews’ are the assumptions and values individuals adhere to that are held consciously and subconsciously (Sire, 2004). Identifying personal worldviews faces challenges, not least in how to make the subconscious conscious. Various methods have been trialled to access these subconsciously held views yet each has flaws. Self-reflective writing is often employed but this may result in reflections that are ‘too big and too vague’ (Korthagen and Wubbels, 1995: 53), or produce over simplifications (Joram, 2007) that have often led to reinforcing bias rather than illuminating understanding. However, one research project employed photographs to elicit teacher-training students’ preconceived ideas (Stockall and Davis, 2011) which proved insightful. Therefore, I decided to employ photographs with my ITE students as part of worldview identification.

Further assistance in identifying personal worldviews is experiencing ‘disorientating dilemmas’ (Mezirow, 2000), a situation where individuals come up against contrast – different views, practices, cultures or norms. For example, a teacher told me how annoyed she was that a pupil she was telling off would not look at her but stared at the ground, which she saw as disrespectful. Yet the pupil was from a cultural background where you show respect by looking down and to make eye contact is disrespectful. Personal worldviews were illuminated, and clashed, in this contrast. These occurrences in life, sometimes lead to conflict, but can be replicated, sensitively, in the classroom by providing opportunities for experiencing difference – examining images, optical illusions, watching video clips, and discussing ethical dilemmas which all challenge assumptions.

Tracing

As aspects of individuals’ personal worldviews appear then we can examine where these have come from; not to judge or dispute but to see the evolutionary process of those views. This can be in a fun and investigative way – as Self-detectives.

Where does my view come from? Tracing these back for self and then in dialogue with peers can assist this process. The aim is not to attempt to decipher the entirety of someone’s worldview but to examine a few aspects to illustrate the existence of personal worldviews and trace the factors that have impacted them.

For example, with a discussion on the word ‘home’ – my husband calls his parents’ house ‘home’ even though he has not lived there for 30 years. For me home is wherever my family happen to be. Why this difference? This can be traced back to life experience. For my husband his parents still live in the house where he was born so he calls that home. My parents moved around during my childhood and, for me, my home is wherever my family are. This is a part of our worldviews of what home is and has evolved from our life experience.

Further practical ideas:

Alongside images, I have employed video clips to disorientate and prompt new reactions. One particularly effective clip was ‘Radi-aid’, a spoof charity video claiming to be raising money to buy radiators for children in Norway, as ‘the cold kills too’. The video written by the Norwegian Students’ & Academics’ International Assistance Fund (SAIH) forms part of their annual campaigns. Their goal is ‘to challenge the perceptions around issues of poverty and development, to change the way fundraising campaigns communicate and to break down dominating stereotypes’ (SAIH,nd).

Another example is from the US Television drama ‘The West Wing’. The light-hearted scene sees Cartographers for Social Justice discuss power and social injustice in the creation of maps of the world. HSBC also ran an advertising campaign concerning different cultural norms, which provides materials that could be used to aid discussions about worldviews.

Further useful tools include Question Cards on worldviews. A range of statements or questions can be written on cards and then discussed in pairs or larger groups. Questions, such as ‘Is it ever OK to lie?’, can assist in revealing differences between individuals, their accepted norms and what they hold as most important: truth, politeness etc.

I see worldviews, not as an add on but, as a starting point to provide a frame for pupils to develop a greater understanding of their personal worldviews and the worldviews of others, whether religious or not.

References:

Joram, E. (2007) ‘Clashing epistemologies: Aspiring teachers’, practising teachers’ and professors’ beliefs about knowledge and research in education’. Teaching and Teacher Education, 23 (2), 123 -135.

Korthagen, F., & Wubbels, T. (1995). Characteristics of reflective practitioners: Towards an operationalization of the concept of reflection. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 1 (1), 51–72.

Mezirow, J. (2000). Learning to think like an adult. In J. Mezirow and Associates (eds.) Learning as Transformation (pp.3-33). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Sire, J. (2004). Naming the Elephant: worldview as a concept. Illinois: Intervarsity Press.

Stockall, N and Davis, S (2011) Uncovering pre-service teacher beliefs about young children: A photographic elicitation methodology. Issues in Educational Research, 21 (2), 192-209

Websites:

https://www.radiaid.com/

The Radi-aid clip can be viewed at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJLqyuxm96k

The West Wing clip on maps of the world with Cartographers for Social Justice:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLqC3FNNOaI

I’ve long been an advocate of what might be labelled as academic, rigorous, systematic, knowledge-rich RE, one that teaches pupils the key beliefs, practices, concepts and values found within some of the major world religions. And I have long argued that this content should be taught in a progressive manner, by which pupils’ comprehension gradually moves from simple to complex as they grow in their awareness of the diversity of expression and understanding found within and without religions.

However, the ideas contained in the Commission on RE (2018) report, and the subsequent thinking developing these ideas has provided me with both the opportunity and the stimulation to question the basis of these ideas about the curriculum. Here I set out some brief comments on just one part of my thinking that I have been questioning.

Is the ‘essentialist’ curriculum model the best one?

The term ‘essentialism’ is perceived in different ways in the RE community. Some argue that ‘essentialism’ narrows and limits understanding and fails to provide a realistic picture of the world and religion and belief. Others, myself included, accept this to a point, arguing that ‘essentialism’ may be limited, but it is a necessary part of the process of learning about religions in a progressive manner, in that what is learnt in this phase is essential for progress to more sophisticated learning.

I would still argue for the latter position, but the ideas found within the proposed National Entitlement statement, and the ongoing work to develop these ideas (e.g. Cooling 2020 [1]) have made me question what might be considered ‘essential’. Let’s consider an example, the Christian practice of going to church. The current approach would seem to suggest that we teach about the church, and what might be found in the church, and what Christians do in the church, and then later on, we might start to consider types of church building, and different forms of worship. But what seems to be missed here is that for the vast majority of people in the UK who identity as Christian, going to church is something they never or very rarely do. [2] So why is a study of the church building considered essential? My concern is that rather than this being a progressive programme by which pupils move from simple to complex, it isn’t progressive at all because it may actually hinder progress in understanding Christians. This approach would seem to make going to church normative for Christians when for many it isn’t.

This is where a range of different disciplinary questions may help. If we place a social scientific approach alongside a theological approach, maybe we will avoid the problem of making normative something that isn’t normal.

And this thought is leading me to consider how else we present that which we study. When we study Christianity (if there even is such a thing as Christianity) then which Christianity are we studying? Do we make normative a male, European, educated, white Christianity, and so ‘other’ different forms of Christianity?

What the idea of worldview has contributed to my thinking is that I need to pay much more attention to teaching students that what we teach is not all that there is, and that the most essential of all facts to teach about religious and non-religious worldviews is that they are diverse.

¹https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/RKMZYYPQMVINAXJPC2R4/full?target=10.1080%2F01416200.2020.1764497&

²Figures for Christian affiliation vary depending on which survey you look at, but range upwards from 38% of the UK population, while figures for church attendance also vary, but are perhaps around 5% of the population

Approaching two years on, we may be getting to grips with the significance of the final report of the Commission on Religious Education.[i] Some things are clear. To become Religion & Worldviews (R&W), religious education (RE) needs to embody the meaning of the new language of the Commission report. The Commission report never meant that the new subject should simply refer to religions as worldviews or add an extra set of content on non-religious philosophies or ways of life.

What are worldviews? How should we teach about them? How will RE change as we negotiate the transition to R&W? These are the big questions which cannot be settled quickly, but current research brings interesting suggestions into the mix: not easy suggestions, but that is because the transition is no easy matter. In this blog, I look at three current British Journal of Religious Education articles, all of which we have just reported on Research for RE in the hope that quick access to the key points will be helpful to readers.

Firstly, Trevor Cooling confirms that the Commission report proposes R&W as a ‘significant reframing’ of RE, ‘understanding worldview as a shared human phenomenon, of which there are religious and non-religious manifestations’.[ii] When religions are viewed as fluid, complex, diverse worldviews, the subject changes; it moves away from ‘sealed-box’ presentations of religions. One key focus is on the lived experience of people and communities identifying with a particular institutional worldview: CORE, here, draws heavily on Robert Jackson’s interpretive approach to RE. A second is on personal worldview, where the positive elements of the ‘learning from religion’ aspect of the world religious paradigm of RE are used – pupils should understand the varied influences on them as they form their own worldviews. [iii]

For Cooling, Anthony Thiselton’s ‘responsible hermeneutics’ provides the disciplinary knowledge needed in R&W. It gives teachers three responsibilities. We need to promote rigorous knowledge of what is being taught; ensure reflection on the contemporary context and how it may influence both teacher’s and pupils’ perspectives; and enable reflection on the potential interaction between what is taught and our own perspectives, so that teacher and pupils benefit in their own self-understanding.

Cooling recognises that a workable curriculum and resources are still to come. He also recognises that the need for teachers to reflect on our own worldviews warrants further attention, though in fact the issue is established in research. During my studies with secondary pupils in Sheffield, I found that the RE teacher’s role should be to collaborate with them, modelling enquiry into religions and non-religious worldviews, emphasising interpretation. [iv] Cooling does cite Ruth Flanagan’s research in this regard, and we now turn to it.

For Flanagan, teachers need to become conscious of their own worldviews. Otherwise, unconscious biases may be communicated to their pupils through what we teach, or how we teach it. Flanagan warns of a tendency for teachers to emphasise those parts of worldviews most amenable to our own views on what is rational, and, again, this is already established in prior research, the Does RE Work? data showing how teachers prefer to construct religion as ‘safer’ philosophy. [v] What can be done about this? She suggests that if teachers are supported to reflect on our own notions of a good life, we can guard against only emphasising those features of others’ worldviews that we find palatable. [vi]

It is interesting that though Tuuli Lipiäinen, Anna Halafoff, Fethi Mansouri and Gary Bouma focus on Finland and Australia, they echo Trevor Cooling’s thinking. They do report global trends, principally the decline in ‘old-style’ or ‘packaged’ religion where less and less people follow one religion’s rules, beliefs, or ways. Instead, people’s worldviews often comprise different elements from inside, between and outside religions, and (especially those of young people) they often change. The researchers call for education on these processes, to help young people to understand themselves and others and to manage the ‘superdiverse’ religion and worldviews situation. [vii] Once more, these are not yet curricular plans or resources, but may help policy makers, curriculum developers and teachers to understand the direction of travel from RE to R&W.

Arguably, by my own reading of them, one need pointed to by all three sources is for the future subject to give increased attention to personal worldviews, with regard to how these are formed in relation to complex influences. This would apply to individuals who were studied as representatives of organised worldviews, as well to pupils themselves. There would be balances to seek. Worldviews at the organised or institutional level would need to form a permanent background to the study of personal worldviews. My use of ‘background’ is in no sense intended to suggest that organised worldviews should reduce in importance within the new subject. Of course, I would argue that the nature and influence of large-scale organised worldview movements are also necessary foci in their own right. That the various ways in which wider traditions and personal worldviews interact are hard to pin down offers the rich intellectual challenge of R&W, which – for all of the researchers whose ideas we have covered – is also a matter of self-awareness and readiness for twenty-first century life.

Returning for a moment to the interactions between wider tradition and personal worldview, and echoing Cooling’s acknowledgement of the importance in this regard of Jackson’s work, we might bear in mind Jackson’s adaptation of Wilfred Cantwell Smith’s two-level scheme to a three-level one. Cantwell Smith used the terms ‘faith’ (to denote the personal involvement of an individual in a tradition) and ‘cumulative tradition’ (to stand for the entire mass of data associated with the community in question, past and present).[viii] Jackson made several criticisms of this model and added the term ‘membership group’ in recognition that individual identities are also shaped by smaller groups – which could be based on peer, ethnic, family, gender or other relations – within broad traditions. [ix] This point adds ways to account for the complex influences on personal worldviews, especially because the range of available membership groups has grown exponentially over the internet since 1997, when Jackson published the book which I have cited.

We eagerly anticipate further publications on worldviews, in the near future. The Religious Education Council of England and Wales (REC) have commissioned a literature review on the concept of worldview, through the organisation Theology and Religious Studies UK (TRS-UK) which is due to be published soon. This has been funded by Culham St Gabriel’s Trust. Culham St Gabriel’s are also funding the dissemination of a Theos report on worldview, which is due in early Autumn 2020. For more details of these and other current Culham St Gabriel’s grants, see https://www.cstg.org.uk/grant-giving/grants/grants-awarded/

[i] RE Council of England and Wales, “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/

[ii] Trevor Cooling (2020) Worldview in religious education: autobiographical reflections on The Commission on Religious Education in England final report, British Journal of Religious Education, DOI: 10.1080/01416200.2020.176449, 4. See also https://researchforre.reonline.org.uk/research_report/what-does-the-shift-to-worldview-mean-for-teachers/

[iii] Cooling, Worldview in religious education: autobiographical reflections on The Commission on Religious Education in England final report, 6-7.

[iv] Kevin O’Grady, Religious Education as a Dialogue with Difference: Fostering Democratic Citizenship through the Study of Religions in Schools (New York and Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2019), e.g. 48.

[v] J.C. Conroy, D. Lundie, R.A. Davis, V. Baumfield, L.P. Barnes, T. Gallagher, K. Lowden, N. Bourque and K. J. Wenell, Does Religious Education Work? A Multi-disciplinary Investigation (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 88-89.

[vi] See https://researchforre.reonline.org.uk/research_report/teachers-need-to-become-conscious-of-their-own-worldviews/ and Ruth Flanagan (2019): Implementing a Ricoeurian lens to examine the impact of individuals’ worldviews on subject content knowledge in RE in England: a theoretical proposition, British Journal of Religious Education, DOI: 10.1080/01416200.2019.1674779

[vii] See https://researchforre.reonline.org.uk/research_report/worldviews-education-in-finland-and-australia/ and Tuuli Lipiäinen, Anna Halafoff, Fethi Mansouri & Gary Bouma (2020): Diverse worldviews education and social inclusion: a comparison between Finnish and Australian approaches to build intercultural and interreligious understanding, British Journal of Religious Education, DOI: 10.1080/01416200.2020.1737918

[viii] Wilfred Cantwell Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion (New York: Mentor, 1962), 141.

[ix] Robert Jackson, Religious Education: An Interpretive Approach (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1997), 62 ff.

As part of the CSTG Leadership Programme I have had the great fortune to be part of a reading group looking at articles relating to RE. Now, I must make a confession or two here. First, I love reading groups and am an enthusiastic member of another in my free time. There is something about reading groups that, I believe, makes me far more attentive to the text. Knowing that I am going to have to discuss it, I busily make notes and try to map out the drift of the author’s thought. Secondly, I came late to teaching – and as a Primary school-based trainee – never had the background in academic pedagogy and theories of RE. So – the opportunity to read Rob Freathy and Helen John’s ‘Worldviews and Big Ideas: A Way forward for Religious Education?’ was one I grasped with both hands!

Ably marshalled by Kathryn Wright and – as always – kindly probed and challenged by the ever-wonderful Ed Pawson, we dissected the ideas set out in the article. Freathy and John begin with the Core Report (2018) and its recommendation to look wider than the ‘big 6’ to incorporate the teaching of worldviews. In what, all members commented, is an immensely readable paper, they canter through a brief literature review of the concept of worldviews in education – pausing awhile to graze on the thorny questions of ‘personal’ or ‘institutional’ worldviews chewed over by thinkers such as Hands and Van der Kooij. In a metaphor I personally rather liked, they muse on whether a Venn Diagram might enable these ideas to be drawn but conclude that this would need to be four dimensional and change over time! What was clear to all of us in discussion, was that this is an issue on which we all felt was not one with clearly drawn edges – that part of the ‘fuzziness’ and ‘mess’ of lifestyles meant that we live in a place of liminality – and very few people have clear lines. I recalled, whilst studying Theology and Religious Studies, one of my lecturers; the very distinguished Julius Lipner – describing himself as a ‘Hindu Catholic’ and describing his interpretation of a Hindu worldview in terms of the banyan tree; with many branches that there is not one clear trunk.

Freathy and John move on to discuss whether the idea of a worldviews education would cause a ‘necessary dilution’ of the content of RE – as some institutional faith bodies fear it might, or that it would increase teacher workload as implied by Damien Hinds’ (2018) response to the Commission report. However, they firmly reject this notion making analogies to other academic subjects, such as History and English and noting that they do not try to cover all of their subjects. It is the approach – rather than content selection – which is key to their argument. Questions of which worldviews may be chosen was an object of discussion – and this extended to the family dinner table – where my son, who is taking GCSE RS as a whole cohort (very much against his will!) questioned strongly whether agnosticism could be a coherent worldview in its own right? Ed Pawson suggested that a key worldview for many young people might be hedonism, and was this part of an enquiry that might take place in a classroom?

In setting out the ‘Big Ideas’, Freathy and John seek to unpack aspects of how a worldview-oriented education might work in reality. For me, two key themes leapt out. Firstly, in Big Idea 2 (BIA2) the extent to which a worldviews approach might enable a reflexive response for students – highlighting the ‘particularity of their own lived experience and their own epistemological lenses’. I have a friend who teachers in a very successful secondary school as Head of Religious Studies, and she often remarks on how students (particularly from minority religions) do not recognise the religion taught in the GCSE spec. Could this approach enable all students to see how all worldviews– institutional and personal – might be inherently diverse, partial, fluid and dynamic?

A final thought concerns the real passion that both Freathy and John have (set out in Big Idea 3 and 4) to close the ‘gap’ between academic RS/Theology and the classroom – both in the wish to see teachers and students as ‘co-researchers’ , but also to see more interaction between departments and schools. The latter, we all felt, is so important – and very much part of what Kathryn Wright is advocating in her new vision for CTSG – to make teachers ‘research aware, informed and active’. I think this group definitely made us feel we were ‘aware’ and becoming ‘active’. More of this, I think is vital for the health of RE – and a paper as well written and accessible as this – will definitely be on the agenda for one of my forthcoming Bristol Learn teach Lead RE Hubs. I may even invite Mr Pawson to bring his wisdom and humour to it!

http://kau.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1386095/FULLTEXT01.pdf

Reflecting back on my time as a Commissioner and all the data we used in drawing up our final report (Commission on RE 2018), there are two further pieces of evidence which have convinced me that we were right to go for radical change and not simply aim to find more resources to shore up the present system. Both of these were from 2018 YouGov surveys. The first, of the general population, revealed that 55% of those surveyed thought that RE was ‘not very’ or ‘not at all important’ and RE was fourth from the bottom of the list. The second, of pupils, showed that RE was their least favourite subject, with the exception of Citizenship. I find these figures devastating. The title of the popular Facebook group ‘Save RE’ says it all: the subject needs to be saved and whether or not, or how far, you might agree with our recommendations, something needed to be done.

One of our main recommendations was that there should be a National Entitlement (not Curriculum) for all pupils in all schools. That’s pretty radical in itself. It is set out in tightly written prose and each of the subsections is worthy of careful study. As an example, let me take the first two areas that we say pupils must be taught about.

‘Matters of central importance to that worldview’. “Tick”, says the RE teacher and the Agreed Syllabus Conference member, “We do that”. I’d like to think that is the case, but I don’t think I did that, or did it very well, when I was a teacher. It is too easy to fit religions into our curriculum framework rather than the other way round. Take most RE textbook series: beautifully illustrated, packed with ‘knowledge’, learning activities and key questions but so many of them follow the same format, no matter which religion they’re looking at: worship, scriptures, rites of passage – as if these were all matters of ‘central importance’ to every worldview. They’re not. There might be a birth ceremony in Judaism but there’s not in Buddhism. Pilgrimage might be central to Islam but not to most Christians. The first element of the NE asks us to think again about what we are presenting to pupils and how we frame it.

The second is the one I like the best: pupils should be taught about ‘the key concepts including ‘religion’, ‘secularity’, ‘spirituality’ and ‘worldview’…’ . Elsewhere in the report we call these our ‘over-arching categories’. This presents to me a helpful spatial metaphor: rather than not just ‘under-standing’ a religion, we also have ‘over-arching’, a rising above and looking down on the complex, fascinating and essentially important phenomena of worldviews, their complex, diverse and pluralistic nature, their changing patterns and their inter-connectedness.

Each of these four concepts is complex, each contested and each needs to be understood by pupils if they are to make any sense of the world in which they live, never mind continue to create their own worldview. ‘Religion’ is not synonymous with ‘the big six’ – the whole is more than its constituent parts. The zeitgeist of the western world is ‘secular’ and pupils need to understand its meaning, its development, its contested nature and its relevance to understanding ‘religion’ in the modern world. RE teachers often lay claim to ‘spirituality’ when, of course spiritual development is a whole-school responsibility. Religion and Worldviews does not just contribute to pupils’ spiritual development through the content of the subject but through the opportunity to provide an ‘objective, critical and pluralistic’ approach to understanding the term, its meaning and its manifestations in human life, including – but not only – religious interpretations of ‘spirituality’. It is the term ‘worldview’ that has aroused the most controversy, which isn’t unexpected, but, despite its contested nature, it is a widely-used, overarching term and the one that we decided was most fit for purpose. We knew that a great deal more work needs to be done and I’m delighted that the RE Council is currently leading on that.

And that’s another misconception: there’s much more going on than is evident to everyone. The authors of some of the most significant reports in recent times, all of which called for radical change – A New Settlement, RE for Real, the report of the Commission on Religion and Belief in Public Life, as well as the Commission on RE – are continuing to work and to collaborate. Others have taken the initiative and developed responses – primary teacher educators, for example, have developed Recommendation Six and their work is available on the Culham St Gabriel website (see: https://www.teachre.co.uk/itt-providers/primary-itt-tutor-toolkit/). Many individual teachers I’ve met as I’ve travelled the country speaking about the Commission have expressed immense enthusiasm and I hope that will be translated into classroom practice. There’s a long way to go but we’ll get there in the end. We have to.

I believe that a badly done lesson can be as bad as no lesson at all. In the classroom I’m larger than life, pitching myself to be at least 10% more enthusiastic about the day and learning than the students lollygagging towards my classroom are.

But how do you do this through a screen?

My solution was to create short, fun and fact-packed videos, which allow creativity to flow and smiles to follow. My issue with videos about religion is that they tend to be very serious about their content, which is fine and appropriate for some situations, but when trying to retain the attention of 14- and 15-year olds in the midst of a global pandemic, watching a 25 minute video with someone explaining the intricate details of the nature of God won’t hold students’ attention for long.

I don’t claim to have entirely solved this problem, as GCSE Religious Studies is very fact-heavy, but I reckoned that if I made some videos which are funny (at least to my mind!), clear and short, my students might just watch them to the end.

Because, what I’ve noticed is that my student’s enthusiasm for a topic is directly linked to my own. It does not equal it, rather they trail mine. If I am excited and curious about a topic, whatever it might be, they follow me down that path.

And the combined problems of lockdown, coronavirus-proof teaching, teenagers and social media is that information is filtered through a screen, which is easy to switch off or change what it is showing. Not to put too fine a point on it, but RE is always going to play second fiddle to English and Maths.

So I put on a fake beard and pretended to be an atheist. And I plotted out Peter’s denial of Christ using Lego stop-motion. Or I used my daughters’ farm-yard figures to demonstrate the parable of the sheep and the goats (she was upset that I didn’t ask her permission to do this). I have conducted conversations with myself, switching hats and costumes to denote a change of viewpoint (green hat with an Hawaiian shirt represents a liberal view, blue hat with a leather jacket for a more conservative view), and I have taken fruit from my son and given it to his toy dog (aka the Syrophoenician woman in Mark chapter 7).

For me, it was important to make sure they were fact-filled (so students could watch them and gain a basic understanding of the topic), short (so students would have a chance of watching it to the end) and funny (because life is too short to make boring videos!) My YouTube channel, RSin5orLess, will continue to act as a revision aid once ‘normal schooling’ returns, whenever that will be, as well as a reminder that necessity is the mother of invention. And that I’m bad at accents.

Engaging pupils can be a challenge in Religious and Moral Education (RME). Pupils can arrive with preconceptions of our subject based on a range of external influences.

I would like to give an overview of how I use thematic units to develop skills and engage learners.

In the last academic year, we worked on redeveloping elements of the Broad General Education (S1-3) courses for RME. The main area of my focus was S1 (equivalent to KS3).

Embedding skills for learning, life and work became central to the development of the new and revised units (in line with school improvement priorities). After our introduction to RME through Ultimate Questions, pupils explored a research skills mini-unit based on in-class and at-home activities that focussed on teaching the skills of research, using sources, analysis, and evaluation.

To follow this, it was decided to try a thematic approach for the S1 classes and seek to develop these skills further and introduce Beliefs and Values & Issues across different religious and non-religious viewpoints.

USING…Thematic Units.

Normally, we do not begin to use thematic units until S3 (KS4) and these focus on moral issues, however this new work sought to try a thematic unit from the start of the Secondary RME experience and use it to explore both issues of belief and issues of morality. The unit would be: Who Am I? The Human Condition – the broad scope of the unit was to explore beliefs about The Soul, the Nature of Human Beings, and Responses to Suffering.

TO DEVELOP…Skills.

I was keen to use this as an opportunity to further develop on the previous intensive research skills unit, in order to consolidate the pupils’ confidence in these skills. As we explored the content of the unit we made use of a variety of Making Thinking Visible thinking routines (already being used across the school), Co-operative Learning strategies (in order to provide structure and social skills development to our group and paired work), and Active Learning activities (in order to engage learners), with all these supporting the development of higher order thinking skills.

AS A RESULT…Engaging Learners.

In order to make learning relevant to pupils, I ensured the unit was broken down into small chunks, clearly linking lessons, and identifying contemporary moral issues that were relevant to each lesson.

As we explored the nature of human beings, we introduced debate around the environment and climate change; through teachings about responses to suffering, we explored racism and then poverty and injustice.

Pupils, through short focussed lessons, were engaging with sources that included Plato, Holy Scriptures from Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, and photo journalism. Throughout this unit they explored issues of belief, values and issues, consequences of beliefs, and began to express their own opinion with supporting reasons on the relationship between values and actions.

The result of this thematic approach to learning in S1 was a cohort of pupils who were more engaged in their learning than they were in subsequent single religion units or single-issue units. The pupils were able to demonstrate their progress toward the four capacities in Scottish education (for pupils to become Responsible Citizens, Successful Learners, Effective Contributors, and Confident Individuals). The quality of written answers were higher and more fully developed than in the previous year at this stage due to pupil interest and their ability to connect beliefs to issues. Feedback from pupils in their end of year evaluation has shown how they have appreciated dipping in and out of different religions and relating the beliefs to the world around them.

What is a ‘Specialist Leader of Education (SLE)?’ This is a question I have been asked dozens of times by both teaching and non-teaching friends and family. The role of an SLE is often not clearly defined and can be easily misunderstood, so in this blog I am hoping to answer that question, and also explore how SLEs can support the provision of RE across a Teaching School Alliance.

The DfE has defined SLEs as “experienced middle or senior leaders interested in supporting middle and senior leaders in other schools”. The impression I get is that even when schools employed ‘Advanced Skills Teachers’, there were varied examples of how these teachers were used, often with mixed degrees of success. The vision that I want to communicate in this blog post is that there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to being an SLE, and hopefully I can give some ideas as to how this might look. I think that the role can be defined by three Cs: collaboration, communication and context.

Let’s start with the first of our Cs: collaboration. When I was asked to put together this “How I…” blog, my initial reaction was to ask to change the title to “How we…”. I think that the days when an SLE will swoop in to provide the expertise to save the day for a failing teacher or department are gone. The absolute key to this role is empowering others to make positive change. Expertise does not just lie with an SLE, but with every single teacher of RE across every Alliance school. My role is to tap into this expertise and allow schools to work in a more joined-up way to share key ideas coherently.

In this situation an SLE is primarily a leader, someone who may have expertise but also the qualities to inspire change by developing the abilities of others. Coaching and mentoring can play a very important role in this school-to-schools support that SLEs can offer.

The second of our Cs is communication: this is vitally important in many different ways. Without a structure of communication, it is impossible for SLEs to offer any kind of lasting, meaningful collaboration between different schools across their TSA. One way of creating effective communication is the use of regular teach-meet style events. As a group of RE teachers we usually meet within our Alliance hub once a term. The purpose of this can be to share resources or subject and pedagogical knowledge. As an SLE it is my role to facilitate this session: this sometimes involves me delivering ideas myself, but often also involves me leaning on the shared expertise of others. To ensure this contact is ongoing, and not just once a term, we use Google classroom as a dialogue stream and a platform to continued sharing.

Context, the last of our Cs, is arguably the most important aspect of an SLE’s role. At the Chiltern Teaching School Alliance in Bedfordshire where I work, we serve a wide variety of schools. Our Luton schools have a large majority of Muslim pupils, whereas our Central Bedfordshire schools have a higher proportion of non-religious and Christian pupils. This is important because teaching RE in these different contexts carries its own sensitivities and challenges. In order to understand these contexts, the best thing an SLE can do is speak to the teachers from that school – in this situation they are the experts because they work within these particular settings on a daily basis. SLEs can also reach out to local community and religious groups to bring these contexts into greater focus thus enabling better support.

Being an SLE is a job that I truly enjoy. The reward is enabling the provision of high-quality RE, which undoubtedly benefits all. I hope that some of the ideas in this article are useful. If you would like to ask any questions, feel free to contact me on twitter (@AdamHoldsworth1) or email me (aholdsworth@denbighhigh.co.uk).