Baha'i
Buddhist worldview traditions
Christian worldview traditions
Contextualising the diversity of worldviews
Hindu worldview traditions
Humanist worldview traditions
Jain
Jehovah's Witnesses
Jewish worldview traditions
Muslim worldview traditions
Pagan
Rastafari
Sikhi worldview traditions
Soka Gakkai
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Zoroastrian

Faith in Encounter Project: Connecting Schools & Communities Through Faith & Belief Storytelling

Amy Ark, Sarah March, Alejandra Sánchez – Faith and Belief Forum

 

This project is running in four English regions and involves primary schools taking part in a three-workshop programme, based around an ‘I, you, we’ methodology. The first workshop centres around pupils’ personal worldviews, the second involves an encounter with two speakers who talk about their lived experience of different faiths. The third workshop applies these broad themes to living in the world. The project develops pupils’ skills of dialogue, understanding, empathy and critical thinking.

 

 

The project is based on Allport’s (1954) Contact Theory.  This suggests that that meaningful, positive interaction between members of different groups can reduce prejudice, especially when the contact happens with young people, but only when certain conditions are met, such as equal status, shared goals, cooperation, and a supportive environment. When these conditions are in place, contact helps individuals replace stereotypes with real understanding, leading to more harmonious intergroup relations.

The work is dialogic, involving pupils listening to the lived experience stories and interpreting the worldviews of people of differing faiths.  It therefore models respectful dialogue. Speakers are encouraged to present their individual story, and not feel pressured to be the official representative of an institutional worldview.

The project provides a good model for engaging pupils in meaningful reflection about their own and differing beliefs, which schools that are not part of the project might wish to consider:

  • What faith and belief stories are pupils hearing as part of your curriculum? How could you add more?
  • In which ways can parents be invited and supported to reflect on their faith, belief, and identity journeys and share these in classrooms?
  • How can you support pupils to develop dialogue skills across the curriculum?

For more detail about the workshops, take a look at the Faith & Belief Forum website. It is also worth looking at their resources page, the final project resources will go on this page in the new academic year but there are also a number of resources that may be able to help in the meantime with classroom based dialogue..  If you want to know more about how Contact Theory can promote community relations in RE, then this toolkit, from an earlier project, might be helpful.