Resource Spotlight: Practical support for primary teacher education
A new collection of Primary Initial Teacher Education (ITE) resources is now available on RE:ONLINE. Developed collaboratively by a group convened by Culham St Gabriel’s, the resources provide practical support for those leading Primary Initial Teacher Education in Religious Education across a range of contexts.
The collection has been designed primarily for use in the training of primary teachers in England. Importantly, the resources were developed with non-specialist users in mind, recognising that trainee primary teachers may be encountering some of the subject knowledge, language and pedagogical thinking associated with Religion and Worldviews for the first time.
As you explore the collection, you might like to consider:
- Which resources could support your next ITE teaching session or conversation with a trainee?
- How might they help beginning teachers connect subject knowledge, pedagogy and classroom practice?
- Who else might you use these resources with, pass them on to or recommend them to?
What does the collection offer?
The collection brings together downloadable guidance, presentations, documents, films and animations. You can choose a particular starting point or work through the full collection, which covers planning and mentoring, useful websites, subject knowledge and worldviews, the purpose of RE, pedagogical frameworks and further exploration.
Resources include:
- Supporting Primary Religious Education: Planning, Observation and Target Setting for Beginning Teachers: prompts for planning discussions, lesson observations and target-setting conversations. It is intended to support focused professional dialogue rather than operate as a checklist.
- Useful Websites for Primary Beginner Teachers and Trainees: an accessible starting point for finding organisations, publications, classroom materials and professional learning relating to subject knowledge, curriculum planning, teaching approaches, visits and visitors, professional networks and academic reading.
- Rationale: What is RE? Why RE?: a PowerPoint presentation designed as an introduction to the subject and as the possible basis for an ITE teaching session. It supports beginning teachers in considering the purpose and statutory position of RE, as well as introducing positionality.
- Understanding Our Worldviews: a powerpoint presentation exploring personal worldviews, the relationship between beliefs, values and behaviours, and some of the influences through which worldviews are formed.
- The Initial Teacher Training and Early Career Framework: RE subject-specific pedagogical knowledge: maps the non-subject-specific framework in England to the particular demands of primary RE and can support the design of carefully sequenced training.
- Pedagogical Approaches in RE: introduces practical classroom approaches including creative storytelling, images, belief lines, qualifying language and a worldviews approach.
- Decolonising RE: introduces beginning teachers to decolonial thinking and encourages reflection on positionality, lived experience, classroom power and the representation of diverse voices.
The page also includes short films and animations exploring ways of knowing, the three forms of knowledge, personal knowledge, a Religion and Worldviews approach and diversity within religious traditions. These provide accessible ways into ideas that can then be explored through discussion, reflection and application to primary practice.
How might these resources support teacher development?
Used together or individually, the resources can help ITE tutors and mentors introduce key ideas, structure training sessions and support purposeful professional conversations with trainee primary teachers. They address both the practical work of planning and observing RE and the wider subject thinking that beginning teachers need as they develop confidence and expertise.
Although the principal audience is those involved in Primary Initial Teacher Education, the materials may also be useful for colleagues working with early career teachers, other primary teachers and teachers with other specialisms. Although these resources were developed with the English system in mind, many of the resources may also be valuable to educators in other nations and to those supporting early career and other teachers.
As you explore, consider not only how you might use these resources yourself, but who you might use them with and who else might benefit if you passed them on.
This collection has been produced by a group convened by Culham St Gabriel’s. The group includes Helen Sheehan (Sheffield Hallam University), Rhiannon Love (University of Winchester), Imran Mogra (Birmingham City University), Ruth Flanagan (University of Exeter), Lizzie Yeomans (Liverpool John Moores University), Paul Smalley and Fiona Moss.