Understanding the Interplay: Education, Lived Worldviews and Citizenship

This is a project that responds to growing polarisation in society and sometimes in our classrooms. Classrooms are a crucial space for a reflexive engagement with difference but also that there is not enough time to discuss these often sensitive and sometimes controversial topics.

• How might a theoretical framework of worldview literacy as ‘reflexive engagement in plurality’ (Shaw 2022) and Lego Serious Play® work as a research methodology and a pedagogical resource?
• How might these approaches support young people to explore their worldviews and those of others?
• What is the potential of the concept of ‘worldview’ to enhance understanding of lived citizenship (identity, belonging and participation)?

This research from Martha Shaw and Alexis Stones responds to growing divisions in society and sees schools and classrooms as crucial spaces for the practice of reflexive citizenship, dialogue and democratic engagement. Through speaking to young people and teachers about the intersecting curriculum areas of Religious Education and Citizenship, they found that both subjects have potential to enable the practice of reflexive citizenship in plurality through recognising that young people

1) need to express their feelings and challenge norms of citizenship

2) are able to negotiate intersectional identity, belonging and action in society.

Understanding the Interplay: Education, Lived Worldviews and Citizenship draws together researchers, teachers and teacher educators in Religious Education and Citizenship, to enhance education through a co-created pedagogical framework and related resources that resonate with the complexities of young people’s experiences as citizens and the role that religion/worldviews play.

This project has created a number of classroom resources for you to use in RE/RME/RVE/Religion and worldviews and citizenship lessons.

Watch and listen to Alexis and Martha as in just 3 minutes they explore their two research questions

• How do young people understand being a citizen and what, if any, is the relationship to worldview?
• How useful is ‘worldview’ and a ‘worldviews approach’ to understand more complex personal and civic identities, and to promote more inclusive notions of citizenship?