Global terms: Blog Categories

Ramadan Reflection by a Muslim from the Shia tradition

Zameer Hussain | 21 April, 2021

“O you who believe, fasting is prescribed for you as it was prescribed for those before you, that you may develop God-consciousness.” (Quran 2:183)

Every now and then, a notification will pop up on our phones. It will ask us to complete a software update so that the applications, functionality and performance of our devices will work to its optimum level. I would like to think that the month of Ramadan is the ‘software update’ for our souls where the one who fasts, once the month is over, can perform to his or her optimum level for the rest of the year.

Contrary to what many may perceive, both within and outside the Muslim community, Ramadan is not about food and drink. The aim of Ramadan, as the Quran verse mentions, is God-consciousness. If I don’t feed my pet for a day, it has fasted. If I do similar, I would ask myself if I am better than this pet of mine when in reality, Islam teaches me that the human being is the highest of God’s creation. When I fast, I am aiming to defeat my animal nature and tap into the divine nature that God breathed into us. This is what fasting aims for – defeating the animalistic desires (food, drink, sex, anger etc.) and realising the divine nature through becoming God conscious.

Here I will explain 3 levels of fasting using familiar language:

Grade E Fast

If I was to get an E grade for one of my A-Levels, I would have passed but in all honesty, it may not open the door to many opportunities. An ‘E-grade fast’ is where I simply abstain from food and drink for a day. However, I may not change any vices I may have such as anger, bad language etc.

Grade C Fast

If I was to get a C grade for one of my A-Levels, I have more than passed and it will open the door to some opportunities. A ‘C-grade fast’ is where I do not just abstain from food and drink for a day but my ethics become virtuous too. Whilst usually I may road rage when someone is driving slow in front of me, whilst fasting I remain calm. I remove my vices and transform them into virtues.

Grade A* Fast

If I was to get an A* grade for one of my A-Levels, I have reached the peak of my subject area and it will open any door for me. An ‘A*-grade fast’ is where I quash my animalistic desires, become virtuous but also activate my divine nature in some form of union with God. Union with God means that I would do everything that God is pleased with and avoid what He is displeased with. My will becomes the same as His where He is pleased with me and I am always pleased with Him.

Imam Ali, the first Shia Imam (whose death anniversary is also mourned by Shia Muslims this month), summarises these levels of fasting well: “Some people get nothing from fasting except hunger and thirst.” Every Ramadan I always aim to achieve an A* with my fasting. It is a struggle and there are days where I achieve an E or C grade. However, I know that if I do achieve the A* one day, I will have the best of software upgrade for my soul that will help me function properly all year around.

About

Zameer has been involved in Religious Education and interfaith work since 2013. This has included leading RE departments and supporting teachers nationally with subject knowledge.

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Religion, Worldviews and Multi-disciplinary Lenses

Simon Oldfield | 02 March, 2021

No change in change

I’ve been a religious studies practitioner for over two decades. Nearing three, if truth be told. And those years have seen much change in the context of the subject, with much to be excited about. Each change seems to have reinvigorated my passion for the subject and, I hope, lead to me being a more effective classroom teacher and subject lead.

When the 2018 Commission on Religious Education provided a new framing of the subject – as “Religion & Worldviews” rather than Religion – it was accompanied by a fresh wave of informed conversation that will have lasting impact on the subject and the pupils who are studying it.

And this conversation has a number of important new terms in it, terms that those participating in it need to be clear about. What is a ‘worldview’ and what sets it apart from a ‘religion’? What is ‘religious literacy’? And quite how many ‘multidisciplinary lenses’ are there?

A worldview

The report describes a worldview as ‘a person’s way of understanding, experiencing and responding to the world … as a philosophy of life or an approach to life’. (CofRE P8) Whilst this definition could cover the six principle religions of the United Kingdom (although I know this is contested), it does allow an individual who considers themselves not to be ‘religious’ to use terminology that places value and coherence upon their specific framework. And it allows others to place value upon it too.

No longer is a considerable proportion of our population defined by a negative – ‘not-religious’ or ‘not believing in God’ – but instead acknowledged as being a community drawn together by shared values and beliefs.

Multi-disciplinary Lenses

However many you might consider there to be, ‘multi-disciplinary lenses’ refers to using different academic disciplines or approaches or methodologies to study an aspect of a worldview. In Norfolk, the latest Locally Agreed Syllabus (Norfolk Agreed Syllabus 2019, P5) has settled on three – theology, philosophy and human/social sciences. In practical terms this might mean approaching the topic of pilgrimage by asking three different questions; “what does this pilgrimage teach the pilgrims about their deity?” (theology – thinking about and thinking through believing), “is it right that one place is more significant than another?” (philosophy – thinking about and thinking through thinking) and “what significant acts do the pilgrims carry out?” (human/social sciences – thinking about and thinking through living).

Serving religious literacy

No term has done more to reinvigorate my passion for RE than ‘religious literacy’.

The Norfolk Locally Agreed Syllabus defines religious literacy is ‘how well pupils are able to hold balanced and well-informed conversations about religion and worldviews.’ (P5) It advocates equipping the pupils to go beyond – whilst still embracing – personal reflection and academic excellence, becoming significant, independent, participants in the world in which they find themselves.

And in order to hold these ‘balanced and well-informed conversations’ with the wide-ranging worldviews they will encounter our pupils must engage with the unique beliefs, wrestle with the unique questions and negotiate the unique expressions of each. They will bring the lenses to bear on the worldviews in their journey to religious literacy.

And after nearly three decades, I’m still excited to be on the journey too.

About

Simon is Head of RE and Citizenship at Northgate High School, Dereham, a member of Norfolk SACRE (Chair 2017-2020) and an independent RE trainer.

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Inspired by…Bringing historical methodology into GCSE teaching of Christian beliefs

Thomas Breakwell | 26 January, 2021

In my teaching of AQA GCSE RS Christian beliefs I have found one aspect perplexing, namely the paradoxical role of scripture. On the one hand, the new GCSE Religious Studies places a greater emphasis on every RE teacher’s favourite buzz words, ‘sources of wisdom and authority’ and yet pupils spend very little, if any time at all, actually engaging with scripture in any meaningful way. Instead, engagement with biblical scholarship seems to begin and end with cutting a few quotes from the synoptic gospels or John or the letters of Paul and simply pasting them in an exam answer without any engagement with the history, audience or purpose of the biblical texts.

The result is that I often find pupils asking me fantastic questions such as ‘who is Mark?’, ‘who was Luke writing for?, ‘what is a gospel?’, ‘what was life like at the time of Paul?’, ‘did Jesus actually exist?’. These are all excellent questions, and questions that pupils should be asking, and yet I felt that these questions were often ill-served by the current GCSE specification.

In response, this academic year, I did something different. I taught a lesson that was completely removed from the specification. The aim of this lesson was for pupils to gain a greater understanding of the historical Jesus and importantly how New Testament scholars use historical methods to ascertain if events contained in the gospel narratives can be considered to be historical. The lesson went something like this:

I started by briefly explaining to pupils the audiences and purposes of each of the synoptic gospels and John. The aim of this being that my pupils would begin to appreciate that the gospel texts they have been studying where written by authors to particular audiences and therefore these texts, like any other text, have a purpose and sit within a historical and social context.

Following this, I Introduced to pupils three main criterion which are often used by scholars in the study of the historical Jesus: the criterion of dissimilarity, criterion of embarrassment and the criterion of multiple attestation. The criterion of dissimilarity is simply a method that considers if the events in Jesus’ life (for example his baptism) are distinct from the teaching of 1st century Judaism or the early church. If they are, it reasons that it is more likely to be historical. The criterion of embarrassment considers if the event in Jesus’ life would have been considered embarrassing for the early church. If it would have been embarrassing for the early church it seems unlikely they would just make it up! Finally, and most importantly, the criterion of multiple attestation which focuses on if the event in Jesus’ life occurs in multiple different Christian and non-Christian sources. If an event in Jesus’ life such as the crucifixion is referenced in both Christian and non-Christian sources, such as the writings of Josephus, then it is more likely to be historical.

After my explanation, my pupils got to work. As a class, pupils read the baptism of Jesus (along with some information about baptism in first century Palestine). Then using the three criteria, I modelled step by step how each criterion could be applied to the baptism of Jesus. The benefit of modelling the first example as a whole class allowed me to reiterate what I expected my class to do and address any questions or misconceptions they had.

After scaffolding and modelling the first example, it was now time for my pupils to practice on their own with pupils applying the same criteria to several of the miracles of Jesus such as the exorcism of the blind and mute man and the raising of Jairus’ daughter. I found that my higher attaining pupils went one step further and even considered the limitations of using the criterion of embarrassment, multiple attestation and dissimilarity to study the miracles of Jesus. To end, we discussed as a class their views on if the events ascribed to Jesus in the gospels are historical and if such a question matters for Christians today.

Overall, I think my off-specification adventure helped some of my pupils to begin to think a little bit more deeply about biblical texts and historical methodology. I hope this blog provides a little bit of inspiration to go a bit beyond the specification and get your GCSE classes to delve a little deeper into the rich world of the texts they are reading. Not only would engagement with historical methodology enhance our teaching of Christianity, but other worldviews might also benefit from an appropriate form of this approach.

About

Thomas is a Subject Lead for Religious Studies at Colmers School & Sixth Form College, Birmingham.

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An education in Religion and Worldviews matters…but why?

Dr Kathryn Wright | 22 January, 2021

At Culham St Gabriel’s we are really interested in why an education in Religion and Worldviews matters. This is why we have recently launched a new pupil blog competition with this theme.

I’m biased of course! Working for a charity which is all about advocating for a high-quality education in Religion and Worldviews clearly means I think it matters! However, young people can give us unexpected answers to this question and that’s why our competition is so exciting. Here are two examples…

We will begin with Nutan. During the late 1990s I was involved with a research project about the implementation of agreed syllabuses. As part of this project my pupils were interviewed about the difference that RE made to them and why they thought it was important. Nutan announced that it was the skills she had learnt in RE that had enabled her to write better evaluative and analytical essays for English. She also felt the knowledge she gained helped her to understand some of the religious references in GCSE English set texts. She could see the transferable nature of her studies and the benefits of the subject in terms of broadening her understanding and cultural development. As a young teacher I confess I was a bit surprised!

Secondly, here is an example from closer to home:

This blog is from my youngest son Ben. He wrote it for my personal blog site in 2016. He is now 15 and I have asked his permission to use it here! I was intrigued by Ben’s response at the time because he used the term wise, and also because he connected studying religions with learning about human rights. I asked him today if he wished to update his thinking… he said that the most important reason for studying Religion and Worldviews is to understand others. He stressed the importance of learning about the diversity of different religious and non-religious worldviews. He also felt that it would help him get on well with others and enable him to identify prejudice or bias in society.

So why does an education in Religion and Worldviews matter? Why not ask some children or young people you know and see what they think?!

Details of our blog competition can be found here:

https://www.reonline.org.uk/news/pupil-blog-competition/

About

Dr Kathryn Wright is CEO of Culham St Gabriel's Trust

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How I… promote religious literacy about the Jewish worldview tradition through my curriculum

Ria Searle | 05 January, 2021

Over the last year, I have had the opportunity to build my department from essentially scratch, shaping our Key Stage 3 (KS3) curriculum in line with my vision for RE. After exhausting the Locally Agreed Syllabus, I went about ascertaining ‘priority’ topics for our pupils. Prior to the re-sequencing a student could complete secondary education spending only one one hour studying Judaism. Exploring Judaism was then my priority. However, I was stuck as to how to do justice to this extremely rich and diverse religion and tradition. Luckily, a PGCE peer came to my aid and allowed me to borrow her Scheme of Work (SOW), from which I drew much inspiration, adapting it to suit our school and pupils.

To promote religious literacy, we begin examining the notion of identity, particularly diverse identities within the Jewish tradition. The ‘Do Now’ starter task invites pupils to note what makes them, them; exploring their own identities. It is really important to start the SOW exploring the multiplicity of identities within the Jewish tradition, because if pupils’ have any knowledge of Judaism prior to the unit, it is overwhelmingly based on overgeneralized, single-lensed stereotypes, often images of Haredi Jews. Many are simply unaware that there are varied identities within Judaism and believe they do not know anyone who is Jewish, which isn’t true; they just didn’t know any Haredi Jews as they believe all Jewish people to be like.

We look at Orthodox, Liberal, and Secular identities and expression in daily and yearly life. I try to stress that Liberal and Orthodox Jews are no less ‘devoted’ or believe any less, but simply express faith differently. This provides a sustained reference point throughout the SOW. While exploring Kosher, Shabbat and Passover we refer back these and how expressions are varied in divergent Jewish tradition communities. For example, with observance of Shabbat, we suggest Orthodox Communities may avoid all work: light switches, cars, and mobile phones. Whereas some Liberal or Reform Jews may observe in adapted, often more modern ways, such as using cars to drive to Synagogue, allowing some electrical appliances (ovens, kettles) or, as one student offered from her own life observing when with Grandparents and using her phone (Instagram!) throughout.

Most effective for religious literacy is drawing on those with personal experience. I was fortunate to have Jewish pupils who offered their worldviews and traditions. This enabled students to connect ideas to varied interpretations and individuals they knew, bringing their learning to life and allowing them to interact positively with various worldviews. In addition, we invited in our local Liberal Rabbi to speak to the whole cohort about her faith, worldview and traditions. This was an incredible experience! It shocked the pupils to learn that, as part of her Liberal Jewish identity, she did not ‘keep kosher’ – for she could not then eat and celebrate with non-Jewish neigbours, and that she had had a scientific career in the traditionally male-dominated field of Chemistry prior to becoming a Rabbi, another traditionally male-dominated vocation. They were full of questions about her experience as a female faith leader: the reaction of Orthodox Jews to her position as Rabbi, her favourite parts of Shabbat – community worship, foods, time to pause and reflect on life, the week, and faith – and her experiences of Anti-Semitism. In particular, her family’s connection to the Holocaust and the inspiring journey of her Grandmother across Europe during the War, including liberation at Mauthausen in 1945 and her return to Prague, where she had fled 6 years prior. These personal experiences held the key to unlocking my pupils’ religious literacy about the multiplicity of Jewish traditions and worldviews, how lived faith was so different to the strict, traditional and ‘textbook’ religion many had expected from a Rabbi and leader in their local Jewish community – shamefully, far greater than I could achieve teaching in the classroom.

I understand this is not possible for all schools in all areas, my hometown wouldn’t have such a luxury of a nearby Liberal Rabbi however there are many websites and services online that would willingly engage in a dialogue, whether it be a prerecorded Q&A session, or even a live virtual meet, as we have all become accustomed to since the start of the pandemic! However, with certainty I say it was by far the best way of promoting religious literacy around the multiplicity of lived Judaism and real-life Jewish worldviews. I would advise starting with the basics – bust the myths, dispel stereotypes and open eyes to the diverse identities within the Jewish tradition, this will allow for more effective personal dialogue further into their learning.

About

Ria is Curriculum coordinator of RE and PSHCE in the London Borough of Hillingdon.

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A meaningful process…

Dr Kathryn Wright | 06 November, 2020

The last few years have been an interesting journey for me, not only in terms of my career, but also in terms of my thinking. When the Commission on RE’s Interim Report came out in 2017, I admit to being rather sceptical about a change of name for RE. However, I reflected, read and reflected more. I used to find the train or car journey’s useful for thinking about these matters!! Now I have to carve out time in the week to do this. It is important, because I believe what is being suggested in the Final Commission on RE Report (2018) regarding Religion and Worldviews is a vital paradigm shift, and not just a name change, and a potential game-changer for our subject.

On a personal level this has been a challenging and enthralling journey so far, and it is not at an end. My thinking is fluid, I am trying to see possibilities, to continue to read more and to learn from others across the diversity of our Religion and Worldviews community. At the launch of a recent Theos report Dr Lois Lee talked about being part of a meaningful process. For me, this described not only my personal journey, but also what I think is happening in our subject community at the moment.

This is why I welcome two recent reports. The first is a literature review entitled ‘Worldview: A Multidisciplinary Report’. This review was commissioned by the Religious Education Council of England and Wales working in partnership with TRS-UK. It aims to provide clarity as to the historical and contemporary use of the term ‘worldview’ in a number of disciplines. This report raises questions and at the end there is an invitation to engage; to be part of the conversation.

The second report, alluded to above is an independent academic report authored by Cooling with Bowie and Panjwani, entitled ‘Worldviews in Religious Education’ and published by Theos. One of the most powerful chapters in this report comprises three autobiographical reflections that illustrate the impact of worldview on academic development. The interaction between personal worldviews and what we might call worldview traditions in this section illustrates to me the educational potential of the worldview concept.

For me both these reports emphasise the fact that as a subject community we are in a meaningful process. These reports are not in themselves destinations; they are to be engaged with, discussed and reflected upon. They provide vital tools to help us work through what the new language means. Alongside these reports I have noticed conversations opening up; I have observed and read about teachers sharing what a paradigm shift might mean for the curriculum; I have taken part in a media discussion where journalists asked questions about what Religion and Worldviews means; I have listened to Ofsted’s Dr Richard Kueh, talking about new ways of understanding knowledge within this paradigm shift…. All these moves are part of a meaningful process of engagement. The question is, will you be part of this process?

 

https://www.religiouseducationcouncil.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/20-19438-REC-Worldview-Report-A4-v2.pdf Literature Review

https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/research/2020/10/21/worldviews-in-religious-education Theos Report

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAK1lCS2_y0 You Tube Recording of Theos Report Launch Event

https://www.reonline.org.uk/news/opening-up-conversations-about-religion-and-worldviews/ Includes teachers and other professionals discussing Religion and Worldviews in a series of blogs

 

About

Dr Kathryn Wright is CEO of Culham St Gabriel's Trust

See all posts by Dr Kathryn Wright

Lesser asked questions for Religion and Worldviews (and their relationship with curriculum)

Professor Bob Bowie | 14 August, 2020

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. Some questions don’t seem to get asked in religious education as much as others. Here are three examples designed to pose questions about the relationship between questions and curriculum and what we think an education in religion and worldviews might be for. Question One Explain how a common response to poverty can be reached from people who hold different religious and non-religious worldviews. In your answer show:
  • how a point of consensus can be reached from different theological and or philosophical principles, and
  • refer to hypothetical or actual case studies.
Two observations about question one: We tend to prefer questions that are about difference leading to disagreement, rather than difference leading to overlapping consensus. Should RE consider having structured questions designed to test out the possible range of areas where difference might still lead to cooperation or consensus? We don’t explicitly ask for case studies (although students can use them in their reasoning). As case studies are interesting way of thinking about communities in context, might this be a useful tool for RE? Question Two (designed to follow from a longer sacred text extract) Read the extract from a sacred text. Identify and explain different ways this text is engaged within religious traditions. In your answer refer to each of:
  • communal ritual or private prayer/meditation/reflection
  • scholarly debate or public moral discussion
  • communities / individuals living in contrasting contexts (poverty and wealth or peace and war)
This question is designed to show diverse ways of ‘knowing’ and ‘engaging’ in religions and worldviews. It is also about the importance of context in textual interpretation and in the way religious life develops. This goes further in explicitly acknowledging different kinds of dialogue that the subject should entertain: scholarly and public. Question Three Should voluntary assisted dying be permitted? Explore this question and two different settings in which it might be answered. First consider a political debate in the media. Second consider a hospital chaplain asked to counsel a family faced with a request from a terminally ill relative. Identify any differences or similarities in the way the question might be engaged. This question illuminates the kind of classroom experience we want to have happening and the sort of argumentation there might be. Should RE help students win arguments? Should it help them be good listeners and pastoral helpers of others in times of personal crisis? A few things might jump out from these questions. First, the question structure will ‘beg’ for different kinds of content shaped in different kinds of ways in any curriculum that prepares the students for this question. Second, distinct social aims are apparent. Question one requires the idea of consensus being reached from different starting points to be structured into the exploration of the content. Question two requires blocks of texts to have been explored through multiple types of engagement and multiple contexts (it is multidimensional and contextual in character). Question three requires an explicit treatment of different settings for discussion: one that speaks to a pastoral context, the other that speaks to a more traditional debating context. I think all of these are interesting, and all of them should have space in a religion and worldviews classroom. Now it is possible that my suggestions are not the ‘right questions to ask’. Indeed, some of these might not work very well in practice – they could surely be improved. However, they do reveal the relationship between question and curriculum, the way knowledge is organised, and the kinds of skills developed in association with that content. They reveal something of the possible character of learning in religion and worldviews classrooms and they focus on the ‘how’ of the subject, as well as the ‘what’, something highlighted by the Commission for RE (2018) report.   Professor Bob Bowie, Canterbury Christ Church University @bobbowie, bob.bowie@canterbury.ac.uk, www.bobbowie.com,   This blog is linked to a piece of work written by me in a book currently in press. ‘The implicit knowledge structure preferred by questions in English Religious Studies public exams’. The book, edited by Gert Biesta and Pat Hannam is Religion and education: The forgotten dimensions of religious education? Leiden: Brill | Sense. It also links to the Texts and Teachers research project (www.nicer.org.uk).

About

Bob is a Professor at Canterbury Christ Church University @bobbowie, bob.bowie@canterbury.ac.uk, www.bobbowie.com,

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An Interesting View of Worldviews

Paul Smalley | 11 August, 2020

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.

OK. I admit it. I’ll come clean: I think religion is inherently interesting.

Personally, I am intrigued by some of the ways people carry out their deeply held beliefs. I am impressed by the way that many people find comfort in doing seemingly strange things or by having faith in apparently unfathomable beliefs. I love the stories that they tell – and those they ignore – and the different ways people interpret, reinterpret, and misinterpret their own sources of wisdom and authority. I enjoy doing what’s called reception criticism, studying the way that these texts have been interpreted by popular culture in different times and how popular culture has reciprocally influenced the perceived understanding of the texts. I’m interested in how people who don’t want to belong (to a religion) do have beliefs, and how some people do want to belong to groups with which they share very little beliefs. So, for example what many Roman Catholics believe is often different to what the Catholic Church teaches, but that doesn’t seem to affect many people’s ‘being Catholic’. And I’m fascinated by the fact we use language like ‘belonging’, ‘being’ and ‘believing’…. What do these really mean? I’m amused (not in a funny way) that asking a person, ‘Are you religious?’, ‘Do you have a faith?’ ‘Are you a member of a religion?’, ‘Do you have a religion?’ or ‘Do you belong to a religion?’ might result in very different answers.

I’m not very interested in shopping, although I seem to do quite a lot of it. One of the arguments for a new vision for RE is that the study of religions is no longer relevant to young people as most of them don’t belong to a religion. I don’t really buy that argument (do you see what I did there… shopping… buy! Oh, never mind…). I don’t think the majority of (young) people are ethical vegans, or Humanists, or liberal Anglicans, or Buddhists, or Muslims. And even if they were, I don’t think we should be teaching just what most people think they are (that was possibly a mistake of the RE of the latter decades of the last century). I think that the majority of people in the west have a consumerist capitalist worldview underpinned by a sort of selfish rationalism. For many of us the purpose of life is to accrue apparently attractive property and wealth in order to ‘feel good’ in a quasi-hedonistic way. And that’s fair enough. If I were more interested in studying that, I would be a sociologist, and I’m not. In RE we should probably be teaching what is most interesting, or most useful in helping people make sense of the world, what is most … relevant.

So, I have no desire to study shopping, and I’m not a sociologist. I’m not much of a historian or a theologian, either, although I understand that these disciplinary lenses can be useful in pursuing our aims. Ah! – but what are these aims? …Well, John Hall in the Foreword to the CoRE report suggests, “The subject should explore the role that religious and non-religious worldviews play in all human life.” Which is lovely, but possibly a little vague. (As an aside, I’ve been wondering recently why the phrase “religious and non-religious” has been adopted. I dislike defining something by what it is not. Wouldn’t “secular and sacred worldviews” be a better phraseology?). The CoRE report, has another stab at the aims of the subject, tucked away in Appendix 1: “It is about understanding the human quest for meaning, being prepared for life in a diverse world and having space to reflect on one’s own worldview” (CoRE: 73)

Now that’s something that does interest me, what the best RE teachers have been doing for years, and a vision I think I can get behind: pupils should study the ways secular and sacred worldviews have used narrative, questions, symbols and praxis [1] to try to make sense of the world, both through history and in contemporary society. If pupils understand the ways that these secular and sacred worldviews relate and inform the fluid worldviews of individuals in society, causing people to believe or behave in certain ways, it will prepare them for the contemporary liquid modernity [2] which they inhabit. And through all this learning, if given space for personal reflection, pupils will have opportunity to engage in epistemic cognition [3] and develop their own emerging personal Weltbild [4]. This is the sort of RE that I have encouraged those beginning RE teachers who have trained with us at Edge Hill to explore. I hope their pupils find it interesting and relevant.

 

[1] Hella, Elina. 2009. “Developing Students’ Worldview Literacy through Variation: Pedagogical Prospects of Critical Religious Education and the Variation Theory of Learning for Further Education.” Journal of Chaplaincy in Further Education 5 (1): 4-12.

[2] Bauman, Z. 2000, Liquid modernity, Polity, Oxford.

[3] Fetz, R.L. & Reich, K.H. 1989, “World Views and Religions Development”, Journal of Empirical Theology, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 46-60

[4] Weltbild is one of two German words for worldview, this one having the idea of a personal image of the workings of the universe was favoured by Heidegger. Weltanschauung tends have more of the feel of an all encompassing meta-narrative. I am sure this will be much more comprehensively covered in the REC’s forthcoming ‘Worldviews Project’

About

Paul is a Senior Lecturer in RE at Edge Hill University.

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Worldview Education, hermeneutics and teaching pupils how to know, not just what to know

Professor Bob Bowie | 07 August, 2020

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.

The Commission for RE final report definition of Worldview, emphasises the way of understanding, what I sometimes call ‘knowing’ meaning the way of making sense of things that goes on in a worldview.

“A worldview is a person’s way of understanding, experiencing and responding to the world. It can be described as a philosophy of life or an approach to life. This includes how a person understands the nature of reality and their own place in the world.” (on page 4 and 26 where it is unpacked and then it is further unpacked on page 72).

On p. 29 the report relates “way of understanding” directly to disciplinarity and it mentions sacred texts scholarship:

“The explicit, academic study of worldviews provides an opportunity to develop a range of specific and general transferable skills. Skills that are intrinsic to the disciplines involved in the study of worldviews include analysing a range of primary and secondary sources, understanding symbolic language, using technical terminology effectively, interpreting meaning and significance, empathy, respectful critique of beliefs and positions, recognizing bias and stereotype, and representing views other than one’s own with accuracy.” (p.29)

And this is central to the understanding of diversity. On p.30, the link between this and making sense of how different communities of interpretation are possible is underscored

“There is now greater recognition that within each major tradition there are different communities of interpretation and different theological and philosophical approaches.” (p.30)

So there is an explicit interest in the way of knowing that goes on in a worldview, not just a list of facts about ‘what they do and what they believe’. An advisor to the Texts and Teachers’ project, Professor Towey, Director of the Aquinas Centre, at St Mary’s University, who was one of the Commissioners, reminded us that the approach to interpreting sacred texts was often key to unlocking the self-understanding and practice of different denominations today. The report continues that in the subject there needs to be significant rebalancing of the ‘how’ of worldview with the ‘what’ of worldview.

“how worldviews work in practice, is as important as knowing the content of particular worldviews.” (p,31)

The proposition of the commission contains within it a hermeneutical turn for the subject. This is how and why hermeneutics is central to worldviews. Religion and Worldviews cannot simply transfer propositional knowledge, without also introducing pupils to the structure of those propositions and in that structuring we see the worldview that has shaped the discipline. Here an observation of Liam Gearon is important. In his book On Holy Ground, he identified how the rise of social sciences were in part a rejection of role of religion in making sense – disciplines are themselves perforated by worldviews. Disciplines are part of a historical and cultural development which is why philosophers like Alasdair MacIntrye and Julian Baggini argue for an understanding of the place (and time) from which an attempt at an objective view may be sought. Philosophy, often loved in our subject, is itself a space of contested worldviews. I recommend Julian Baggini’s book, How the World Thinks, which I know some RE teachers have been reading thanks to #REBookClub. Baggini sheds light on the importance of learning to be able to operate through multiple ways of making meaning.

Religion and worldviews must not be a mish mash of propositional facts, thrown together without rationale. A worldview education means introducing pupils to the way things are organised, the grammar, the ways of knowing practiced from a place, a community, and how meaning is made. I find the analogy of language learning helpful. Our subject is where we teach children to read their own language of meaning making. Everyone, by virtue of actually having a first language has this as language itself, the shaper of our expressions, is soaked in worldview, indicated through the metaphors which our sentences are riddled with. In our subject we must seek for our pupils to recognise their own metaphorical landscape, the worldviews that shape their perception, as well as becoming bilingual in (I suggest) two traditions’ ways of making meaning. To bring about this transformation we have work to do. We need to translate the grammars of knowing found in worldviews into progression structures of the kinds of activities that will tease out concepts and ways of making sense in those traditions. The questions we ask and the things we value in answers given will need to be keyed into these progression structures and the ways of meaning/ grammars of knowing practiced by traditions, rather than bolted on as an afterthought. In this way we might be able to teach pupils how to know, not just what to know.

About

Bob is a Professor at Canterbury Christ Church University @bobbowie, bob.bowie@canterbury.ac.uk, www.bobbowie.com,

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Why Religion & Worldviews won’t dilute my passion for rigorous Religious Studies

Dominic Kidney | 04 August, 2020

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.

As I enter my fourth year of teaching, Religious Education continues to be at the forefront of curriculum debates and media coverage, which arguably, more than ever, demonstrates the need for our subject to be rigorous and detailed in its delivery to young people across the UK.

During the last three years after graduating from Edge Hill University in Secondary Religious Education with QTS, I have had the privilege to teach within a rural independent school setting and now a Church of England Academy, with the continued benefit of ‘Religious Studies’ being highly regarded as an academic subject. With this, Religious Studies has also had a pastoral element to nurture young people and their values, which I view as crucial. When reading through the Final Report of the Commission on RE for the first time, the push for entitlement and quality in the teaching of religion and worldviews is what resonated with me the most. I viewed this commission as not concerned with changing RE from the core basis of ‘learning about and learning from religion’[1], but instead as highlighting the need for the statutory entitlement of RE to be enforced in all schools regardless of status, excellent practice through specialist teaching and clarification on the purposes of RE as an academic subject.

As a teacher I have been fortunate enough to train and work in schools where ‘good RE’ was and is being purposed and taught, which was neither over-complicated or ‘diluted’ in the curriculum through the incorporation of other subjects or irregular timetabling. Personally, this has shaped my view on RE to rely heavily on three things to succeed; specialist teaching, reasonable/regular curriculum time and senior leadership support. Through these simple structures, I have seen first-hand how RE can enrich young people to learn not only about the ‘big six’, but also other religious and non-religious worldviews that have and continue to shape the UK and beyond. I think ‘worldviews’ can often be mistaken as ‘more content’, although I believe that it is having the time to first acknowledge (which through no fault of the teacher is often forgotten through curriculum time pressures) and then teach about the varying religious and worldviews in their own right and in application to the ethical/moral issues that feature heavily in various RE curriculums from Key Stages 3-5. In consequence, I believe this can create well-rounded young people who are able to understand each other and the world around them. As an educator, I believe ‘good RE’ not only educates young people on religion, belief and worldviews, but also shapes their outlook to flourish in the diversity we are so fortunate to have. Regardless of the name it is assigned, RE is learning about what people believe and do, which is what makes our subject so unique and diverse. The task we have as RE educators is therefore of paramount importance, as we are the ones teaching young people about their fellow members of society, which in turn will shape views towards one another. This is why a clarified vision, and supporting colleagues across the nation in pushing for the statutory requirement to be enforced without ‘diluting’ RE, for me, is indeed welcomed. I certainly am no expert, I am just passionate about RE being taught and viewed as an academic and rigorous subject, which can offer opportunities for conversations about beliefs and the world, whilst also nurturing young people to be happy and understand each other with a value for Religious Education (directly and/or indirectly!).

 

[1]Geoff Teece (2010) Is it learning about and from religions, religion or religious education? And is it any wonder some teachers don’t get it?, British Journal of Religious Education, 32:2, 93-103, DOI: 10.1080/01416200903537399

 

 

About

Dominic is a Teacher of Religious Studies at a Church of England Academy in Liverpool.

See all posts by Dominic Kidney