Teacher/Researcher Case Study: Zoe Higgins

RE Connect: RE and Climate Crisis Teacher Fellowship Programme

I had been teaching for 19 years, mainly in KS2, when I spotted the opportunity to join a teacher fellowship run in partnership with Dr Jeremy Kidwell, Senior Lecturer in Theological Ethics at the University of Birmingham and Dr Ian Jones of St Peter’s Saltley Trust. The fellowship was designed to give teachers a deeper knowledge and understanding of the climate crisis with a focus on religion and worldviews and lead to projects about how to transfer this learning into classroom practice. A teacher fellowship is a part time project, in this case 7 online evening sessions and 2 full days over 9 months, which enables teachers to work closely with researchers and specialists on transforming practice in a particular area. Having been RE Lead for over 10 years, Global Lead for 3 years and with a keen personal interest in climate issues I applied straight away. My school is a Church of England VA school in a large village setting and part of a diocese MAT. There are 320 pupils on role from Reception to Year 6 with 25% of these children coming from out of catchment. The majority of the children are White British.

The fellowship provided opportunities to hear from specialists, beginning with an introduction to the science behind the current climate situation which left me well informed, a little overwhelmed but also inspired by the knowledge. My main thoughts were; if this is what the Science is telling us, I need to continue with this project and find ways to include the climate crisis in my teaching of RE. Over the next few sessions we heard from a member of Extinction Rebellion Muslims, a Professor of Sikh Studies, a member of Young Christian Climate Network which explained how some Muslims, Christians and Sikhs are responding to the Climate Crisis and how their beliefs impact this. Again, more food for thought about how this could be shared with pupils and used to help them consider their own responses.

The next few sessions were more focused on pedagogy with Jeremy Kidwell speaking about ethics and culture, Lat Blaylock exploring classroom practice with the group, Ian Jones discussing Religion, Climate Change and the Affect. We tried scriptural reasoning with Nick Adams and went on to hear about creative and experiential ways of teaching and learning in RE. In our final session together we were inspired by Justine Ball, an adviser/inspector for primary RE in Hampshire, about an art project she had done with local schools focusing on climate changes and Charlie Syson, a secondary teacher, who has been developing a scheme of work on less widely taught religions as part of a Farmington Scholarship. Throughout the months of the project we were also provided with suggested reading and watching which provided further background knowledge and food for thought.

With all this content the difficulty was narrowing down what my individual project would look like as I came away with ideas and new knowledge after every session. I finally settled on a scheme of work with a set of accompanying photo cards. The scheme of work would focus on how people’s religious beliefs influence their thoughts and actions about climate change. I used key enquiry questions for each key stage to frame the learning; ‘What do people love about Earth and how do they look after it?’; ‘Why does caring for the world matter?’; ‘What do different people do to care for the world and why do they do it?’; and ‘How do beliefs influence people’s responses to the climate crisis?’. The scheme of work would include 6 lessons for Reception, Key Stage 1, Lower Key Stage 2 and Upper Key Stage 2 and could be used as a half term’s block of work or as RE focus week. I also wanted to include the photo cards and some accompanying resources that could be used without the scheme of work.

When trialling some of the resources and lesson plans, I found that all of the children were engaged and excited about the learning and when using the photo cards they found havingpictures of real people inspiring and interesting. In the initial y1/2 lesson, which looked at what climate change is, the children were very eager to discuss their ideas. What I also found was that the y4 children looking at the photos needed some structure to help them focus their discussion about encourage deeper thinking. With the y1/2 lessons, the teachers who trialled the first two lessons found them easy to use and appropriate in length and activity but found that the children lacked some subject knowledge to fully access the lesson.

At this stage, I have a working scheme of work and accompanying resources, which I will continue to develop based on trialling and discussions with the teacher fellows and RE specialists who met in person on the official final day of the fellowship. The aim is that this will be shared more widely allowing other schools to include a focus on RE and Climate Change within their curriculum. Being part of the fellowship has been an opportunity to focus my time and thinking on RE and about the importance of including climate change. The opportunity to work with others who are passionate about both RE and raising awareness about climate change amongst young people really has been inspiring.

For further information or to discuss the project please email: zhiggins@scargill.derbyshire.sch.uk

 Zoe Higgins Teacher and Religion & Worldviews Lead

Teacher Case Study: Rebecca Wright

RE Connect: RE and Climate Crisis Teacher Fellowship Programme

Fellowship Aims
 When I saw the advertisement to join the project, I was certainly intrigued. Ian Jones (Director of the Saltley Trust) and Dr Jeremy Kidwell (University of Birmingham) had organised a Teacher Fellowship Programme, focusing upon RE and the environment/ climate change. The interrelationship between ecology and the RE classroom was not a connection I had previously made or seen explicitly on a KS3 curriculum.
The project involved evening sessions led by a variety of experts to support fellows with their own projects. These projects were then presented during a symposium in Birmingham to a panel of experts.

Focus of my project
I was very aware when developing my project, that not all schools would be able to remove one of their existing units entirely in order to make space for a topic covering RE and ecology. Criteria set by the Local Agreed Syllabus and ever-decreasing curriculum time means that it can be a struggle to teach students required content, without shoehorning another topic in. So, my plan was to create an interdisciplinary unit of work that could either be a standalone topic or used as individual lessons within key topics already covered on KS3 curriculums.
My unit of work (‘People and the Planet’) is presented as a booklet, as I find these to be effective tools within my classroom. It provides clear instructions and routine, but it is important to use it as a resource, rather than a lesson. The booklet is also helpful if there are non-specialists in the department, as it provides structure and uniformity across the whole school delivery of RE.
The ‘People and the Planet’ topic focuses on student reflection and allowing students to fully embed themselves in the narrative. In the classroom, while I make links to experiences that the students can relate to, encourage discussion/ personal reflection, etc., certain topics can be easier to link with the lives of the students than others. This was discussed during our first workshop and became a focus when trialling my project in the classroom. As the topic of climate change is everywhere, students were very eager to share their personal experiences and contexts. The aim of the project is for students to fully place themselves into the narrative of climate emergency, rather than seeing it as a problem for others to solve.

Reflection upon action research
After planning a first draft of my booklet, I trialled the lesson with one of my year 7 groups. When first exploring the topic, student’s thoughts revolved around the phrases “they should”/ “they need to.” Students were all well-versed in the causes of climate change and what steps could be taken to resolve it. Many proudly shared that they recycle/ walk to school/ have an electric car, but ultimately the focus was placed upon others. Exploring this further, many felt they were too young, or inhibited by their family lifestyle. While I cannot change these factors, this allowed us to explore collective responsibility and how everyone can make a difference. Many activities were situation based, allowing students to apply learning to their everyday circumstances.
At the beginning and end of the topic, students created an artistic response to the phrase ‘People and the Planet.’ The initial response was completed simply based upon the phrasing, prior to commencing the topic. There was a contrast between the two responses, with the final responses showing a greater sense of connectedness and togetherness. Students have shifted towards using collective pronouns, rather than “they” when talking about the climate emergency.

What next?
The fellowship concluded with a symposium, allowing us to share our project with the other teacher fellows. It was fantastic to hear how other teachers within different contexts interpreted the project and applied it to their setting. We were also able to receive feedback on our projects, which are being refined prior to being published on the fellowship website.
Based on feedback, I have adjusted aspects of my project and will trial these with students. I will also be able to apply learning from the fellowship to other units of work and share with my department.
The experience of the teacher fellowship has been applied to my classroom through emphasising the challenges of intersectionality in teaching around environmental crisis and religion. In the classroom I am very aware not to say statements such as “all Christians/ Muslims etc” however we focus completely on how religion influences individuals. While it is vital to learn about religious beliefs in RE, we often forget to discuss how other aspects of social identity influence decision. No religious believer is only defined by their religion, and the fellowship highlighted that I should focus upon this more in the classroom.

I will be presenting alongside with Dr Kidwell, Ian Jones and Amy Powell at the RExChange conference later in the year about the project and the concept of a teacher fellowship in RE as a form of research and CPD.
 

Rebecca Wright is currently the Head of RE at a secondary school in Northampton. She studied Theology and Religion at the University of Oxford.

Teacher/Researcher Case Study: Lucy Peacock

I do not identify as a Religious Education specialist. Rather, I am an interdisciplinary researcher spanning education, the sociology of religion and interfaith studies. Nevertheless, my PhD research into interfaith encounters in schools provided an unexpected opportunity to constructively and critically engage in RE debates.

School Linking: A PhD case study
My 2016-2020 PhD examined the relationship between ‘interfaith encounters’ and ‘peaceful relations’ among young people in England’s schools by evaluating the work of the Faith and Belief Forum’s (F&BF’s) School Linking programme, an extracurricular scheme which brings students together to creatively engage with questions of identity, belonging and belief. School Linking pairs two classes, from two different schools (mostly, but not necessarily, from schools with a religious character), for one academic year. The linked teachers are trained in interfaith dialogue facilitation skills, before delivering three joint interfaith workshops, called Link Days, in which the students visit each other’s schools and take part in creative activities. For a student on the scheme, Link Days present opportunities to creatively explore their background, beliefs and communities with students that they may otherwise never meet.
For my PhD, I analysed 1,488 student and teacher surveys, conducted focus groups and observed School Linking activities in four faith schools in London to better understand how interfaith encounters foster interpersonal relationships between students, and what factors influence how School Linking is experienced by its participants. I completed my PhD in 2020, presenting my research findings in a report published on F&BF’s website. Recognising the need to challenge the assumptions of School Linking and articulate the complex processes underlying the relationships between the programme’s activities and ‘peaceful relations’ in a manner that was grounded in academic theory, I chose to reassess the intergroup model of contact theory (Allport 1954; Hewstone and Brown 1986), which essentially argues that contact between two or more groups reduces prejudiced attitudes. By mapping my findings onto Allport’s (1954) four ‘conditions’ for effective prejudice reduction (equal status, common goals, cooperation and institutional support), I presented F&BF with a practical ‘recipe for successful interfaith contact’ and reflected on how School Linking can further our understanding of the theory itself.

Implications for RE: An unexpected element
My academic background is in theology, and I see myself now as a researcher straddling the sociology of religion, education and interfaith studies. Whilst I expected my research to lightly touch upon RE, the extent to which it spoke to curriculum debates and teacher practice surprised me.
Early on, I noticed that students and teachers mentioned RE in their motivation for taking part in School Linking. A year 9 student from a Muslim-ethos school, linked with a Roman Catholic-ethos school said, “I am interested in learning RE in a different environment and this may also help me in my GCSEs”. When I asked teachers to simply state why they are taking part, responses included “raises the profile of the RE department at school”, “part of our RE curriculum is living / practising your faith so by teaching others our signs and symbols / celebrations of Catholicism we are fulfilling the curriculum”, and “support study of RS”. This was in the back of my mind, when, following a Link Day visit to a school’s local mosque, I observed a teacher telling his students, “as well as being important for interfaith relationships, everything we’ve covered here will be part of your GCSEs in six months’ time”.
During my data collection, School Linking’s reach was expanding beyond schools with a religious character to include community schools. Moreover, RE teachers were regularly being nominated by their schools to lead a School Linking class. It was important to me that I positioned my research in such a way that it spoke to the educational landscape experienced by my participants, but I struggled at times to configure my empirical and theoretical insights with the RE landscape. How significant is the connection between RE and extra-curricular activities? Will the scope of my research limit the implications for RE teachers? Can the research truly speak to RE when I don’t identify as an RE specialist?

Things ‘clicked’ for me upon reading the Commission on Religious Education’s Religion and Worldviews: The Way Forward report (CoRE 2018). It was clear that the report’s proposed move towards and Religion and Worldviews curriculum fundamentally emphasised the complexity and diversity of religious and non-religious worldviews; it intrinsically questioned notions of ‘typicality’. I could not ignore that School Linking was, and still is, used as a tool to enhance RE provision and experience in schools, thus it was vital for me to examine whether its theoretical underpinnings enable the programme to engage in discursive shifts in RE. My findings indicated that framing School Linking through contact theory risks closing worldview complexity down. The type of knowledge reportedly gained by School Linking students is sometimes oversimplified; generalisable ‘facts’ speak to principles of intergroup contact theory, and often align with school assessment measures, but do not accurately capture the religious and worldview plurality of the programme’s participants. I explored this in more detail in my (2021) open access article, Contact-based interfaith programmes in schools and the changing religious education landscape: negotiating a worldviews curriculum, in which I proposed an alternative theoretical framework to School Linking – the ‘decategorization’ model of contact (Brewer and Miller 1984, 1988; Miller 2002).

The process of writing the article affirmed to me a hope that academic and policy debate will recognise the value that extra-curricular programmes can provide in exploring questions of religious and non-religious belief in the classroom moving forward. I invite RE teachers to explore alternative literature, such as my own research, when considering how to facilitate meaningful student encounters across worldview difference. A summary of its application to RE teaching in this RE:ONLINE feature is a very welcome first step.

Next steps: exploring worldviews in more detail
I continue to explore interfaith encounters in education. For now, I am working on two projects related to higher education. I am a research fellow on the Building Positive Relationships among University Students across Religion and Worldview Diversity (‘IDEALS UK’) project, which explores how university students develop attitudes towards religion and worldview diversity, and examines how different aspects of university life shape interfaith learning and development. This month also marks the start of my new project, STEM and Belief in UK and USA Higher Education, which aims to promote meaningful university Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) opportunities for underrepresented belief groups by better understanding how to foster STEM environments inclusive of belief diversity. Both of these projects consciously adopt the terminology ‘religion and worldview diversity’ to recognise that barriers in communication and understanding can arise from differences of perspective not captured by conventional categories of religion or faith. Considering ‘worldview’ alongside religion enables us to explore conceptual and empirical links between our higher education research and the continued Religion and Worldviews curriculum debate, something I look forward to sharing with the RE:ONLINE community in the coming months and years.

References
Allport, G. W. 1954. The Nature of Prejudice. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Brewer, M., and N. S. Miller. 1984. “Beyond the Contact Hypothesis: Theoretical Perspectives on Desegregation.” In Groups in Contact: The Psychology of Desegregation, edited by N. S. Miller and M. B. Brewer, 281–302. Orlando, Fl: Academic Press.
Brewer, M., and N. S. Miller. 1988. “Contact and Cooperation: When Do They Work?” In Eliminating Racism: Profiles in Controversy, edited by P. A. Katz and D. A. Taylor, 315–326. New York, NY: Plenum.
CoRE (Commission on Religious Education). 2018. “Final Report: Religion and Worldviews: The Way Forward.” Commission on Religious Education. Accessed 2 July 2022. https://www.commissiononre.org.uk/final-report-religion-and-worldviews-the-way-forward-a-national-plan-for-re/
Hewstone, M., and R. Brown. 1986. “Contact Is Not Enough: An Intergroup Perspective on the ‘Contact Hypothesis.” In Contact and Conflict in Intergroup Encounters, edited by M. Hewstone and R. Brown, 1–44. Oxford: Blackwell.
Miller, N. 2002. “Personalization and the Promise of Contact Theory.” Journal of Social Issues 58 (2): 387–410. doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/1540-4560.00267.
Peacock, L. 2021. “Contact-based interfaith programmes in schools and the changing religious education landscape: negotiating a worldviews curriculum.” Journal of Beliefs & Values, DOI: 10.1080/13617672.2021.2004708

Dr Lucy Peacock is a Research Fellow in Sociology of Religion

Teacher/Researcher Case Study: Mark Plater

Previous experience

I have a growing experience of Religious Education research, dating back to my time as a diocesan education adviser in Chelmsford, when I ran an All Saints Trust funded RE Resources Project with a group of schools, comparing teachers’ responses to specific resources at three different stages: firstly, their immediate response to seeing the resource (a five-second glance, such as one might give at a bookstall); their more-considered reactions after a fifteen minute look through it; and finally, their reactions after having made use of it with a class of pupils. All of the resources were classroom materials, and it was interesting to note that quite often, what at first sight didn’t appeal, often was seen in a very different light once it had actually been used by pupils (and vice versa!).

Shortly after that project I embarked on an MPhil/PhD programme to explore Hallowe’en in schools. This was quite a different style of study, using a questionnaire to discover what was actually happening in respect of the festival in three local authorities, as well as an exploration of teachers’ attitudes to Hallowe’en. Although I eventually decided not to complete a PhD, I did publish this work (Plater, 2007) and continued to explore the topic, publishing a few years later the results of a pupil survey, examining their activities during Hallowe’en and their attitudes to it (Plater, 2013).

By now I had moved into higher education teaching, and, alongside my teaching, was actively engaged in leading regular field visits, locally to religious centres in the region, but also further afield, to London, Turkey, Rome, and India. Especially for students in Lincolnshire, such first-hand experience of non-Christian places of worship was often a novel experience, and some of my students had never previously even been to London, let alone Europe or Asia. I was already convinced of the value of travel, having myself lived in Australia and India, but these university visits further confirmed for me Allport’s ideas about contact theory (Allport, 1954): that such immediate experiences of the ‘other’ are invaluable for breaking down stereotypes and assumptions, and for helping the study of religion to come alive for students.

Dialogue

Another key concept threading through my experience of university teaching is dialogue. Apart from teaching several modules with this word in the title, I have also established strong links over many years with the Dialogue Society, a Hizmet-inspired, Turkish Muslim group who are based in London and several other cities around the UK, but who also were instrumental in setting up my student visits to Turkey. I have participated in many of their activities over the years, and now count them as good friends.

The same concept of dialogue has also been central in discussions about school religious education. Mike Castelli proposes Dialogic RE (Castelli, 2012; Castelli, 2018) as a pedagogic methodology for RE. A former work colleague- Antony Luby (Luby, 2019) – also works in this field, identifying different forms of dialogue used by pupils in a Catholic school setting, and Kevin O’Grady’s work (O’Grady, 2018) portrays the whole purpose of RE as being a dialogue with difference. These, and many others from across the world (e.g. Bagrowicz, 2010; Schihalejev, 2009; Linden, 2016; Shuster, 2016) lay emphasis on the importance of dialogue as a focus and methodology in the teaching of school religious education.

An idea is born

I have been the coordinator for a Lincolnshire RE Hub group for several years, seeking to support and develop RE in the region through teacher support and resourcing. In discussing this group with a director of the All Saints Educational Trust (ASET), the idea was developed for a local project which would help to fund the coming together of schools and faith practitioners for mutual benefit. The funding would enable us to purchase the expertise of the St Philip’s Centre, Leicester, as well as provide support for schools to fully engage with the programme. A funding bid was drawn up, using the expertise of this local ASET director, and we were successful in gaining funding for an initial pilot programme.

The programme was based on a very simple idea: to link faith practitioners to six schools for a year, allowing a relationship to develop between the two, and with funding to both incentivise engagement and cover the costs of active participation. The schools were free to engage in the programme in any way that they wished, and ideas and training was provided in order to stimulate suggestions and to enhance their enthusiasm.

The challenge of implementation

No difficulties were encountered in attracting interest from local schools, and I was then faced with the challenge of selecting six schools from the thirteen applications. The selected schools offered a balance of primary and secondary, large and small, rural and city. Named contacts were identified from all six schools, and faith representatives were identified by St Philip’s Centre according to school preferences.

A timeline had the pilot stage of the programme running from September 2019 through to July 2020, with the possibility of bids for further funding to expand the project into 2021 onwards. However, Covid-19 lockdown resulted in an extension of the first phase to December 2020, and the freezing of ASET funds from the same period, meaning that any expansion of the project had to go on hold, at least for the time being.

 Outcomes of the project

At three stages during the course of the pilot project intermediate feedback was gained from all participants and this was summarised into published Project Update leaflets. The purpose of the updates was to maintain enthusiasm, and to share ideas on how individual schools were engaging with this unique opportunity.  These leaflets provided photos of activities and descriptions and quotations from schools and faith practitioners. However, lockdown had affected participating schools in different ways, so that some of the planned visits had to be cancelled, and other activities were significantly curtailed. Most schools did manage to maintain involvement however, but often in different ways than they had initially intended or hoped.

A final project conference was held online in December 2020 to consider the impact of the programme and to update participants on how it might be developed further into the future. Follow up interviews were also held with all participants in order to ascertain the individual impact on schools and participants, and to seek their advice on how the programme might be refined. A Final Report on the project was published in November 2021 and can be accessed here: https://bgro.repository.guildhe.ac.uk/id/eprint/884/

Participants in the project were unanimously positive about its impact, and in some instances the claim was made that it had left a lasting impact on pupils and teachers. One teacher commented, “This project was amazing! It’s one of the best things we’ve ever been involved in” (Primary teacher).

However, there were two schools (one primary, one secondary) which did not fully engage. In one instance this was because the link staff member moved on from the school during the start of the programme, and in the other, personal circumstances led to a delay in establishing practical actions, and then came the impact of Covid. With such a small cohort of participating schools, two ‘failures’ amounted to one third of the participating schools, so this was a great disappointment for me.

Another learning point for me was the fact that, in the follow up interviews, several of the school link-teachers expressed the wish that clearer guidance and targets had been provided. As one teacher put it: “We’re used to being told what to do” (Primary teacher). My hope had been that schools would appreciate the freedom and flexibility that was provided through the open structures of the project, but in fact the lack of such targets only implied that there were no minimum requirements, that it did not matter how much they engaged: they were free to do as little or as much as time and circumstances allowed. I guess that I had underestimated the extent to which performativity and target-culture had infiltrated the teacher mindset. Without threshold standards and minimum targets, there was no framework within which to work; no set standard meant that the task was inconsequential, that it did not matter. In the event, all of these teachers did engage with the task and did make arrangements with their linked faith visitor, but this was due to their own interest and motivation, not, as was the norm for them, because there was a task that had to be done and for which they might be held accountable.

What next?

I am still hopeful that it might be possible to expand this project to a wider range of schools in the Lincolnshire area. However, this would not be possible without further funding to appropriately engage all participants in the setting up of the programme, and, in view of what I have said above, next time I might work with participants more closely to identify appropriate expectations and targets.

Meantime, lockdown afforded me the opportunity to engage with another fascinating piece of research: to explore the make-up of the 2020-21 cohort of secondary Religious Education trainees on various Initial Teacher Training courses across the country. Because this involved completion of an online survey, it ideally suited the lockdown context, and, because this proved to be the largest ever cohort of trainees for RE ITT, it was a unique group to work with in seeking to discover their motivations for entering teaching as a profession and to discover various other demographic details about the group. The results of this piece of work have now been published, and can be downloaded from: https://bgro.repository.guildhe.ac.uk/id/eprint/881/

References

Allport, G. W. (1954). The nature of prejudice. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books.

Bagrowicz, J. (2010). Dialogue in religious education. Paedagogia Christiana 26:2 pp. 215-232. DOI https://doi.org/10.12775/PCh.2010.032

Castelli, M. (2012). Faith dialogue as a pedagogy for a post secular religious education. Journal of Beliefs and Values, 33 (2), 207-216.

Castelli, M. (2018) Principles and procedures for classroom dialogue. In: Chater M (ed.) We Need to Talk about Religious Education. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, pp. 143–154.

Linden, L. (2016) From Freire to religious pluralism: exploring dialogue in the classroom, International Studies in Catholic Education, 8:2, 231-240. DOI: 10.1080/19422539.2016.1206404

Luby, A. (2019) Dialogic skills in RE: recontextualising the dialogue school. Journal of Religious Education (67). Pp.127–142.

O’Grady, K. (2018) Religious Education as a Dialogue with Difference: Fostering Democratic Citizenship through the Study of Religions in Schools. NY: Routledge. DOI https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351064385

Plater, M (2007) ‘Toil & trouble revisited: Hallowe’en in schools’, British Journal of Religious Education 29:2

Plater, M (2013) ‘Children’s attitudes towards Hallowe’en’, British Journal of Religious Education 35:2.

Schihalejev, O. (2009) Dialogue in religious education lessons – possibilities and hindrances in the Estonian context. British Journal of Religious Education, 31:3, pp. 277-288

Shuster, D. (2016) Mutuality and Intersubjective Dialogue in Religious Education. Studia Paedagogica Ignatiana, 18:0 pp. 149 – 176.

Mark Plater

Mark has been a religious education teacher all of his working life, but has experienced a range of employment opportunities within that field over the past forty years. He is married, with two children and one grandchild, and, alongside work and family, enjoys a recently purchased small piece of woodland as a source of retreat and creativity.

Teacher Case Study: Karen Steele

Beyond the ‘Proof Text’: Analysing Islamic Texts at GCSE

It took just moments to decide the focus of my project for the Edge Hill RE Subject Knowledge Summer School in 2021. I’ve always loved teaching Islam and enjoyed the challenge of developing my subject knowledge for the 2016 specification. The support of people like Zameer Hussain with Shi’a Islam has been greatly appreciated. However, at times my lessons felt a bit plodding and superficial. I recognised immediately the Ofsted Research Review [i] reference to the use of ‘proof texts’ in GCSE. I’ve been guilty of that. Although I had included some textual analysis and scholarship into my lessons, I still felt I could do better. I knew straight away, therefore, I wanted to develop my confidence with Islamic texts and consider how to deliver the content in a more memorable, engaging and meaningful way. After attending the Summer School, I developed a student anthology with carefully selected and sequenced readings, clearly linked to the specification content.

Day 1 of the Summer School included an inspiring session on text and story by Mary Myatt. She reminded us of something we all know, but too often forget when preparing students to sit exams: humans love stories and stories matter. Daniel Willingham claims ‘our brains privilege story’[ii]. RE has an abundance! Text and story are a wonderful way into learning about the Islamic traditions and can be used to enhance our GCSE. That’s what I set out to do.

Islamic texts are daunting: the many collections of Hadith, the varied commentaries and interpretations. Even as an RE specialist, I worried about my ability to get it right. This is why Edge Hill’s offer is so important. Surrounded by specialists including RE teachers and academics, I could ask questions, share ideas and consider feedback. The very patient Dr Harith Ramil supported me with my project, answering my endless questions, offering suggestions and critiquing my work. If only every RE teacher had opportunities like this.

The ‘final product’ is by no means final. Like the tradition of textual interpretation in Islam, it will continue to evolve. Not everyone will agree with my selections and the interpretations I have offered. However, I’m now able to justify my choices and engage my students in a deeper dialogue about the ways texts and story are used in the tradition. The anthology includes 7 texts from the Qur’an and Hadith, chronologically covering key events in the early development of Islam.

Back in the classroom I have been using the anthology with my students. Together we have analysed and annotated Al-Fatihah (Surah 1:1-7) and an Al-Bukhari Hadith narrating the Night of Power among other texts. I can see that they have developed a strong foundation for investigating Islam. They are instinctively referring to the texts they have studied to support their claims rather that ‘sticking in a quote’. Will this have the desired impact? Time will tell, but the early signs are good; students are showing a richer and more contextual knowledge.

You can find all of my resources on the Edge Hill website alongside those produced by others who attended the Summer School. I have included a list of the many resources I discovered and notes for each text designed to help busy teachers.

I feel privileged and grateful to have had this opportunity. If you get the chance to apply to the Summer School, I recommend you go for it.

i Ofsted Research Review Series: Religious Education

ii Mary Myatt’s blog: Using stories in the curriculum

Case Study: Catriona Card

My RE Research Journey

My RE research journey began in 1998 when the Deputy Head of the infant school I was teaching at put a leaflet about Farmington Institute Millenium Awards in my hand and suggested this might be of interest to me. I began to think about what might be useful to research, eventually deciding to explore the importance of first hand experience in Key Stage 1 children’s knowledge and understanding of religions. It seemed to me that in every other subject the importance of first hand experience was recognised but in RE this was less true, particularly with regards to religions other than Christianity. My first application was unsuccessful but following further work on my ideas I was successful the following year and was awarded a Fellowship for the 2000-2001 academic year. My first Farmington Conference in Summer 2000 provided my first experience of attending presentations where I would learn from Secondary colleagues and begin to see that I could learn from research not aimed at my own phase of education.

I spent the 2001 summer term in Oxford and was guided by my tutor Nick Mead at Westminster College, which had become part of Oxford Brookes at the start of that academic year. I learnt about background reading, referencing, designing a research interview and so much more. I also benefited from time to think through my reading and the outcomes of my research questionnaires and interviews. I also realised how much I learnt by watching others teach. At the end of my term my headteacher, Jenny Cripps, travelled down from Scunthorpe to be there for my presentation. This was a real encouragement to me and made me feel valued.

My research had demonstrated to me that first hand experience did appear to have an impact and so I discussed with my headteacher changes that we might put into place to make this possible. One of our changes was to change the second religion studied to Sikhism. We have a Gurdwara locally, the Sikh community were open to visitors and this would enable our children to have that first hand experience. I also felt it was important to enable my colleagues to have the same experience and so I arranged for us to visit the Gurdwara for a Staff Meeting. My colleagues found the opportunity to meet faith members in person and talk to them to be a valuable experience. It improved their subject knowledge and raised the profile of RE in the school significantly.

Before I started my Farmington I had been considering undertaking an MEd. By the time I had completed my Farmington I had decided that I wanted my further study to be in the field of Religious Education. I spent a few months researching the available options, finding out which universities offered suitable courses and then working out which would be best for me. In 2002 I began a part time MA in Religious Education with the University of Warwick.

My time with Warwick provided me with much challenge. To study for an MA in RE when the only qualification I had was my Farmington was a very steep learning curve. There were many times when I wondered what I had got myself into! However with the support and encouragement of Professor Robert Jackson and his colleagues I discovered that yes I was capable of study at this level. My first module introduced me to the Warwick approach to Religious Education, an approach that was grounded in the research carried out by Jackson and his colleagues. As I studied I was challenged to recognise the impact of my own worldview on how I perceived the world around me. I also learnt about the variety of lived experience within different religions, something I had not really considered before.

My MA also provided me with my second experience of small scale research, this time into the use of ICT in RE, this being the early days of computers for teachers and the beginning of the rollout of interactive whiteboards. How the world has changed since then!

This research showed me how I could apply approaches from other subjects in RE. I did not create something novel, but I did learn how to adapt ideas and apply tools to RE.

One significant impact of my exposure to research just a few years into my career was to make me much more research aware. I had learnt about different types of research, about how an approach to education was built on research. I had also learnt that research carried out in one phase of education could have relevance in other phases.

All this meant that I would look at the research behind ideas and gave me a deeper understanding of the scope of research and of the importance of sample size for example. When research is mentioned in a staff meeting I am quite likely to go and look up the original article to find out more both about the findings, about the confidence in these and about confidence in the impact of the approach.

For the past few years I have been thinking about restarting my research journey. For various reasons, both personal and professional the time did not seem right. Then last year I was fortunate to be accepted onto the Culham St Gabriel’s Leadership Scholarship Programme. This has given me the opportunity to engage in a small scale research project again with support from my mentor, Gillian Georgiou, who has challenged and encouraged me. I have taken the opportunity to engage in research that extends beyond my comfort zone, beyond the phase of education that I have worked in for my whole career, looking at the impact of a multi disciplinary approach to RE in both the primary and the secondary phase of education. Doing this has helped me to realise that we have much in common from Early Years through to Key Stage 5.

As I consider what the next step on my research journey will be and how I will undertake it I have realised that learning from other key stages is not a one way process. I realised very early on in my research journey that I could learn from approaches used by colleagues in Key Stages 4 and 5. I am increasingly realising that the opposite is true and that colleagues in those phases can learn from approaches used by those of us working in Early Years…

Update: Catriona is now studying for a Doctorate at Lincoln Bishop University

Catriona Card is a Reception teacher and the RE Subject Leader at Berkeley Primary School in Scunthorpe. She has been a member of the NATRE executive since 2015.

Teacher Case Study

Opening Doors: How Educational Research empowered and inspired me

During my second year of teaching I completed a Masters’ in Education with a thesis titled: When does Dialogue about Race and Racism become Dangerous within the Classroom? This explored the dynamics of a white teacher facilitating dialogue about race and co-constructing the knowledge and rules for dialogue with students. Since then, I have maintained that the M.Ed has been the most meaningful and empowering thing I have done as a teacher in my professional development.

The M.Ed allowed me to investigate a previously unexplored topic of interest within my teaching and curriculum and come to understand my students and their backgrounds more deeply. I also had the opportunity to develop a pedagogy and corresponding scheme of work for racial dialogue based on my findings. This was adopted by my department. All of these ‘in school’ benefits made the Masters valuable, but the greatest reward was in my own individual development and progression. The M.Ed taught me important skills of data analysis (further than the usual school statistical analysis), allowing a more meaningful level of reflection on curriculum and pedagogy, the application of literature and others’ knowledge to my own teaching and context and finally, how to draw meaningful conclusions based on the appraisal of evidence. All of these skills are desired from leaders, and the M.Ed gave me an opportunity to develop these within myself which have now led to further opportunities, such as a Farmington Fellowship, collaborating with Martha Shaw and Adam Dinham at Goldsmiths in their work on Innovation Through Co-production, networking with Culham St Gabriel’s Trust and beginning a PhD in January. All these opportunities came as a result of the M.Ed, therefore I can say it certainly opened many doors for me.

To provide context on how I applied and was accepted into the Masters’ course, I was a PGCE student two years before the M.Ed and had completed Masters’ accredited modules as a result of my training. I was then able to complete the M.Ed with my training provider, which allowed a smooth transition into the course as I was familiar with the facilities and staff already. My biggest apprehension when applying for the course was that during my training it became clear that educational research was a weakness of mine. Coming from a Philosophy degree I wrote conceptually, using thought experiments and counterexamples as evidence, rather than literature or data. This was a steep learning curve during my training, and I could have used this as a reason to avoid the M.Ed. However, knowing this was my weakness and being dedicated to personal development and progression I decided this is more of a reason to do the M.Ed, rather than a reason to avoid it. Consequently, I now consider these skills as my strengths in teaching. The best way to learn it, is to do it.

The M.Ed was demanding. The time pressure of weekly webinars meant I needed to balance my time well, and although at the time I saw the webinars as an inconvenience on top of my workload, they were essential and extremely beneficial at becoming acclimated to education. Also, because of the typical demands of teaching, I inevitably left the M.Ed work until half terms, which meant that I found I was sacrificing a lot of personal time. However, the benefit was worth the cost.

I would encourage any teacher looking to further their personal progression in education to undertake an M.Ed. If you are interested but don’t know where to start, contact your training provider or local University, who should be happy to help you start the next step of your journey.  I recommend choosing a subject that you want to study. I observed friends who had chosen subjects they thought would look good on a CV struggling to summon the energy to complete their studies. A subject that you are passionate about and gives you the drive to continue when you are tired and overworked. This is something that really provided me drive and motivation within the research and what encouraged me to take risks. Finally, and most importantly, ensure you make your research ‘you-centric’. The overall conclusions of the research are important, but what is more important is that you learn the skills and processes of educational research. Hopefully, education research like this opens up doors and opportunities for you as much as it did me.

Conor George is a full-time Secondary teacher in Peterborough, He is also a Farmington Fellow and has earned his Masters in Education. Conor is currently studying for his PhD, focusing on impact of religion on student achievement. Conor is interested in exploring the purpose of RE and the implications for the curriculum.