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