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We continue with our ‘summer series’ of recommendations for you. We asked Geoff Teece, Linda Whitworth and Kate Christopher to tell us about something that changed their thinking. In this edition: rewilding, religious pluralism, migration and belonging.

An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent by John Hick, 2004

John Hick’s An Interpretation of Religion was published in 1989. The book won the Grawemeyer Award in 1991 for new thinking in religion.

Hick involved himself in a variety of organisations committed to good relations between people of different faiths, spending time in mosques, synagogues, gurdwaras and mandirs. Indeed, it was in one of the gurdwaras that I first met him. He was wearing a Jewish yarmulke. Such experiences led Hick to develop his pluralist hypothesis, proposing that religious communities are expressions of how each community understands what is most valuable, most important, and most holy in life.

Hick starts with the proposition that the universe is hard to make clear sense of, and is subject to interpretation. This is extremely significant for Hick’s argument. Based on this premise, Hick presents religious experience as rationally defensible as any other, such as scientific knowledge. For Hick an unspoken scientific bias means religious knowledge has come to appear illegitimate. However Hick reminds us that all human knowledge involves interpretation and subjectivity.

Hick proposes that the religious traditions we see today are cultural systems that provide spiritual paths to the transformation of the self, directed towards the transcendent. This proposal has not developed out of a purely intellectual process, but out of personal encounter.
It is the book that has had the greatest influence on my own thinking about the nature of religion and possibilities for teaching about religion.

Geoff Teece

Geoff graduated in Theology and Education from the university of Birmingham from where he also received his MEd and PhD. He has taught RE across the phases from primary pupils to undergraduate students. He was Director of the Midlands RE Centre at Westhill College and worked with Michael Grimmitt training secondary RE teachers at the university of Birmingham. He was secretary of NASACRE for ten years and won the SHAP award for ‘an outstanding contribution to the teaching of World Religions’ in 2005. Latterly he has worked at the University of Exeter. More recently he was editor of Professional Reflection in RE Today

Refugee Boy by Benjamin Zephaniah, 2017
The Arrival Shaun Tan, 2006

Reading and then discussing Benjamin Zephaniah’s Refugee Boy with Initial Teacher Education students helped change my worldview. It raises a lot of issues, both as a story and a teaching text, such as refugee experience, change and belonging. It resonated deeply with many of us and challenged assumptions. Some spoke about the challenges of moving to other cultural environments or the experiences of their parents and grandparents. It altered my view of my role in the classroom as an enabler, becoming more conscious of the conversations about diversity, equity and inclusion I could facilitate with my students.

I followed up by reading Shaun Tan’s The Arrival, a graphic novel with no words. This extraordinary book raises questions about belonging in even starker terms. Its sepia appearance provides both historical and mysterious dimensions, navigating the alien yet always returning to shared human experience. It helped me recognise how important it is to acknowledge different worldviews and discuss cultural and religious navigation so that real experience is considered and human connections are made.

Linda Whitworth

Linda is a retired ITE lecturer who specialises in Primary ITE in Religion and Worldviews. She is Chair of Trustees for Culham St Gabriel’s Trust and a visiting lecturer and consultant on primary education.

Wilding: the Return to Nature of a British Farm by Isabella Tree, 2018

Like many people I experience despair and fear when I think about human impact on the planet, the tipping points we have already reached and the injustice we seem indifferent to. I feel a profound grief about what we have lost and disbelief when I see government or corporate complacency and inaction in the face of catastrophe. I bought Wilding by Isabella Tree (2018) for my brother in law’s birthday, not knowing anything about rewilding. He is a literary critic, and it seemed to be creating a buzz. I glanced into it before I wrapped it, and eventually handed it to him well-over half read. I have since bought myself a copy and read it several times.

Wilding tells of Isabella and her husband Charlie Burrows’s West Sussex farm, Knepp. After decades of running at a loss, they finally realised the denuded, impoverished land was spent, so gave it over to nature. What follows is an astonishing account of just how ready myriad species are to spring into life, if they are only given the chance. With a few measures, such as introducing free-roaming herbivores to keep the natural woodland under control, the life that had not gone away, but was merely dormant, came flooding back. Layer upon layer of fungi, insects, wildflowers, bats, lizards, songbirds slipped into their niche in the burgeoning ecosystems, allowing other species to thrive. As Professor Sir John Lawton, chair of the 2010 ‘Making Space for Nature’ states: “Knepp Estate is one of the most exciting wildlife conservation projects in the UK, and indeed in Europe. If we can bring back nature at this scale and pace just 16 miles from Gatwick airport we can do it anywhere. I’ve seen it. It’s truly wonderful, and it fills me with hope.”

I have read this process described elsewhere as like a ‘pulse’, where nature only needs human interference to pause for a short time, for life to erupt in a landscape, any landscape. All over the world, in environments and climates nothing like Southern England, rewilding projects are emerging. For example, a huge ‘rewilding Arabia’ project has restored an Arabian leopard which acts as a keystone species, playing a similar role to the cows, ponies and pigs of Knepp. I have since read much more about rewilding, such as George Monbiot’s Feral¸ and it seems to be a story of hope. Nature knows what she is doing, we just have to let her. Ultimately humans have to rewild ourselves.

Kate Christopher

Kate teaches Secondary RE and is an independent RE consultant, focusing on curriculum

Welcome to our ‘summer series’, where those in the world of RE recommend something that changed their way of seeing the world. In this first edition we bring you recommendations from Janet Orchard, Claire Clinton and Jen Jenkins on innocence and experience, liberation theology and a so-called ‘Slave Bible’

Songs of Innocence and of Experience by William Blake, 1794
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake, 1790

I studied the Songs of Innocence and of Experience, by the English poet and printmaker William Blake, during my A Level English course. The book is a collection of illustrated texts, with a radical twist, that are printed beautifully from etched plates, coloured by Blake and his wife Catherine. If the power of the poems on their own weren’t enough, my teacher took us on a trip to see original copies at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. My fascination with this work was thus cemented for a lifetime.

Blake’s work appealed to my teenage self, being unconventional, egalitarian, conscious to disrupt and depolarize, and yet bring together diverse opinion. This view can be summed in a well-known phrase from another work by Blake, ‘The Marriage of Heaven and Hell’, in which he claims, “Without contraries, no progression”.

He cites contraries like attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, good and evil, seeing both together as necessary to existence. Each needs the other.

As someone who resists over-simplification at every turn, I often draw on this, to me, memorable phrase. Then there is the matter of looking for the value in someone else’s view when I disagree with them, as least in the first instance. I don’t think all views are valid; but being open to possible new ideas, composed when opposing instincts are disrupted together is an insight worth having.

Janet Orchard

Janet Orchard is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion in Teacher Education in the School of Education, University of Bristol and a former teacher. She takes a comparative interest in relationships between philosophy, religion, and teacher education specialising in England, Hong Kong and the Western Cape (South Africa). She edits Professional Reflection.

A Theology of Liberation: History, power and salvation by Gustavo Gutierrez, 1988
For my people: Black Theology and the Black Church by James H Cone, 1984

Both these books changed my way of thinking about the world. At the time I was a newly qualified RE teacher delivering units on Liberation Theology and Black Theology for a new A- Level RS course. There were no materials for students to learn about these theologies, just a book list as a teacher I needed to get through and create a unit of study for my students.

I was a white, British woman who had just finished a tradition theology degree and RE PGCE at Durham and Cambridge Universities – both very traditional places where these topics hadn’t come up, so everything was new learning for me.

I had no conception of what life had been like for the people of Latin America and how white western worldviews had interpreted the Bible in certain ways that Gustavo wrote about and challenged. Then I knew a little of the Civil Rights movement in America in the 1960’s to 70’s, but again reading the book by James completely immersed me in a different world. A different way of seeing the world through other people’s experiences that involved oppression and poverty.

I had learnt a little about hermeneutics at university, but now I was absorbed in what this meant in the 20th Century for theologians living in a very different world from my own. These theologians wanted to give a voice to the people they lived with and worked alongside. Before reading these books I would not really have consciously thought about my own worldview, nor my own privilege. Therefore these were transformative reads for me to see the complexity of belief and practice, power, privilege and injustice. They were foundational for me to understand the importance of listening and hearing diverse voices and how a sacred text can be interpreted in different ways without any recognition of this taking place. These books were uncomfortable reads for me in places as they challenged me to see religion in more actively political terms. I was also challenged to see myself as part of the silent majority that allows oppression to take place.

Claire Clinton

Claire is RE Advisor for Newham, Barking and Dagenham and Director of the national RE Hubs.

Museum of the Bible: ‘Slave Bible’

Through engaging with the Diocese of Coventry’s anti-racist learning community, Amazing Grace, I discovered this very troubling form of biblical interpretation. This is the so-called ‘slave bible’. You can find out about it through videos and information video on the Museum of the Bible link below.

The ‘Slave Bible’ (as it came to be known) was originally published in London in 1807 on behalf of the Society for the Conversion of Negro Slaves, an organisation with the expressed intention of improving the lives of enslaved Africans put to work in Britain’s colonies in the Caribbean. This version of the bible was edited with significant parts of the Bible missing, such as the story of the Exodus where the Israelites were released from slavery in Egypt and passages in Paul’s letters that suggest an equality between slaves and masters. Certain passages were deliberately left in, such as the curse of Ham by Noah in the Genesis narrative which even the church at the time of the transatlantic slave trade felt comfortable to use as a justification for the enslavement of races considered to be ‘inferior’ to Europeans. Likewise, the guidance in the Pauline letters regarding slaves obeying their masters was retained as part of a deliberate hermeneutic intended to convince Black Africans they were justifiably enslaved.

The intention in using this missionary book was to indoctrinate slaves into the Christian faith. It was also used to teach African slaves to read (which I am assuming was meant to be a ‘noble’ intention at the time). This use of the Bible to perpetuate one of history’s most deplorable grand narratives is deeply shocking.

If this is your initial discovery of the existence of this text, I am sure you are deeply troubled by it. It is important to also consider the reactions of your pupils and to approach this with absolute sensitivity if you plan to share its existence with pupils.

for more information: https://www.museumofthebible.org/exhibits/slave-bible

Jen Jenkins

Jen is RE & Spirituality Officer for Coventry Diocesan Board of Education and RE Facilitator for Coventry and Warwickshire.

I have been teaching RE for 25 years and one of the challenges in teaching at the moment is how to keep our subject moving forward and keep our motivation going. This year I have been a participant on Stage One of the Culham St Gabriel’s Leadership programme that is supported and guided by the main national organisations that have a say on the future of RE. The subject has seen many changes over the decades in terms of approach, name, content, purpose, and value within schools. Do teachers have a say in any of this and how can they implement change? This was a motivating factor in applying for the Culham St Gabriel’s Leadership Programme; to have a voice and be heard in the debate. I decided to engage with a set of research outputs, as part of an attempt to clarify where I stand in terms of the issues in RE. I chose a range of articles reported in the RE:ONLINE archive to read, digest, think about and if possible, implement on my own teaching.

One of the first articles that I read was Nastasya van der Straten Waillet, Isabelle Roskam and Cécile Possoz’s work on the advantages of using Philosophy for Children in RE (2014). I am a long-term advocate of this approach but my use of it is hampered due to lack of time within the classroom and that P4C needs to be used in a certain way that sometimes gets lost.

Although the research takes place in Belgium, it has very clear links with my syllabus: Hampshire Agreed Syllabus, ‘Living Difference’. The interpretative nature of the process, along with an enquiry-based approach helps the learner unwrap and unbox the key ideas of the focus of enquiry. It needs careful prodding and needling (and a skilled facilitator) in order to get to the evaluation process.

This point about interpretation connects with Julia Ipgrave’s work on what secondary teachers can learn from our primary colleagues (2013). “From storybooks to bullet points” leads us to understand that primary RE is full of colour, rich in text and story and that the child is allowed to imagine and think through those stories that come to life from the holy books. This piece was written before the new GCSE specifications came into being, and these have a renewed focus on textual references but often they are just that. The context has been stripped away, they are words to back up an argument, as an example to show a believers’ faith and not as the story with meaning that they should be. Take for example the AQA GCSE spec that looks at the Incarnation and then jumps straight to the Crucifixion. Where is the narrative? Where is the story that sets the scene for the final act of Jesus’ life? Is this meant to be left for previous knowledge or learning? One thing I have taken from Ipgrave’s work is that the story is just as important as the teaching as it is the context that matters.

Bob Bowie, Farid Panjwani and Katie Clemmey (2020) may agree. Their work, “Opening the door to hermeneutical RE” has really helped me to open up the texts in ways that our English subject colleagues have been doing for decades. The pupils are familiar with taking a text, breaking it down, looking at its context and meaning, the purpose of the writer and the symbolic nature of the words. We should make more of these insights in RE, enabling pupils to learn in more focused, nuanced ways.

In part 1 of this blog, I have shown my initial motivations of choosing relevant research linked to my classroom teaching and how these articles have helped my thinking. In part 2 I will develop this by delving into more classroom practice of others and how these examples have helped shape what I now do in the classroom.

References

Bowie, R, Panjwani, F, Clemmey, K (2020) Teachers and texts: Improving Religious education through hermeneutics (canterbury.ac.uk) Online material can be found here

Ipgrave, J (2013) From storybooks to bullet points: books and the Bible in primary and secondary religious education, British Journal of Religious Education 35.3 pages 264-281 online article available here

Van der Straten Waillet, N, Roskam, I & Possoz, C (2015) On the epistemological features promoted by ‘Philosophy for Children’ and their psychological advantages when incorporated into RE: British Journal of Religious Education, 37:3, 273-292 Online article can be found here

I always feel sympathy for non-religious children sullenly slumped in RE lessons, declaring ‘I’m not religious, I don’t need to know this’. In this blog, I will articulate three reasons why many non-religious pupils struggle to engage with RE following a World Religions paradigm, and how these problems are overcome by following a Worldviews paradigm. While my experience is as a Primary teacher, I am hopeful that this reasoning applies just as much to those in Secondary schools.

Pupils feel invalidated

The World Religions paradigm asks teachers to choose religions for study, meaning non-religious worldviews might be overlooked in an already overcrowded curriculum. For non-religious pupils who know that their teacher has deliberately excluded their worldview, they must question whether the lesson is worth their attention.

How a worldviews paradigm can help

A Worldviews paradigm begins and ends with people: all people. In a Worldviews classroom religious and non-religious pupils are equally worthy of study. No pupil needs to get the impression that their view on a subject is not welcome or important, simply because it is not drawn from a traditionally religious perspective. When pupils engage with Religion and Worldviews, they may discover that their own worldview shares ways of seeing with other established worldviews. This way of thinking gives children the freedom to interact on a completely different level. It is no longer a case of either believing or not believing; pupils can engage in a much more nuanced way, sharing and adapting their beliefs and values as they travel through the curriculum.

Pupils feel disadvantaged

Following the World Religions paradigm means some pupils are automatically disadvantaged. A pupil may find themselves next to someone in a lesson on Christianity who already has considerable knowledge derived from their parents and out of school activities. However, it is unlikely that the same pupil will find themselves in a History lesson sitting next to, for example, a Roman. With natural disadvantages like this, it is no wonder that some pupils feel that RE is not worth the effort of giving their all.

How a worldviews paradigm can help

While there will undoubtedly remain a need for children to gain substantive knowledge regarding major world religions and other worldviews, the focus of a Religion and Worldviews approach shifts from gaining knowledge to interacting with knowledge. Non-religious pupils will no longer be disadvantaged through a lack of experience of religion, as their own, unique worldview created by their own experiences and beliefs is now the driving force for their understanding in RE.
With a curriculum that is not restricted by the need to focus exclusively on world religions, one approach teachers may take would be to introduce Big Questions at the start of a topic: for example, ‘Is there an afterlife?’. This topic could then begin and end with the children articulating their own understanding and belief, with several different religious and non-religious interpretations explored. While some children may have prior knowledge of a particular taught worldview, this will not be a significant advantage over time as all pupils will engage with rich and complex information in order to address the big questions.

Pupils feel alienated

Many non-religious pupils come from non-religious families, they may even have exclusively non-religious friends. In these cases, religion is not only irrelevant to them, but it may seem irrelevant to everyone that they know. Pupils who find themselves in this situation will inevitably struggle to find purpose and meaning in RE lessons, and therefore are unlikely to commit fully to their studies.

How a worldviews paradigm can help

As stated, a worldviews paradigm begins and ends with people. A worldviews curriculum would, among other things, highlight the diversity within and across religions, and to do this pupils have to interact with individuals. We are no longer asking our non-religious pupils to engage with the huge, alien concept of ‘religion’. We are introducing them to individuals; individuals who may subscribe to a particular worldview, but real individuals with unique thoughts and feelings that our pupils will be able to relate to. When pupils find a topic relatable they are much more likely to engage with it positively, and therefore by having a people-focused curriculum rather than a religion-focused curriculum, non-religious pupils are much more likely to connect with the teaching.

I taught RE for a number of years, and am now the RE PGCE course leader and senior lecturer at Edge Hill University. This role allows me to be active in school education, but also to take a strategic approach to research around Religion and Worldviews. The best part of my job is working with beginner RE teachers, who are not only learning a to navigate the complex technical, emotional and intellectual terrain of the classroom, they are finding themselves as teachers in relation to their school contexts and wider society. In this blog I will present my work on ethical veganism in the curriculum, and suggest that the Religion and Worldviews paradigm has much to offer teachers as they explore the urgent questions of our world today with their pupils.

As an ethical vegan myself, my doctoral research concerns the experiences of vegan children in schools and how far the ‘omnivore norm’ can be challenged through the Religion and Worldviews curriculum. As you can imagine, this takes me to the heart of all sorts of fascinating, and sometimes challenging, ideas. The experience of vegan children in schools is an example of a school’s ‘hidden framework’ (Giroux 2001), the dominant school culture which reflects the dominant culture and power relations of wider society.

There is much rich content that can be brought into the curriculum to make sense of values around the food we eat. Vegetarianism in the Dharmic traditions is encouraged in scripture and modelled by centuries of religious leaders. We can explore the environmental impacts of meat production and the compelling ethical questions raised by our globalised intensive meat industries. Moreover, ethical veganism is a topic which speaks to the future of the planet; sustainability, the climate emergency and human exploitation. These types of questions can be found in religious and non-religious worldviews, which further allows pupils to explore the overlapping, complex and interconnected nature of worldviews in our less Christian but more religiously diverse contemporary society. Western perspectives often draw a clear distinction between humans and non-human animals, while many Eastern religions traditions, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, view all life as interconnected and believe in the principle of ahimsa, which requires avoiding harm to all creatures. An environmental worldview can be inspired by religious or non-religious values, or an eclectic mixture of ancient, contemporary, spiritual and practical concerns.

As Religious Education shifts towards a Religion and Worldviews paradigm, such an examination of ethical veganism is an example of how the curriculum can explore the relationship between religion and worldviews in the contemporary world. Ethical veganism is a rapidly growing philosophical belief rooted in practice and protected under the Equality Act (2010) and European law. It can be perceived as a secular worldview yet for many it is closely intertwined with religious belief and practice. From vegan food served in shops and restaurants to discussions about animal treatment, environmental responsibility, human health, social justice, and of course, religion and beliefs, this topic opens up a wealth of pertinent questions. Just like other religions and worldviews taught in RE, veganism is a dynamic and multi-layered subject of study, fostering lively debates and discussions, critical thinking, and thought-provoking questions. My research shows me children’s strong interest in the animal kingdom and their eager engagement in conversations about animal welfare, ethics, and their treatment. The potential to explore such an urgent and engaging set of topics is an example of how the shift towards a Religion and Worldviews approach could be of great benefit to RE.

For any teachers interested in pursuing these questions with their pupils, the following websites are a good places to start:

Veganism in Education
Animal Interfaith Alliance – Faiths Working Together for Animals
Interfaith Vegan Coalition
NATRE- Veganism as a worldview in RE

Reference:

Giroux, H. (2001). Theory and resistance in education. Westport, Conn: Bergin & Garvey.

I have been connected to the REQM since its inception. One of the co-founders, Jane Brooke, was our local RE adviser, so I had a lucky local connection. My school applied for our first REQM while it was still in its infancy and we were lucky enough to receive the Gold Award. As an SLE in RE I trained as an REQM assessor and have been involved ever since.

We were initially interested as a school because we wanted to explore our next steps for developing our RE. We were inspired to develop learning through drama, and other innovations. Over time I have enjoyed supporting clusters of schools working towards the REQM, sharing good practice and working productively with our local SACRE.

When you look back over 11 years of the REQM, I reflect on the importance of being open to different ideas. We don’t all have the same assessment methods, pedagogy or even subject content when it comes to RE but the REQM has evolved so that different voices count and criteria can be met in different ways. I also reflect on the impact which it has had on my career. Speaking at a conference is normal for me these days, but I doubt without the support of the REQM I would have taken this step. The nurture of the subject lead is also important to the REQM process, it supports, questions, evaluates and develops.

I am convinced the REQM continues to have value in the RE world, and more widely. RE needs to stand alongside the quality marks of other subject areas and to be celebrated. The Evidence Form itself as a tool to help them to design an action plan for their subject areas. Being a teacher assessor also opens up opportunities for subject development and leadership.

As well as meeting other teachers, interviewing children about their learning and experiences of RE is always a delight. They are always so keen to show you what they know. Their experiences are wide, varied as is their passion for the value of the subject in their lives within the wider world.

As a teacher myself I know how worrying an assessor visit can be so I always chat to subject leads and get to know them before the visit. It is also fabulous to be able to give a teacher a well- deserved pat on the back and reassure them that they are doing a fantastic job, and to be able to feedback to SLT. This recognition is so important as being an RE lead is often quite a lonely job and the subject doesn’t always have the status it deserves.

It would be great to see the organisation grow and offer networking events. I love the ‘REQM map’ and would like to see opportunities for schools to be working together locally, for example, REQM Gold schools supporting new subject leads and hosting events. Let us make our communities more aware of RE and its relevance to today’s society.

I would say to those thinking of applying to think of the REQM as a journey. Work towards achieving the very best you can for your school, even if this takes time. Involve your SLT and governing body and keep them informed. I have found REQM to be an exceptionally supportive organisation who are driving standards. Get involved with it to develop your own departments, celebrate your achievements, share ideas with others and open doorways to other career opportunities.

I have been an assessor with the RE Quality Mark since the award began, also serving on the review team. As subject lead I was thrilled when we achieved a Gold Award for my school. I was then so proud to see it renewed under the leadership of our current subject lead. I can say my school knows the REQM quite well!

I was excited when I first found out about the award. I loved the way subject leaders were given national expectations, this was a first. Additionally, the process provided exemplification of high-quality RE. Now I know the award better, I can see this exemplification has been an incredibly useful aspect, not just for those schools going through the quality mark process, but for the RE community generally.

There have been changes over time. These have been driven by the need to ensure the award is rigorous and fit for purpose. When educational thinking, and thinking about Religious Education shifts, the award must being able to adapt too, to reflect it being about excellent practice in the subject.

There have been changes in the leadership and administration of the award but what has not changed is the passion and inspiration to offer an award that recognizes and celebrates the very best in RE.

When I look back over 11 years of the REQM, I reflect on its ongoing importance. It is still valued in the RE community, and among school leaders. One dimension particularly close to my heart is the way the award continues to support and inspire emerging leaders, whether in Primary or Secondary.

While I appreciate the warmth with which teachers of RE view the REQM, I also hugely value the status it has outside the RE world. It speaks more widely of our professionalism, innovation and growth within education. In an individual school, the REQM demonstrates the value of the subject, but in the world of schooling and education more generally, it sends out a wider message of quality and development.

I think what surprises and delights me most, when I reflect on my years of working with colleagues as an assessor, is their determination and perseverance. Some schools face significant challenges and I have worked with many teachers doing everything they can to overcome them. Even in the face of significant setbacks and long-term challenges, the teachers I have encountered in my role never lose faith in the value of what they are doing, it is both humbling and motivating to witness.
I particularly enjoy working with teachers in schools as an assessor. As a school teacher myself, I continue to learn from and be inspired by colleagues in other schools and situations. It broadens my perspective and enriches my own expertise.

To any teachers thinking about applying for an REQM, I would say go for it! The experience will encourage and inspire you, enrich your RE provision and offer the professional and personal enhancement of reflecting critically and constructively on your practice.

If teachers are not sure if their leadership team will support their application, remember that this is a unique way to validate the quality of your RE provision whilst providing staff with complimentary CPD. I am sure the REQM will continue to champion high-quality RE and validate nationally- agreed strong RE provision well into the future.

Over the past few years I have made the decision to develop my skills outside of the classroom so that they will enhance my time in it. Part of this was motivated by the time that we spent in lockdown and wanting to re-engage with the Religion and Worldviews community. For me I had become inward looking and only focusing what was happening within my department’s classrooms. Now I decided to look around the community for new ideas and visons that could help me become a better practitioner but also improve the quality of our curriculum.

The subject is in an exciting position; transforming and flourishing into a subject that reaches every part of the curriculum. Part of my own learning over the past few years has been to gain an insight into other teachers’ curricula and engage in the research that shapes their ideas. The widespread use of online seminars and CPD has led to teachers rubbing virtual shoulders with academics, a cross pollination of ideas, views and opinions that were not as visible in the past. One shining light in this area is the work of Culham St Gabriel’s and the online short courses they have developed.

These short courses have been a great help to me when I have been trying to get my head round some of the developments in the subject. The four strands reflected in the short courses are Subject Knowledge, Curriculum, Research and Religion and Worldviews. Each course can be completed in 90 minutes, uses simple enough language to take in after a busy day teaching and planning. The fact they are free of charge is a gamechanger. Selling to Senior Leadership was the easy part.

The courses are also easy to access, another selling point. Whether offering a step- by- step guide in shaping a curriculum, planning a research project, engaging with the different forms of knowledge within the subject, each dimension as helped me gain a better understanding. This year I have gained a place on the Culham St Gabriel’s Leadership Programme and the short courses have offered invaluable guidance and direction.

I have found the Introduction to Research Course especially useful. As an emerging leader my focus is on engaging with research but sometimes this is a tricky area to navigate. Articles and blogs are written with different purposes, reflecting various biases and opinions and the research that is supporting them is compelling in its own right. The Research course presents me with two pieces of research about the same subject, coming from two very different points of view, inviting me to discern and think for myself. I have found this process particularly enlightening, showing me as a professional that I can and should make sense of research for myself, including what I choose to adopt for my own practice.

Research aside, the courses have also given me a better grasp of the debates that are going on in the Religion and Worldviews community. These courses are designed not only for teachers, but anyone who is involved in our community and therefore I signpost people to these courses. They are a great tool for giving us a gateway into thinking about the purpose of the subject as it evolves.

It seems to me that although it’s early days for these courses they will be with us for a long time. To be able to dig deeper into them and beyond is of great benefit to the subject in general. Go and have a look at them if you haven’t done so already.

I just need to find some time to look at the Primary Teacher courses. They look fascinating……

Our competition this year as part of the Religious Education Council of England and Wales 50th Anniversary Celebrations asked three questions…

How have religious and non-religious worldviews changed over time where you live?
How would you describe the mix of worldviews in your community today?
What might it look like in 50 years time?

So what did children and young people say?

Increasing diversity in local areas
It will probably come as no surprise that our entries all highlighted the ways in which their local areas had become more diverse in terms of religious expression over the last 50 years. Some children talked about the ways religious buildings had changed in their use e.g., from a church to a Jain temple, or how new ones had been built to support the needs of belief communities. Many children spoke about the way their local villages and town had expanded, and how this had impacted on the diversity of religion and belief. Some used census data to support their reporting and included perspectives indicating the increase in adherence to non-religious worldviews.

Awareness of complexities of personal religious and non-religious worldviews
It was lovely to hear from children about the different people they had interviewed as part of their film projects, including a range of views on the origins on the universe, as well as how their own beliefs had changed over their lifetime. Children also spoke about the influences – positive and negative-on peoples’ worldviews, and the impact this can have. Some children included perspectives from their parents or teachers, in some cases showing how they were different to their own views. Generational differences were highlighted by many children, but also showed that adherence to a particular worldview tradition from a young age did not necessarily mean that the person was an adherent now. Children, particularly in Key Stage 3 acknowledged that many people identify as spiritual, but not religious. They felt that this group might increase in number over the coming years.

Hope for the future, but challenges we face too…
Children talked about communities being more diverse, yet wanting them to be more cohesive and less divided. Several children spoke about the challenges of the climate crisis, and how we need to work together whatever our beliefs for the future of humanity. Children clearly valued diversity, seeing it as a positive, wanting to celebrate it and work towards creating respectful, harmonious communities.

THANKYOU TO EVERYONE WHO TOOK PART!

Our winners!

Overall Winner:
Zephan and Jonah – judges loved the creative approach, the inclusion of diversity of worldviews in the local area, as well as reference to changes over time and the stories of the families who made the film. Watch their film

Key Stage 2 winners
Florence, Chiltern Primary – Read Florence’s script
Year 3 Group, Warren Road Primary – Watch their video

Key Stage 2 Highly Commended
Daniel, Chiltern Primary
Nikki, Chiltern Primary
Survey Group, Thorner Church of England Primary
Year 5 Group, Warren Road Primary

Key Stage 3 and 4 winners
Millie and Isla, Litchfield Cathedral School – Watch their video
Zara Jamal, Rushey Mead Academy – Read Zara’s script

Key Stage 3 and 4 Highly Commended
Navneet Wilkhu, Kings Norton Girls School
Tormorden High Group, Tormorden High School

Winning entries can be found on our website.

Kathryn Wright
CEO, Culham St Gabriel’s Trust

To find out more about the work of the Religious Education Council of England and Wales https://www.religiouseducationcouncil.org.uk/

Congratulations to Zephan and Jonah being overall winners. They will have their film professionally made and showcased here on RE:ONLINE later in the year.