Research Spotlight: The Religion and Worldviews Project: Teacher-Led Curriculum Framework

May 2024

Gillian Georgiou

Questions for Consideration:

1. How can the RE Council’s curriculum guidance handbook (including the National Statement of Entitlement) provide a scaffold for our process of ongoing curriculum review?
2. How might the Teacher-Led Framework resource (see below) help us to explore what the reality of a religion and worldviews approach might look like in our context?
3. How might the Teacher-Led Framework resource support our continuing professional development?

The Religion and Worldviews Project is a project set up by the RE Council of England and Wales to investigate what a religion and worldviews (RW) approach might look like in the classroom. Each of the three teams working on this project used the curriculum guidance produced by the RE Council, which included the national statement of entitlement.

Our team was made up of teachers and teaching assistants located across England. This includes colleagues working in primary and secondary settings across community schools, schools of religious character and academies. Some hold roles across multi-academy trusts and others work as RE advisers and consultants. Each of us works in a different context, and our research needed to reflect that fact. Our driving purpose was to empower teachers to be confident curriculum thinkers.

We began with two key principles. The first is that worldviews start with people. That may be people as objects of study in the classroom, but it can also be understood as people who are interpreters of the world around them. This does not preclude the study of ontological concepts such as God, but it does recognise that it is people who are engaging with and interpreting these concepts. Our second key principle is that pupils’ ability to make sense of what they learn is a necessary part of the curriculum.

We carried out an initial literature review, which focused on three key areas: the definition of a religion and worldviews approach, the forms of knowledge in RE and the significance of questions about purpose, power and authority. We used this to support the development of the first version of our curriculum framework, which was trialed across our schools. We evaluated our work and refined the framework, using it for a second time with colleagues who were not part of our initial project team.

Our framework was constructed of four key areas: personal reflexivity, curricular framing, knowledge selection and person development. The first three relate to the Position, Engagement and Content elements of the national statement of entitlement. The fourth was included to recognise the ways in which our subject might contribute to a pupil’s life more generally. Each area included a series of questions for teachers to consider as they were reviewing either their whole curriculum or an individual unit of study. Addressing these questions supports teachers to move their curriculum towards a religion and worldviews approach.

We carefully reviewed the impact of using our framework. We noted that it gave the curriculum a sharper focus on context, helping pupils understand how this might impact people’s worldviews. This also helped us avoid abstraction and essentialism in the classroom, which impacted positively on pupil engagement. Our second key finding was that an emphasis on analysing the personal worldview of both the teacher and the pupil made learning more accessible for the pupils. Thirdly, increased clarity on the ways of knowing that were framing the learning enabled us to promote much deeper and richer engagement with the subject content in the classroom. We noted that pupils valued this highly.

A key outcome of our research is a resource intended for teachers reviewing their whole curriculum or an individual unit of study. The resource includes a series of short films in which our teacher researchers discuss developing and using our framework and its impact from early years to KS3. We hope you find it useful.

The resource can be found in the RE Council of England and Wales Religion and Worldviews in the Classroom Toolkit It is the Teacher-led Framework.

Further reading

Benoit, Céline, Timothy Hutchings and Rachael Shillitoe (2020), Worldview: A Multidisciplinary Report

Research Spotlight: Promoting the Exploration of Religion and Worldviews in Schools

June 2022

Sarah Harvey, Inform; Suzanne Newcombe, Inform and The Open University; Carrie Alderton, The Faith & Belief Forum; Amy Ark, The Faith & Belief Forum
As you look at this here are some things to consider:

1. What is your experience of engaging with different stakeholder groups when teaching RE?
2. Are you surprised by any of our data or does it tally with your own engagements with different stakeholder groups?
3. How could you draw on the expertise of different stakeholders in your teaching of RE/R&W?
4. What would you like to convey to different stakeholders about teaching RE/R&W? What would best help you to do this?

Introducing the Project

Promoting the Exploration of Religion and Worldviews in Schools is an 18-month project funded by Culham St Gabriel’s and undertaken by three partner organisations: The Open University, Inform and The Faith & Belief Forum. All three organisations have interests in promoting critical religious literacy, in increasing social cohesion, and in ‘joined-up’ teaching of religion at the school and the university level.

The project aims to generate more positive attitudes towards an education in religion and worldviews (R&W) from and for those with a stake and influence outside the classroom. It aims to better align attitudes within the education sector but ‘outside the classroom’ to the importance of good teaching of R&W inside the classroom. The project is limited to England only.

The main objectives of the project are:

• To gather data on a range of different stakeholders’ views of existing RE and R&W.
• To use this data to create resources to support key stakeholders in ensuring that the study of R&W is incorporated in schools.
• To create a free Open University Open Learn Course, entitled ‘An Education in Religion and Worldviews’, which will provide an introduction to R&W for parents, community group members and anyone else with an interest in the field. This will be released in Summer 2022 – so please check the RE:ONLINE website for announcements!
• To support the development of a network to raise the profile of the importance of R&W.

We began the project with some baseline research in order to ascertain current opinions on RE and R&W, as well as to explore attitudes to religion in England today that impact schools and government policy. Baseline Report 1: Setting the Context provides an overview of existing reports relative to both RE and to the perception of religion in public life more generally, with a focus on policy reports and those written by think tanks and RE professional organisations. Baseline Report 2: Public Perception: Student and Teacher Views first summarises the few existing public opinion surveys available about opinions of RE. These paint a rather negative picture, such as the YouGov polls and ‘opinion trackers’ on RE which suggest that both adults and students do not think RE is particularly important or enjoyable. This information was collected before Culham’s own public perception survey of RE, conducted in Summer 2021, which suggests a much more favourable view of RE/R&W, perhaps because good definitions of these were given at the beginning of the survey. As part of Baseline Report 2, we also conducted small scale surveys with teachers (n=25) in order to gather their thoughts on R&W, and with undergraduate students (n=67) asking them to reflect back on their experiences of RE at school. Our student data, like the Culham survey, presents more favourable opinions than existing surveys would suggest:

• 84% agreed or strongly agreed that RE is a useful subject
• 72% agreed or strongly agreed that they enjoyed RE
• 70% agreed or strongly agreed that they personally learnt a lot from studying RE.

Gathering the Data

The main data collection phase of the project took place between July and November 2021 and involved 12 focus groups and 2 further surveys. The national lockdowns of the Covid pandemic impacted the project as, due to the ongoing uncertainties, we had to conduct all focus groups online. This had some benefits in that participants could access the groups more easily but there were also downsides in that we could not build so strongly on existing connections with schools in particular locations and could not build face-to-face connections. Some focus group numbers were lower than expected and we found it particularly difficult to engage parents in the project. This raises interesting questions about how to engage parents – and other stakeholders – who are not already enthusiastic about the subject. How can we reach and then stress the importance of an education in R&W to disinterested stakeholders? This is something with which we, and many others in the field, are still grappling.

The focus groups were arranged by stakeholder group. We began with a series of eight focus groups with ‘community interest groups’ (religious and nonreligious organisations which have an interest in RE) (n= 31). Two groups were held in the four geographical areas regions of Barking and Dagenham, Birmingham, Lincolnshire and Sunderland. Whilst these areas do not necessarily comprise a representative sample, we aimed for a mix of urban and rural locations, coupled with areas of our existing networks. Other data collected for the project includes:

• A focus group with SACRE members (n=9) supplemented by a survey (n=144)
• A focus group with parents (n=3) supplemented by a survey (n=45)
• A focus group with those employed in school or local authority settings, including heads of MATs (Multi Academy Trusts) and SLTs (Senior Leadership Teams) (n=6)
• A focus group with academics and policy professionals (n=14).

The focus groups and surveys had three primary areas of exploration:

1. The current state of RE, including gathering thoughts on the purpose of RE and to explore the idea of a current ‘crisis’.
2. The R&W proposal, including gathering thoughts on the strengths and weaknesses or challenges of the approach.
3. What resources are needed for stakeholders to understand the approach better and to promote or implement it in the schools with which they are connected, as well as exploring suggestions for ways forward to implement R&W.

In order to introduce participants to the idea of an education in R&W (and by no means all participants were familiar with it), we played the video Nobody Stands Nowhere and gave a brief presentation on the key points of the Commission on RE 2018 report, Religion and Worldviews: The Way Forward. Below, we will present our key findings but full analysis of all the data can be read in our report, Promoting the Exploration of Religion and Worldviews in Schools: Insights Report.

Key Findings

Our discussions focused on the following areas: the purpose of RE, the challenges to current RE, the strengths of the RW approach, the challenges to or concerns around the RW approach and possible ways forward and learning points.

1.The Purpose of RE

Community interest groups and SACRE members saw RE as having a primarily functional or practical purpose suggesting that RE should fulfil a social role of teaching religious literacy which will lead to social cohesion. However, community groups also thought that RE should have a moral or pastoral function, teaching pupils how to “live well together”. Parents also stressed the “character-forming” and “holistic” purpose of RE and were the stakeholder group most accepting of RE as having multiple purposes. Academics and policy professionals were more likely to see the lack of clarity of purpose as problematic and called for a rethink or reclarification as one of the contemporary challenges.

2.The challenges to current RE

The challenges to current RE teaching were seen as stemming from a number of interlinked factors including structural issues, public perception, and the curriculum content, although the majority of stakeholders saw structural issues as the predominant issue. These include the challenges of a lack of curriculum time, a lack of specialist teachers and support for teachers, a lack of investment, and a lack of resources. The unique status of RE and the lack of a nationally agreed syllabus was seen as a challenge by many. The content of current RE was recognised as not being relevant for all pupils, leading to a lack of interest by some pupils. However, the negative perception of the general public, and parents in particular, was noted as a particular challenge by some stakeholders. However, parents holding a negative perception was not borne out in our data. There is an interesting discrepancy here between what other stakeholders think parents think and what parents actually think – although our parent participants were likely to be biased in favour of a positive view – or at least an interest in RE, due to their wiliness to engage with the remote research.

3.The potential strengths of the R&W approach

Our participants were generally in favour of the R&W proposal and its strengths were seen to be:

• It is more inclusive of all pupils, particularly those who are non-religious
• It recognises diversity
• It recognises historical and social context
• It encourages critical analysis of worldviews
• It encourages self-reflexivity
• It has greater potential for cross-over with over curriculum subjects.

4.The potential challenges of the R&W approach

However, the approach was not seen to be without problems. Challenges and concerns raised included the lack of agreement in the RE and academic communities around what is a ‘worldview’? Other concerns include:

• The R&W approach might be a dilution or ‘watering down’ of the ‘religion’ component of RE
• Or it could just become a means of adding in extra content about ‘non-religious’ with the term ‘worldviews’ reserved only for this content
• Worldviews is not clearly defined and is not a neutral term
• Is it correct to assume that everyone has a worldview?
• Do worldviews prioritise individualism at the expense of community and tradition?
• Does the approach overemphasise cognition, belief and ways of ‘seeing’ the world, rather than materiality, corporeality, and social networks?
• Could R&W’s critical approach lead to greater child withdrawal from religious parents?
• Could there be defensiveness around worldviews, whether this is from pupils/parents or at a higher level from SACRE members/ community interest groups/ established religious organisations with a stake in schooling?
• How relativistic will an education in R&W be? Will all worldviews be considered equal? How will issues of, for example, extremism and minority religions be engaged with?

5.Ways Forward

Our data suggests that there is a need and appetite for greater engagement between the different stakeholders we have reached. Schools, SACREs, community groups and parents all expressed enthusiasm for working together and suggested that support and best practice guidance on this would be appreciated. Academics were keen to host and/or facilitate networking meetings.

We suggest that greater community engagement could also contribute to greater positive perceptions of RE/R&W education and hence to greater critical religious literacy in the long term. Greater interaction with academics could ensure that school and university-level teaching on religion can be more in-line, whilst recognising the differences between the two.

If you would like to know anything more about the project, please feel free to contact us:

Sarah Harvey – sarah.harvey@kcl.ac.uk

Amy Ark – amy.ark@faithbeliefforum.org

Research Spotlight: ‘But are you religious yourself?’ Being non-binary between ‘religious’ and ‘non-religious’

May 2022

Denise Cush, Emeritus Professor of Religion and Education at Bath Spa University 

As you look at this here are some things to consider:

1. Does the idea of being ‘non-binary’ help to make the subject of Religion and Worldviews/Religious Education more inclusive for all pupils, and not just something of interest and relevance to the decreasing number of people in many European countries – especially young people – who identify as ‘religious’?
2. Do you think that RE teachers and/or students might find the non-binary option helpful when reflecting on their own developing worldview or when asked whether they are personally religious or not?
3. How would you go about introducing discussion of what people mean by terms like religion, non-religious, secular, spiritual, worldview, in your particular classroom context?

‘But are you religious yourself?’ Being non-binary between ‘religious’ and ‘non-religious’

Being invited to be one of the fourteen Commissioners on the RE Council’s 2016-2018 Commission on RE was a great privilege, and it has been very interesting to be involved with the developments since 2018, such as the REC’s follow-up ‘Worldviews’ project resulting in the literature review (Benoit, Hutchings and Shillitoe 2020) and Discussion Papers (Tharani 2020). As pointed out by Trevor Cooling in this series of presentations, the move towards worldviews was not just to include the non-religious as well as the religious in a changing social context – and certainly not about adding a list of non-religious isms to an already expanding list of religious ones – but also about reflecting on the ways in which our own worldviews affect our interpretations of information, including about the worldviews of others.

Having retired in 2015, alongside working on the Commission and with Barbara Wintersgill on the Big Ideas project, I have had more time to read about, reflect on and write about a number of related issues including the concepts of religion and worldviews; the disciplines of Study of Religions, Theology and Religious Education; Buddhism, Hinduism and Paganism as religions (or not); phenomenological approaches to studying religions and in RE; and the role of experience as a source of authority.

The Commission Report, as well as highlighting the term worldview and initiating a developing ‘worldviews approach’ to RE, distinguished between institutional or organised worldviews (in the sense of systematic ‘isms’ such as Christianity or institutional organisations such as the Catholic Church) and personal worldviews. In between are many other levels such as sub-groups and local communities. It also stressed the importance of diversity within as well as between organised worldviews, that these have changed and developed over time and in interactions with each other, and that individuals and communities may draw upon more than one tradition.

In the contemporary globally connected world, researchers have found that in various ways people are increasingly exhibiting forms of multi-religious belonging, whether brought up in mixed heritage families, identifying with one tradition while taking aspects from another, or drawing upon a variety of traditions to form their own ‘patchwork religiosity’ (Lähnemann, 2008). Others, such as Woodhead, Lee, and Cotter have highlighted the increasing number of people (the ‘nones’) who identify as non-religious, becoming a majority in some countries such as England. Yet what is meant by non-religious varies, including at times elements that other may label religious. In this complex context the distinction between religious and non-religious worldviews can start to break down.

The presentation focuses on the possibility of identifying not as belonging to one particular religious tradition, or as influenced by several, or as non-religious, but as being non-binary in relation to the religious/secular divide.

Paying attention to personal worldviews reveals a weakness in the binary division between ‘religious’ and ‘non-religious’, in that people may draw upon or be influenced by a variety of religious, spiritual or secular elements in their beliefs, values, practices and identities. Trying to label this complex and often fluid situation either ‘religious’ or ‘non-religious’ can be difficult. RE professionals are often asked whether they are actually religious themselves – for many decades I found this difficult to answer, once I stopped identifying with one particular tradition. Neither ‘religious’ nor ‘non-religious’ really seemed accurate.

We have recently become more familiar with the term ‘non-binary’ in relation to gender – as used by those who do not find either ‘male’ or ‘female’ appropriate, and have started to use the pronoun ‘they’. The first person I heard applying ‘non-binary’ to religious identity was Richard Holloway – and I found this idea personally very liberating, and also started employing it in RE contexts since about 2018. Norwegian Professor Oddrun Bråten also finds the concept of non-binary worldviews helpful and argues for a ‘superwide’ use of the term ‘worldview’ to include ‘more complex personal worldviews that might relate to several religious or spiritual or humanistic ideas’. This better reflects the diversity of pupils’ worldviews as revealed by research and experience. Another article I found useful was by Finnish Professor Peter Nynäs, who doesn’t actually use the term ‘non-binary’, but argues that individuals have a dialogical relationship with their context, and ‘combine spiritual and religious positions with secular values into authentic and unified outlooks on life’. Not being able to answer the question ‘are you religious?’ doesn’t mean that you are confused, it means that the categories do not fit your experience.

Of course, one response to the question ‘Are you religious or not?’ is ‘it depends what you mean by ‘religious’, and academics have been discussing this for many decades, some arguing that we should drop the term altogether. The Commission argues that discussing what we actually mean by terms like ‘religion’, and recognising that different people mean different things (as academics like to say it is a contested concept) is a vital part of RE. A narrow definition of religion, modelled on Western Christianity, is particularly unhelpful in understanding Dharmic traditions or new forms of religiosity such as contemporary Paganism. It is important to introduce students to traditions such as Buddhism that are not based on the concept of God, and non-Western philosophy that is less based on binary thinking.

Deciding whether something is religious or not is not just a ‘merely academic’ issue however, as defining something as religious, especially in law, can have real life consequences. In practice as well as theory it is often difficult to separate out the religious and the secular, even when required to do so. There is an interesting difference between civil funerals and civil weddings in England. Civil funerals, which began in 2002, often contain a mix of ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ elements. However civil wedding ceremonies are not allowed to have any religious content. Thus, when my partner and I wanted a pluralist, non-binary wedding ceremony in 2018 we ended up having the legal, non-religious part in a deconsecrated chapel licensed for civil weddings only (though handfastings were allowed) and our ‘religious’ (Christian, Buddhist, Hindu and Pagan) blessings in a marquee outside.

So, I am suggesting that getting away from the binary division between religious and non-religious is not only helpful for those like me who have problems identifying with either label, but also is a really important part of keeping our subject relevant to everyone – religious, non-religious or non-binary – not just those who are either adherents of or academic specialists in particular organised traditions.

Bibliography

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