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RExChange is about ‘real world research for real world classrooms’ and so we asked three secondary school teachers Beth Blizzard, Ian Dover and Kelly Keatley to share some of their reflections. Beth and Kelly are all current participants in the Culham St Gabriel’s leadership scholarship programme.

If you were at the conference, consider how you are going to apply what you heard in your context? Who might you share what you heard with?

If you were unable to be at the conference recording of the Keynotes, In Conversation and Panel sessions will be available very soon. Also look out for the post conference newsletter which will have links to some of the research shared.

Keynotes

I loved the diversity of the Friday keynote session with Chine McDonald, Jasjit Singh, Iona Hine and Anastasia Badder on researching worldviews communities. It was interesting to reflect on how the public perception of religion and worldviews has shifted over recent years and why RE can be considered to be more important than ever. Jasjit’s input on the focus on how research is conducted with the Sikh community and the work from Iona and Anastasia on behalf of the water companies and the way water is used and seen by faith communities was fascinating. (Kelly)

I’m always looking for ways to engage students with real life examples of how worldviews are lived. Dr Iona Hine and Dr Anastasia Badders section of the keynote provided me with a brilliant project to use to demonstrate a catalyst into religious enquiry. I plan to implement this into lessons on the environment and ecology. (Beth)

Do listen to the recordings of this keynote and the very popular and much discussed keynote on AI.

Recordings are also available of the In Conversation and Panel discussions.

Seminars

Within my school and department, I am trying to incorporate more opportunities for improving literacy through work on vocabulary, extended writing and oracy and so I found the session on Using debating to teach argument and evaluation in GCSE Religious Studies by Beth Eades really inspiring. Beth’s approach with structured debates was so clear and practical and I am confident that as a result of this session, I will be incorporating lots of her strategies into my classroom with a view to conducting formal debates with my classes. (Kelly)

Personal knowledge is another area within RE that I definitely want to explore further, and I am keen to reflect on the space that I give within the curriculum for students to consider their own positionality and how they approach the topics we cover but also how the topics we cover affect their positionality. Emma Salter’s session provided a useful discussion around the concept of personal knowledge and how we incorporate it and whether we can assess it and report on it. Having attended Trevor Cooling’s session on ‘What is Knowledge?’, Emma’s session really drilled down into the practicalities of how we can support student development in this area. (Kelly)

My main area of focus in my role is the development of the RE and Worldviews curriculum here and to provide support to primary schools in my MAT. David Lewin and Kate Christopher’s session on the “After RE” curriculum framework provided me with questions and ideas to carry forward to support other colleagues. It has also prompted me to go back to the teacher led resources on the REC website and highlight these to other staff within my trust. (Beth)

Oli Aston’s session on supporting disadvantaged students made me consider more closely what it means for students to be disadvantaged. In many of our settings we have a narrow view about what disadvantage means in terms of Pupil Premium, SEND, Forces children etc. He encouraged careful consideration to other aspects of disadvantage, in my context, it has prompted discussion about how as a school we best support our students whose reading ages are well below those required to fully access the GCSE curriculums that we teach. (Beth)

In my context we are currently really focusing on using reading to support students overcome barriers to learning and so it was particularly interesting to hear Jane Yates focus on language use from a variety of languages and traditions in her session on ‘a culture of untranslatability in the RE Classroom’. Oli Aston talking about widening our understanding of disadvantage beyond the Pupil Premium label also supported our current focus. I feel these two sessions complemented each other nicely, as the acquisition of language, especially terms that students have not encountered before is one of the areas of disadvantage that is a focus for the department this year. (Ian)

Jas Butterworth’s session on the gender gap in RE made me consider the approaches that we use MAT and school wide to support boys achievement and the assumptions that we make. Some of these are drilled into school policy, leading me to think how we might open discussion as a school and a Multi Academy Trust to look at more research and effective strategies to support these students. In my wider role within school, I am beginning to embed a teacher led CPD programme, I want to explore in more depth the barriers to learning and research further to find out some clear strategies that can be delivered to whole staff to support these students in all areas of the curriculum across the school. (Beth)

So what as you return to school…

Sessions have provided a range of different sources of research to explore a bit more, and consider how they become embedded in our curriculum, and how we ensure that we allow students to appreciate, understand, and confidently engage with a range of highly specialised vocabulary without devaluing the ideas and concepts that they are a part of.

I am really looking forward to sharing the information from these sessions in the wider department and considering how best we can apply this research to support the whole of our diverse cohorts. (Ian)

Thank you to all three of our bloggers. What was your key takeaway?

RExChange is about ‘Real world research for real world classrooms’ and so we asked three primary school teachers Amy Clarke, Fiona Greening and Paul Marvin to share some of their reflections. Amy, Fiona and Paul are all current participants in the Culham St Gabriel’s leadership scholarship programme.

If you were at the conference, consider how you are going to apply what you heard in your context? Who might you share what you heard with?

If you were unable to be at the conference recording of the Keynotes, In Conversation and Panel sessions will be available very soon. Also look out for the post conference newsletter which will have links to some of the research shared.

Keynotes

In the first keynote, ‘Researching Worldview Communities’, we were presented with the idea of the role that religion and religious communities still play in today’s society. The work that Dr Jasjit Singh was doing with Sikh communities, made me consider the place that conversation and interview has in researching lived examples that can be shared in the classroom. He also made us consider our positionality when interviewing and researching.

The Keynote on AI seemed to provoke thoughts and wider conversations for everyone;

The Keynote session ‘Disciplinary perspectives on AI’, Wow is all I can say. Although this was a whole new area for me I found the discussion was at a level that I could understand and was presented in a way that I could see links into RE. I then spent lunchtime discussing it with my family!

This session left me considering how AI could be used by teachers to support their preparation for lessons. There is a serious concern around who is classifying and deciding upon the knowledge that different AI models have access to and whether this knowledge is biased or skewed in any way.

Do listen to the recordings of these two keynotes.

In conversation

Two of our bloggers attended the conversation between Adam Robertson and Fiona Moss on the research and evidence underpinning the new Oak academy RE curriculum and resources.

…the thinking and research from the RE Community that sits behind the curriculum has led to threads being created to link the different units together, with each unit also having a “disciplinary driver”.

OAK’s remit is to create a curriculum that will close the religion and worldviews “disadvantage gap”, to offer something that will support a range of people, including ECTs and non-specialist teachers. …

You can explore this in conversation and two others on our recordings.

Seminars

Trevor Cooling’s session on ‘What do we mean by knowledge in RE?’: I was left considering the question ‘What influences the formation of a worldview?’ I was also presented with the idea that proper knowledge in RE is personal, because it is influenced by our worldview (much like the idea of our positionality from Jasjit’s presentation). To be good knowers, we need to be aware of our own worldview. Trevor also compared the world religions approach (knowing information about world religions) with the religion and worldviews approach (including personal worldviews). He suggests the first is all about “information transmission”, whereas the second is about “reflexive dialogue” and “making sound judgements”. This helped to clarify the difference between the two, although Trevor did clarify that this portrayal was a crude binary model!

Clare Clinton: Tackling religious and worldview stereotypes in the RE Classroom: I wanted to revisit her work to support a project I am about to start. I was soon making notes on links to different videos and thinking about a way that I could use her toolkit in a primary setting effectively.

Ryan Parker Primary pupils can! A richer encounter with parables: Ryan was aware that too often we tell children the “correct” meaning of parables, without giving the children time to discover their own interpretation. As part of his doctoral studies Ryan has created two lessons based on hermeneutical questioning and the Parable of the Good Samaritan.

Justine Ball Developing child voice in RE in EYFS and Key Stage 1: The references to different research I will now read as part of a small piece of research I am doing. As the teachers shared their practice, I found I was reflecting on my current practices and writing down ideas.

Carrie Alderton and colleagues: Engaging parents in their children’s Religious Education: ‘How do we learn?’ is a question we were asked at the beginning of the session. Is it just reading or is it about doing, experiencing through senses, and problem-solving? And how can we involve parents in this? My key takeaways

• Understand The Power of Objects: Instead of relying solely on textbooks the team encouraged us in how we can use religious artefacts to spark curiosity and discussion. A kanga (Sikh), mandala (Buddhist), Rose (Alevi), Red thread (Hindu), candle (Jewish) were given to parents to take home and share with children, to discuss who they may belong to and where they would place them in their home.
• Encourage ‘Take-Home’ Projects: The research considered a project where parents and children take religious objects home to host in their own space. This allows families to engage with the item in their daily lives, prompting discussions and reflections.
• To encourage ‘Interfaith Dialogue’: Exposing families to objects from various faiths opens up conversations about how others think and experience the world. One comment from a parent involved in the project particularly struck a chord with me as she said ‘it didn’t change my faith but it definitely increased my exposure’.
• To see Religion as a ‘Jigsaw Puzzle’: Each object, story, or practice is a piece that contributes to the bigger picture of identity .

By involving parents in this material approach to RE, we can help pupils and parents see religion differently. It allows for deeper connections, opens up learning, and makes RE a subject that reaches the deepest parts of our understanding. This material approach can be incredibly powerful I thought, going beyond Eurocentric views and de-hierarchising texts. This approach can engage even sceptical parents, making RE a truly inclusive and enriching subject for the whole family.

Thank you to all three of our bloggers. What was your key takeaway?

This started for me in 2022 with a Farmington Scholarship. I was inspired by so many RE specialists praising the programme. Unlike other courses, a Farmington Scholarship covers the costs of cover at school, offering scholars precious time for their research.

The focus of my Farmington is two-fold. Firstly, the transition from Primary to Secondary and the inconsistent subject knowledge shown by pupils coming in from different schools. Secondly, the benefits of disciplinary knowledge in the RE curriculum, and how far this could provide a model for progression from EYFS to KS3. I was aware the idea of disciplinary knowledge in the RE curriculum might cause concern for non-specialist RE teachers, and so also planned to investigate ways of supporting non-specialists in understanding and working with the disciplines in their teaching.

My working hypothesis was that non specialists were not secure in their understanding of the disciplinary lenses in RE. This is further compounded by the lack of National Curriculum in RE, which means there is no clear guidance of what Primary-age pupils should know and understand by the end of their Primary education.

I began by engaging teachers from different key stages in thinking around end of key stage outcomes. I delved into RE outside my own key stages through reading and observing, to gain a sense of RE through the phases. Academic research is part of a Farmington Scholarship, but if I am honest I found this challenging at first. After initial reluctance, I found myself enjoying the academic reading and my more systematic reflection and expanded knowledge. One of the great benefits of the Farmington programme is the time and resources made available to teachers to actually study.

My work links closely with the new Warwickshire Agreed Syllabus. In fact, those involved in the creation of Warwickshire’s Agreed Syllabus make up one of three working groups developing a curriculum to support the REC’s new Curriculum Framework. Joining this group has been hugely positive, not least to work with two inspiring women: Jennifer Jenkins and Alice Thomas. My own research into disciplinary lenses and progression links with Alice’s work on assessment and Jennifer’s role ensuring the new syllabus supports the REC’s Curriculum Framework. The opportunity to be part of this group means my work has a much wider reach and impact.

There are several key moments in my journey of discovery. Observing an EYFS lesson sticks in my memory as a turning point. It was then the idea of progression in disciplinary first came to me. I also found the differences in co-planning with KS2 teachers compared to KS3 teachers fascinating.

However the major turning point for me was probably an exploration into what disciplinary lenses could mean for teachers, how teachers understood the idea of disciplinary lenses and how teachers envisioned their implementation. It is abundantly clear that teachers need CPD to understand and then implement the disciplinary lenses in the RE curriculum.

There is lots of knowledge out there for teachers, and engaging with it myself through the Farmington made a big impact on my own grasp of progression, curriculum design and subject knowledge in RE. The information about disciplinary lenses comes in the form of books and articles, but also podcasts, recorded conversations and practical ideas. The first step for a teacher who is reshaping their curriculum is to find out what is already out there, to enhance both their subject knowledge and practical understanding.

What’s next for me? I will continue to work with local primary schools in building a wider understanding of the core disciplinary knowledge pupils should possess at the end of each key stage. I will also be investigating different ways of implementing disciplinary knowledge across the key stages, and developing the all-important CPD for teachers. The Farmington has shown me that continuing to pursue my academic reading and thinking is of prime importance, not only for my own understanding, but for the benefit of my team and all the teachers I work with in the local area.

I was intrigued by this project because it was an opportunity for me to learn about a topic I had never given any real thought to; how animals are farmed, and what are ethical ways of thinking about this. The project is CEFAW: Christian Ethics of Farmed Animals Welfare. The CEFAW project is an engaging and accessible way to educate pupils about farming practices and the ethical questions raised, such as responsible meat consumption. As a teacher, I was able to tailor the lesson plans and resources created through the project to enable pupils from all backgrounds to explore these ideas, contextualising what this means for Christians, the animals, farmers and for pupils as individuals – now and in the future.

I have always been mindful of what children put into their bodies and how this can impact their physical, emotional and mental wellbeing and consequently their ability to learn and be responsible members of society. I had been recently researching the impact hormone injected chickens can have on children and what some of the signs are of this impact.

For these reasons, when the opportunity to work alongside leading experts like David Clough and James Holt presented itself, I was excited to explore how a topic I am interested in personally, will develop through the RE lens.

I worked with two primary colleagues – Mel Gilbert and Stacey Cowell- which was a wonderful experience in itself. We shared ideas and experiences and provided each other with advice and support to refine our thoughts. Working with teachers from different parts of the country made certain that the resources were reflective of all pupils.

Furthermore, being provided with forums where I could share my research and experience from the project has facilitated me to continuously reflect on how the project can be utilised in the primary classroom and its potential long-term impact on the environment and young people’s health. For this I am grateful to Culham St Gabriel’s Trust!

One of the many things that I have taken away from this project, is the effectiveness of using discursive questions to stimulate pupils to think critically, review their opinions and experiences considering what they are learning and researching in lessons as well as the wider implication of key concepts and ideas.

Regardless to say, participating in such projects has its own barriers. As a fulltime teacher in Year 6, I had to consider whether I would be able to manage the deadlines and workload. I couldn’t attend the residential as it clashed with SATs. Consequently, I didn’t have the first hand experience of being on a farm; a highlight of the project. Despite my own unfortunate diary clash, it is essential for teachers to take such opportunities, which prevents our teaching from becoming stale and invigorates our own thinking.

Every time I participate in classroom-based research, my class enjoys the benefits of learning something controversial, being able to ask difficult questions and appreciating it is not necessary that everyone agrees to everything.

When the CEFAW resources are available for distribution, I believe everyone should evaluate how their pupils can benefit and trial them.

Our pupils live in a complicated world where most of what they experience is through a screen – the CEFAW project teaches compassion for living things – it teaches to connect with what is happening around you.

In part 1 of this blog, I described my initial motivations of choosing relevant research linked to my classroom teaching and how these articles helped my thought processes. In part 2 I will continue this story by delving more into the classroom practice of others and how these examples have helped shape what I now do in the classroom.

This leads to the work of Kevin O’Grady and Robert Jackson (2020) with their piece on Year 7 views on RE. They focus on how setting clear ground rules for discussion on religious and ethical issues can improve the learning journey for the learners. This is very closely linked to the enquiry base of P4C and also gives an ownership of the learning process to the learners. Add to this contact with faith representatives and non-religious groups helps the learners construct better modes of motivation and relevancy of RE in their studies. This can hopefully lead to better evaluation and understanding of the worldviews held by believers, and this then leads to the better development of hermeneutical awareness.

If O’Grady and Jackson stress pupil self-awareness, Ruth Flanagan (2021) has shown that the same need applies to teachers. Her article on how teachers need to become conscious of their own worldview has really highlighted to me how we should be wary of just taking our worldview and imposing it in the classroom – even just by the selection of what we teach.

As Flanagan points out, we need to become worldview- conscious, providing scaffolding and support with which to read and evaluate the worldviews of others. Rob Freathy and Helen John echo this in their “Worldviews and Big Ideas” work (2019): the clearest link to make here would be between Flanagan’s worldview consciousness and Freathy and John’s view that the set of Big Ideas needs expansion, to become aware of our own position and to be able to reflect on how our own life has ben shaped by our experiences which culminates in our personal worldviews.

Where is the place of objective criticality in all of this? Jawonyi (2014) expounds the value of critical thinking and evaluation and how it is necessary in our teaching. Certainly in the AQA Religious Studies Specification of 2017, the value of evaluation is 50% of the marks available. It is also a key skill within most syllabuses, where evaluation is asking the learners of how an idea, belief or practice fits into their lived experience and worldview and also into the worldviews of others.

Let me begin to summarise by turning to Martha Shaw and Adam Dinham’s work (2020) about how RE is being reimagined in the classroom. Using examples from five diverse school settings they show that great quality RE is being delivered through a range of different approaches. In these examples, religion and worldviews are interpreted by the learners to show both how they overlap and differ. A common agreement is that we should be worldview conscious and able to challenge our own assumptions, beginning by looking at religion and worldviews from a local perspective and expanding our horizons outwards.

For the past six months or more I have been on a research journey. This blog has not covered everything that I have read but has touched upon those sources that have come out with key ideas and views that I have reflected upon. Each of these articles has helped me look at how I teach and what I teach in the classroom. The ways in which learners are asked to evaluate and interpret texts, beliefs and ideas needs more structure; teachers and learners need better self-awareness of their own positionality and worldviews; that good RE can be taught in different ways, harnessing a range of resources and styles, to produce an effective and enjoyable learning experience. These are important points to consider in what we plan, teach, and develop.

Before I taught what was in front of me, using my own interests as a guide to what I wanted in the grand scheme of things. Now I ask myself “Why? Why do I want to teach that? What is the process that we are going through? How will we build or use that understanding or knowledge?” In my mind this has made me a better practitioner and teacher of RE as I have had to think about the process that I go through, almost to the point that it is now second nature.

References

Flanagan, R (2021) Implementing a Ricoeurian lens to examine the impact of individuals’ worldviews on subject content knowledge in RE in England: a theoretical proposition: British Journal of Religious Education, 43:4, 472-486 Online article can be found here

Freathy, R & John, H.C. (2019) Worldviews and Big Ideas: A way forward for Religious Education? Nordidactica, Journal of Humanities and Social Science Education, 2019:4 Online article can be found here

Jawoniyi, O (2015) Religious Education, Critical Thinking, Rational Autonomy, and the Child’s Right to an Open Future: Religion & Education: Vol 42: 1, 34-53 Online material can be found here

O’Grady, K & Jackson, R (2020) ‘A touchy subject’: teaching and learning about difference in the religious education classroom: Journal of Beliefs & Values: Vol 41:1, 88-1-1 online article can be found here

Shaw, M & Dinham, A (2021) Innovative teaching and learning of religion and worldviews in schools, Innovative RE: Case studies, Goldsmiths, University of London Online material can be found here

I have been teaching RE for 25 years and one of the challenges in teaching at the moment is how to keep our subject moving forward and keep our motivation going. This year I have been a participant on Stage One of the Culham St Gabriel’s Leadership programme that is supported and guided by the main national organisations that have a say on the future of RE. The subject has seen many changes over the decades in terms of approach, name, content, purpose, and value within schools. Do teachers have a say in any of this and how can they implement change? This was a motivating factor in applying for the Culham St Gabriel’s Leadership Programme; to have a voice and be heard in the debate. I decided to engage with a set of research outputs, as part of an attempt to clarify where I stand in terms of the issues in RE. I chose a range of articles reported in the RE:ONLINE archive to read, digest, think about and if possible, implement on my own teaching.

One of the first articles that I read was Nastasya van der Straten Waillet, Isabelle Roskam and Cécile Possoz’s work on the advantages of using Philosophy for Children in RE (2014). I am a long-term advocate of this approach but my use of it is hampered due to lack of time within the classroom and that P4C needs to be used in a certain way that sometimes gets lost.

Although the research takes place in Belgium, it has very clear links with my syllabus: Hampshire Agreed Syllabus, ‘Living Difference’. The interpretative nature of the process, along with an enquiry-based approach helps the learner unwrap and unbox the key ideas of the focus of enquiry. It needs careful prodding and needling (and a skilled facilitator) in order to get to the evaluation process.

This point about interpretation connects with Julia Ipgrave’s work on what secondary teachers can learn from our primary colleagues (2013). “From storybooks to bullet points” leads us to understand that primary RE is full of colour, rich in text and story and that the child is allowed to imagine and think through those stories that come to life from the holy books. This piece was written before the new GCSE specifications came into being, and these have a renewed focus on textual references but often they are just that. The context has been stripped away, they are words to back up an argument, as an example to show a believers’ faith and not as the story with meaning that they should be. Take for example the AQA GCSE spec that looks at the Incarnation and then jumps straight to the Crucifixion. Where is the narrative? Where is the story that sets the scene for the final act of Jesus’ life? Is this meant to be left for previous knowledge or learning? One thing I have taken from Ipgrave’s work is that the story is just as important as the teaching as it is the context that matters.

Bob Bowie, Farid Panjwani and Katie Clemmey (2020) may agree. Their work, “Opening the door to hermeneutical RE” has really helped me to open up the texts in ways that our English subject colleagues have been doing for decades. The pupils are familiar with taking a text, breaking it down, looking at its context and meaning, the purpose of the writer and the symbolic nature of the words. We should make more of these insights in RE, enabling pupils to learn in more focused, nuanced ways.

In part 1 of this blog, I have shown my initial motivations of choosing relevant research linked to my classroom teaching and how these articles have helped my thinking. In part 2 I will develop this by delving into more classroom practice of others and how these examples have helped shape what I now do in the classroom.

References

Bowie, R, Panjwani, F, Clemmey, K (2020) Teachers and texts: Improving Religious education through hermeneutics (canterbury.ac.uk) Online material can be found here

Ipgrave, J (2013) From storybooks to bullet points: books and the Bible in primary and secondary religious education, British Journal of Religious Education 35.3 pages 264-281 online article available here

Van der Straten Waillet, N, Roskam, I & Possoz, C (2015) On the epistemological features promoted by ‘Philosophy for Children’ and their psychological advantages when incorporated into RE: British Journal of Religious Education, 37:3, 273-292 Online article can be found here

When the RE:Connect Teacher Fellowship Programme was promoted on Twitter it immediately caught my eye. Combining two of my great passions – RE and the climate emergency – I felt drawn towards the project, which aims to support teachers in connecting RE teaching to the environmental crisis.

I have been teaching RE for 19 years. While I have kept up with new ideas and research, I was not actively looking to embark on a new project. However this project offered me an opportunity to gain high quality CPD in an area I am deeply passionate about. I applied and was accepted onto the programme.

From October 2021 to June 2022 the Fellowship group met for 7 online evening sessions and 2- day gatherings, including a final celebration day. I was exposed to people and ideas that inspired and challenged me; including a climate scientist, religious environmental activists, researchers and experts in RE pedagogy and practitioners who are at the forefront of climate education in RE. Each valuable session opened up new ways of thinking about scholarship, lived experience and my own teaching practice.

I have taught a unit on ‘Creation Stories and the Natural World’ for some years. Through the programme I came to realise that this unit did not reflect the lived experience of the religious activists I met, nor allowed students to engage personally or deeply with the reality of climate justice. This inspired a re-design of the unit to put my new learning into practice, built around the idea of story.

Now my students engage with images, graphs, maps and the stories of real people impacted by a changing climate. This is the ‘Earth’s story’. We explore both Judeo-Christian creation accounts and the Big Bang, the ‘stories of origin’, through scriptural reasoning, introduced by Professor Nick Adams. The students engage with the texts and consider how they could influence religious and non-religious attitudes towards climate justice. We then explore real-life activists from faith and non-faith backgrounds. These are ‘inspiring stories’. Finally students tell their own ‘climate story’ using creative media to respond to and reflect on their learning.

The engagement from students was excellent. My learning from the Fellowship sessions invigorated my planning and allowed students to encounter real voices. I am looking forward greatly to sharing my findings with my department and beyond in the years ahead.

I would recommend participating in a Fellowship programme to any RE colleague, whatever stage of their teaching career. My investment in terms of time and effort is far outweighed by the impact on my own practice, as well as the shared benefits I bring to my team. I have not just ticked a CPD box, I have journeyed with a community of like-minded teachers, been exposed to new ideas and inspirations and been challenged to take my responsibilities to the environment seriously. Bill McKibben, a leading USA climate justice campaigner, says that if we are to save the planet, the whole world, every country, needs to ‘play the perfect game’ for the next decade (McKibben, 2020). I aim to ‘play the perfect game’ in encouraging the next generation of citizens to consider where they stand in relation to climate justice.

Information about the project

Bill McKibben (2020) Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play itself Out? Holt Paperbacks

What part does religion play in shaping the world? How is religion shaped back by the world, in turn? And now, in the Covid-19 world, are the answers different? The first two are essential Religion and Worldviews (R&W) questions, the third promises perspective shifts. The pandemic is changing us all, thus generating new R&W content. That much is clear from the London School of Economics (LSE) Religion and Global Society interdisciplinary blog, an excellent resource.[i]

The LSE blog is a changing collection of articles, often research summaries, as with Grace Davie’s and Nancy Ammerman’s piece on whether religion inhibits or generates social progress. [ii] Among Davie’s and Ammerman’s key findings are these (we recommend reading the entire article, and provide only some of the main points here):

• “Religion is a lived, situated and constantly changing reality, and has as much to do with navigating everyday life as it does with the supernatural.”
• Therefore, we have to look at contexts and examples, closely.
• (Researchers) . . . “will benefit from careful attention to the power of religious ideas to motivate, of religious practices to shape ways of life, of religious communities to mobilize and extend the reach of social changes, and of religious leaders and symbols to legitimate calls to action”

I would say that the advice for researchers is equally good advice for teachers. All of the points would apply whether or not we were under a pandemic, but the pandemic now gives a distinctive context and, in that context, particularised examples of religious motivation and mobilisation. The Covid-19 section of the LSE blog covers some such examples. [iii]

Firstly, Michal Kravel-Tovi and Esra Özyürek discuss religious and other gatherings in the age of coronavirus. [iv] Their analysis is provocative and unsettling:

• They argue that a religious gathering is more likely than a secular one to be identified as a virus cluster, as part of a discourse of suspicion against foreigners or minorities.
• They show how religiously-based defiance can often be typed as outrageous and irresponsible, as opposed to the less-than-perfect-citizenship of ‘secular’ gatherings such as a beach party.
• They see all of this as a clash between different understandings of reality, and a pretext for increasing state control of religious groups.

We might not agree with the views in this article; nevertheless, as we will see later, it offers useful classroom teaching points and resources. So does Marina Sapritsky-Nahum, who draws a fascinating account of this year’s Passover from her research in London’s Jewish communities: [v]

• She writes that “Next Year Together” may replace “Next Year in Jerusalem”, as the phrase of hope that concludes the celebration.
• She reports how for some Jews, social distancing goes against everything Judaism stands for and undermines their biggest strength: standing together as a community
• For a number of young Jewish families, she says, isolation has, however, created greater connection with their own nuclear family, bringing Jewish teachings and history to life in the comfort of their homes.
• It is still a difficult setting in which to celebrate liberation – you cannot celebrate with the extended family or invite strangers, as is customary. But projects such as Seder-to-Go provide all of the essential elements while spreading the message “Freedom is not limited to where you are.” [vi]
• 4,000 plus Seder boxes have been delivered across the UK, to many who are unable to source the necessary food for the holiday, or who need a step-by-step guide

Marina Sapritsky-Nahum concludes that in today’s global yet isolated world, traditions are not just handed down but also made. Recently I have heard two colleagues speaking about a natural role for R&W in offering young people a space to discuss the existential disruptions of the pandemic. I prefer Marina Sapritsky-Nahum’s focus, because whilst we should contribute to dealing with what is controversial or difficult, the responsibility to do so is not ours alone. Different curriculum areas have different contributions to make. Our distinctive contribution is to educate on the religion and worldviews aspects of Covid-19, as signposted by the articles summarised above, heeding the advice of Grace Davie and Nancy Ammerman to pay close attention to the specifics of context, example, motivation and mobilisation.

Michal Kravel-Tovi and Esra Özyürek provide a whole series of links to images and reports of different gatherings, religious and other. Teachers could use these with pupils, who could be tasked to identify and describe the different views of the world that these images and reports illustrate. Pupils could then be asked to juxtapose pairs of images that illustrate worldview differences, note the tensions that may result and suggest ways to manage these. How, for example, should a discussion proceed between the Louisiana pastor who hosted hundreds on Palm Sunday and the Anglican vicar who broadcast the Maundy Thursday service from her home? In a different learning task, pupils could consider the single images of empty places of worship. They could talk and write about why physical gatherings at sacred places are significant to people. Why do they think it is it important to join voices in shared speech and song, to physically take the Eucharist, or to adopt the prayer positions in synchrony with others? Opportunities for pupils to research now arise: what do members of different communities say about this? There are questions, too, about how societal developments challenge and reposition those communities’ self-understanding and practices.

Marina Sapritsky-Nahum’s stories provide excellent material for extending the enquiry. Teachers could present these to pupils, then providing a summary handout for annotation: when Passover took place under lockdown, what was lost, and what was gained? Feedback from the task could build into wider discussion: what do the gains experienced during Passover under lockdown tell us about how all communities can become stronger in the future?

[i] The blog’s home page is https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/religionglobalsociety/about/

[ii] Grace Davie and Nancy Ammerman, ‘A lived, situated and constantly changing reality’: Why religion is relevant to the pursuit of social progress,’ online article available at
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/religionglobalsociety/2019/01/a-lived-situated-and-constantly-changing-reality-why-religion-is-relevant-to-the-pursuit-of-social-progress/ downloaded on 11 May 2020.

[iii] The section is at https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/religionglobalsociety/category/covid-19/ and has twelve widely varied case studies at the time of writing. Again, I have space for only a couple here.

[iv] Michal Kravel-Tovi and Esra Özyürek, ‘Contagious Crowds: Religious Gatherings in the Age of Coronavirus,’ online article available at https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/religionglobalsociety/2020/05/contagious-crowds-religious-gatherings-in-the-age-of-coronavirus/ downloaded on 19 May 2020.

[v] Marina Sapritsky-Nahum, ‘ ‘This Night is Different From All Others’: Passover in London and Celebrating Liberation in Isolation,’ online article available at https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/religionglobalsociety/2020/04/this-night-is-different-from-all-others-passover-in-london-and-celebrating-liberation-in-isolation/ downloaded on 19 May 2020. The article also gives a general introduction to Passover.

[vi] See https://www.thejc.com/community/community-news/deliveroo-to-deliver-chabad-coronavirus-seder-to-go-kits-to-the-isolated-1.498818 .

Teaching about the parable of the Good Samaritan is standard practice in RE, and for good reasons. It encapsulates essential elements of Jesus’ teaching in a memorable and adaptable story. That’s why pupils are often asked to show their understanding of it by making the Good Samaritan into a modern-day character, but sometimes the process misrepresents the parable.

More attention is needed to who, exactly, the Samaritans were (and are), and this is where research helps. The differences between Jews and Samaritans were religious. The Samaritans accept only the Pentateuch as authoritative, have their own version of it and did not accept Jerusalem-related traditions (they have a commandment to build an altar on Mount Gerizim, near modern-day Nablus).

The open-access journal Religions has a 2020 special edition on the Samaritans, prompted by the fact that despite the fame of the parable, people tend to know little about them. We’ve reported one of the articles on Research for RE. [i] Let’s turn to its key findings. Part of the interest is that some of them are very unexpected.

• The Samaritans of today are a community of about 810 people split between Mount Gerizim, their holy place near Nablus (West Bank) and Holon (Israel).
• According to them, their name comes not from the province of Samaria from which they originate, but from the Hebrew word Shômrîm, which means “the keepers” and, by extension, “the keepers of the Law.”
• The researcher, Fanny Urien-Lefranc, states that although there is debate over their origins, Samaritans are now considered Jews by the Israeli state.
• Kyriat Luza, their village on Mount Gerizim, attracts more and more tourists each year, particularly on the Samaritan Passover, during which about fifty sheep are sacrificed. The ceremony brings together Palestinians, Israelis, and many foreign tourists curious to attend a ritual supposedly representing a centuries-old heritage.
• ‘Cultural entrepreneurs’ make full use of this: there is a market in ‘authentic’ Samaritan foods, amulets, texts, music, etc.
• There are now about 300 Brazilian ‘entrants’ into Samaritanism (there is no concept or method of conversion). This movement began in 2015. Many members have Jewish links and seek an authentic, pure, ancient form of Judaism.
• Migration is not a part of this spreading of Samaritanism out of its historical / geographical roots: it tends to be fuelled by the internet, e.g. a way of identification is to post a Facebook photo of yourself holding a laminated amulet containing a verse in Samaritan Hebrew.

How might you make use of these findings in classroom teaching? Well, they don’t add up to a lesson plan, unless you particularly want to teach a lesson about the Samaritans. They’re more likely to give you ways to refine teaching about the Good Samaritan parable, bringing your teaching into line with what is known about Samaritans.

• Use the findings to explain to pupils the religious differences between Jews and Samaritans.
• If you are adapting the parable to a modern-day setting, or asking pupils to do so, make sure that the religious differences are those reflected. Generic enmity (e.g. supporting a different football team) doesn’t really capture the point. Focusing on the real differences will help develop religious literacy.
• Explore with pupils why Jesus would champion outsiders. Are there other cases where he is an outsider himself? Pupils may be able to identify these, as links with previous learning, or you could supply them. [ii]
• Later, open up more general questions on the basis of learning about the Samaritans. Should religion be a form of tourism? [iii]
• And: are pupils surprised to find Samaritanism spreading in Brazil – or religion moving via the internet, in ways that don’t relate to countries of origin, or people physically migrating from one part of the world to another? Are there clues about the future of religion here?

[i] The Good Samaritan: what was his religion and does it still exist?

The original article is Fanny Urien-Lefranc, From Religious to Cultural and Back Again: Tourism Development, Heritage Revitalization and Religious Transnationalizations among the Samaritans: Religions 2020, 11, 86,  available open-access at https://doi.org/10.3390/rel11020086

[ii]E.g. John 1:46, Luke 6:20-26, Luke 9:58-60.

[iii] See e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDxy795P_gU, which also provides a visual stimulus on Mount Gerizim. Youtube has a range of video materials on Samaritanism.

Planning to teach about Hinduism, Gandhi, sacred texts and their authority and influence, ethics or British imperial history? Let’s look at some very recent research by Karline McLain of Bucknell University, USA that spans all of these areas.

We’re first reminded how the Bhagavad Gita is a scripture in which the god Krishna imparts lessons to the warrior prince Arjuna about sacred duty (dharma) and the path to spiritual liberation (moksha). By the 19th century it had come to be regarded as a core text, even the core text, of Hinduism. Under British rule, it was sometimes interpreted as a call for armed resistance, but Gandhi read a nonviolent message into it. The research then shows how there is more to know about Gandhi and the Gita.

Here are some of the main findings.

• Firstly, it is clear that Gandhi sought to find the meaning of the Gita in practice, and through life in a community.
• For Gandhi, the battlefield scene of the Gita was an allegory of the duel between good and evil in the heart.
• For good to win, the heart should be disciplined; people must be prepared to sacrifice themselves for what is true and right.
• For over 40 years, when Gandhi was not in prisons, he was living on back-to-the-land communities (ashrams) that he founded in South Africa and India. They tried to live out the Gita’s message.
• In 1906 Gandhi took a vow of celibacy, to practice the Gita’s principle of self-sacrifice; he would lessen his attachments to his possession of a wife and four sons and treat all ashram members as co-equals.
• On the morning of the Salt March in 1930, Gandhi insisted that only ashram members prepared to be killed, and who had taken vows of celibacy, should join him. They were allowed to take no food or drink, only a copy each of the Gita.

Do read the research (it’s free and very rich; access details are given at the end). You can certainly use it in classroom teaching. Different ways to do so will present themselves, but here are some suggestions.

1.Introduce the Gita to the class. Focus down on some of the most read verses, e.g. 47: “Set thy heart upon thy work, but never on its reward. Work not for a reward, but never cease to do thy work.” (The Bhagavad Gita [trans. Juan Mascaro] Penguin 1962, p.52.) With this verse – arguably the essence of the Gita – organise students in small groups, to come up with examples of people who deliberately work without seeking rewards. When some of these examples are fed back in plenary, discuss why these people do this, whether it can even be possible to do so, why it is held up to be good and whether it is a good rule.

2.Tell the story of the Salt March to the class. The relevant clip from Richard Attenborough’s 1982 film ‘Gandhi’ may help. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WW3uk95VGes

3.The film clip adds a visual element to the research, but the research adds depth and detail to the film clip. Draw on it to set up a follow-up role play task. Back in their groups, students act out the meeting on the morning of the Salt March. One plays Gandhi, insisting that only those ready to be killed should join him, only those who have taken vows of celibacy, none are allowed to bring food or drink, and all are required to bring a copy of the Gita. The others play ashram members, asking questions they imagine would have been asked at the time. As the role play is debriefed, students can be asked about how the ashram members would have felt and why they chose the questions they asked in role. Finally, the class as a whole can discuss whether the Salt March case counts as an example of working without reward.

4.Different homework or extension tasks could follow. Students could carry out their own research into life and ethics in Gandhian ashrams, drawing comparisons with communities of which they are members themselves and evaluating how people benefit from different kinds of community membership. This research could be presented at the start of the next lesson.

5.Alternatively, students could follow up the Salt March investigation made in class, by writing a newspaper article for (say) American readers at the time – they could imagine themselves as the American journalist shown in the YouTube clip, accompanying Gandhi on the Salt March. They could use the knowledge and understanding gained through the various classroom activities to report what happened, why it did, how Gandhi prepared the ashram members, the motivations and emotions of all involved and to explain how the events were linked to the Gita’s teaching of work without reward.

The original article is Karline McLain, Living the Bhagavad Gita at Gandhi’s Ashrams, Religions 2019: 10 (11), 619. Religions is a freely available online research journal. The article is available there, open-access at doi:10.3390/rel10110619

We’ve reported the research in RE:ONLINE at Living the Bhagavad Gita at Gandhi’s Ashrams