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If you teach about Jainism, the research included in this blog will be useful to you; if you teach about religion and the environment, or environmental ethics in general, it gives a good case study. It’s by Michael Reading of Mt. St. Mary’s University, Los Angeles.

The research summarises how Jainism has been pointed to for its eco-friendly example. Jainism proclaims the equality of all life forms, emphasises nonviolent behaviour (ahimsa), and encourages limiting one’s possessions (aparigraha). Within this setting, the research looks at the Jain-inspired Anuvrat Movement, founded in 1949 by Acharya Sri Tulsi.
The main findings are these.

• Jain beliefs and practices, e.g. ahimsa (non-violence to all beings) are highly relevant to ecological problems.
• A further ideal, aparigraha, refers both to the physical limiting of one’s possessions, as well as one’s achieving a general state of spiritual detachment, also a highly eco-friendly stance.
• The Anuvrat Movement, launched in 1949 by Acharya Sri Tulsi, revolved around what he perceived to be a moral deterioration within Indian society. To remedy this, he encouraged all people to take a set of vows (not only Jains but also Hindus, Muslims, Christians and Sikhs have participated).
• The vows are based on traditional Jain and Yoga vows, and also include one (the eleventh) of particular ecological relevance: I will do my best to refrain from such acts as are likely to cause pollution and harm the environment. I will not cut down trees. I will not waste water.
• There are others of relevance, e.g. the seventh enjoins limiting one’s possessions – and 42% of greenhouse gas emissions is caused by consumer goods production.

The full article is fascinating and freely available (access details are at the end), and you can use it to develop your knowledge of Jainism. As for teaching, it offers useful, challenging discussion questions. You could:

1.Begin by watching the short clip at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWhZN9fiLSM , then asking the class what they noticed most, which is likely to prompt discussion of the gauze face masks and thin white robes worn by the Svetambara monks. This can lead into explanation of ahimsa and aparigraha.

2. You could then introduce a power-point presentation based on the other three key research findings above, checking that students understand and can themselves explain such points as the link between aparigraha, greenhouse gas emissions and consumer goods production.

3.Underline how Tulsi placed emphasis on individual conduct. Ask students to discuss in pairs: to what extent are we responsible for environmental problems? How important or difficult are the lifestyle changes needed? How effective can vows be, and to whom or what might a non-religious person vow?

4.Finally, ask the students to write individual summary statements for brief plenary sharing. The researcher says that Jainism gives a solution to environmental problems. Do you agree or disagree? The task is to write as much as you can with as many reasons as you can in ten minutes.

The original article is Michael Reading, The Anuvrat Movement: A Case Study of Jain-inspired Ethical and Eco-conscious Living, Religions 2019: 10 (11), 636, available open-access at https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10110636

We’ve reported the research on RE:ONLINE at Do Jain teachings solve the ecological crisis?

In September, I began a PhD. It was, and is, the second most daunting task of my life to date (the first was having children!).

I started my career as a RE teacher in a delightful secondary school in Sussex, where I taught for a number of years. I liked teaching all year groups, but there was something about my year 11 and sixth form classes that got me buzzing. I loved the discussions, trying to get our heads around tricky issues and watching pupils grow in confidence. But most of all, I loved the journey that I went on with my classes as we tried to understand, appreciate and learn from different religions and worldviews that were often so different from our own.

However, I was so busy with the everyday ‘life’ of a teacher that research in RE was something I rarely encountered (apart from the odd CPD session). It definitely wasn’t something that I had thought about doing myself. Yet, the more time I spent teaching, the more I came to realise that there was a particular area that I felt ill-equipped to deal with – how to best handle controversial and ethical issues that crop up on the syllabus like abortion and euthanasia. Upon talking to colleagues, I found that some of them also struggled with issues that have the potential to be exceptionally sensitive. So, I dived in and decided that more research needed to be done in this area, and that I was the person to do it!

That’s when the Research for RE website came in so much use. On a quick glance, I was able to gain a good overview of some of the key research that is happening in RE at the moment, all in one place. Each of the research reports provides an overview of the project along with key findings and how they might be useful for teachers of RE. I can then provide feedback on how useful and relevant that I think the project is. There’s also space for people to suggest new areas of research, or opportunities to get involved in a project.

For me, the best bit about Research for RE is that it opens up a dialogue between research and practice. The world of academia is still relatively new to me but (much to my surprise) I have found that the majority of RE research is done by teachers, for teachers. The ability to connect with other researchers and teachers who are working in a similar area has been immensely encouraging. One thing that I love about the online RE community is that it is supportive, uplifting and reassuring. The same is true for the research community and I’m looking forward to getting more stuck in in the following months.

So, why not log on Research for RE and have a nose around to see if there’s something that would help your own teaching practice? Or whether there’s a project that you would be interested in helping out with?

Note: Since this blog was published all the research reports have been brought into RE:ONLINE and can be found at www.reonline.org.uk/research/

I wasn’t surprised that last September’s REChat on research raised the issue of effective teaching, and how research can be used to strengthen RE’s position as an academic subject. Currently much attention is being given to how to teach effectively about religious texts and what academic research tells us about this. I’ll go back to a 2012 article to draw out some useful pointers. [i]

The research was carried out in a variety of English schools, finding that primary teachers used the Bible more positively than did secondary ones. In secondary schools, teachers and pupils often expressed negativity about the use of books! Primary teachers seemed better equipped and more determined to help pupils to develop a love of reading.

Here are some key findings of the research:

• Good primary teachers present Bible stories as representing realities that may be different from those of their pupils, and to ask them to think about what is strange or puzzling.
• Secondary teachers could build on this unsettling process. In teaching e.g. Shakespeare they do so. In RE, pupils should be open to possible different meanings or puzzles, expanding their horizons. Secondary RE teachers might try to build on the successes of good primary practice.
  • This would include presenting stories ‘whole’, with attention to their original context, and encouraging pupils to be patient and imaginative whilst reading and thinking about them.
  • Pupils should consider different possible interpretations of stories, the perspectives and roles of different characters in stories and the questions and issues raised, including why the stories may be unsettling.

How might a good lesson look? Those of you teaching AQA GCSE specification A (Theme H: St Mark’s Gospel as a source of religious, moral and spiritual truths) will be grappling with the Parable of the Sower, and others might do so as part of general work on Christianity. There is no problem in presenting the parable as a puzzle: it already is, as Jesus indicates when quoting Isaiah at Mark 4:12, suggesting that anyone who wants to understand the parable should have to transform himself or herself first. But you could introduce the parable to the class as a puzzle or series of puzzles to solve. First read it aloud to them, perhaps, inviting any questions or comments straight afterwards and taking time to discuss these. Then get them to form groups, tasked to analyse the parable, of which they should have printed copies (a good idea is to print in the centre of an A3 sheet, leaving plenty of room to annotate around). Stress that their analysis should involve repeated reading of the parable and discussion of different possible answers to questions displayed on the IWB, including:

• Why has the crowd gathered? What do they want? How do they feel? How would you describe the atmosphere? Are they satisfied at the end?
• Imagine yourself in the farmer’s role. What does he learn from the experience of sowing the seeds in the different conditions?
• Imagine yourself in the roles of those ‘outside’ (the crowd on the shore) and then ‘inside’ (the disciples): how does each understand the parable? What is the difference?
• What about Jesus’s perspective? What is he trying to communicate? Why does he reveal this to those ‘inside’, leaving those ‘outside’ to struggle with the parable?
• What is strange or puzzling about the story as a whole (situation and parable)?

They might not have time to deal meaningfully with all of this! One option is to divide the class into five groups, give one of the above questions or question sets to each group, and let each in turn present their views in a plenary after say 20 minutes of discussion and analysis time. Another is to let each group choose one or two questions on which to focus their analysis.

The enquiry-led approach doesn’t rule out the use of teacher explanation at a different stage, or in response to pupils’ questions. An account of the background and different interpretations of the Parable of the Sower can be found at https://www.bibleodyssey.org/en/passages/main-articles/parable-of-the-sower . In the end, it stresses how the fertility of the soil should be compared to the receptivity of those who respond to Jesus’s message.

[i] We have reported this at Using the Bible – what secondary teachers can learn from primary teachers

One member of the September 9 REChat on research raised the issue of ‘official’ versions of religions contrasting with how they are lived by individuals in Britain today. Research on religion gives up-to-date detail on the latter. I’ll look at one example of this and draw out some classroom applications.

The research looked at the importance of home shrines. [i] It was a survey of 417 Buddhist teenagers of different traditions. The main findings were:

• 70% of British Buddhist teenagers had a shrine in their homes.
• Having a home shrine corresponded with heightened religiosity.
• Those with a shrine at home were significantly more likely to have a daily religious practice (22%) than those without a shrine (7%). Those with a shrine were also significantly more likely to bow to their parents (66%) than those without shrines (36%). Those with a shrine were significantly less likely to attend a temple on a weekly basis (41%) than those without (74%).
• Home shrines were significantly linked with Buddhist religiosity in female, heritage Buddhists in their late teens.
• For female, heritage Buddhists in particular, the shrine helped remind them about the Buddha and Buddhist clergy as symbols of their religion. This included feeling that life has a sense of purpose, considering oneself a ‘proper’ Buddhist, and thinking that Buddhist monks do a good job.
• For male, convert, and early teen Buddhists particularly, the presence of the shrine had more to do with identity than religiosity.

How can these data be used in teaching? Within a topic on Buddhism, you could plan a lesson on home shrines, perhaps following a more traditional one on places of worship. In the first part of the lesson, pupils could use e.g. https://www.thedhammalife.com/how-to-set-up-buddhist-altar-or-shrine-at-home/ to research what is involved in setting up a home shrine and why the different objects (and their placings) are important to Buddhists. Next, as a bridge, different pupils could feed back their findings to the class. In the second part of the lesson, groups or pairs of pupils could be given sets of the research findings, cut into individual strips, and asked to arrange these in order of interest or significance. They may wish to ask about vocabulary such as ‘heritage’, ‘convert’, or ‘religiosity’, developing religious literacy. They should note their reasons and any further questions they want to raise. The plenary would involve different pupils giving their findings and questions to the class, with the teacher also contributing questions for discussion: e.g. why might female and heritage Buddhists relate to home shrines more ‘religiously’? Why might male and convert Buddhists relate to home shrines more in terms of personal identity? Future lessons on gender in different religions might interleave back to this lesson.

[i] We have reported it at Does it matter whether Buddhists have home shrines?

The September 9 REChat on research saw teachers asking for research on various aspects of RE practice. In this blog I’ll focus on three of those: research on how religion is lived in practice, statistics on religion and research on how to be effective as a classroom teacher.

Researchers at the University of Warwick studied British Muslim female 13-15-year-olds. [i] They found them to have distinctive values and attitudes to religion. Here are the findings:

• Religious identity is important to young Muslim women in Britain: 84% agreed that this is so, and 88% said that being Muslim was the most important factor in their identity.
• Further, they tend to be surrounded by family and friends who think religion to be important.
• Nearly three quarters regarded themselves as a religious person (71%) but only one quarter regarded themselves as a spiritual person (26%).
• At least three in every five often talked about religion with their mother (66%) and slightly less frequently with their father (49%).
• Studying religion at school had helped 90% to understand people from other religions and 81% to understand people from different racial backgrounds. 78% found learning about different religions in school interesting, and 68% found studying religion at school had shaped their views about religion.
• 89% believed in God, 94% believed in heaven, and 89% believed in hell.
• The majority supported the views that we must respect all religions (94%) and that all religious groups in Britain should have equal rights (90%).
• 82% agreed that having people from different religious backgrounds made their school an interesting place.

One REChat participant talked about how statistical snapshots sum up lessons well and provoke discussion on religion. Pupils could be asked whether they find the statistics surprising, or how to interpret them.

You could use the statistics to help pupils to think in detail about Islam in contemporary Britain and develop a nuanced, evidence-informed perspective. Let’s say you gave the second half of a 60-minute lesson to this. The first half might be on any aspect of Islam. The second could be a group discussion activity followed by a plenary. In the group discussion activity, pupils would be given the statistical summary with all percentages and figures left out, and asked to estimate them, noting reasons (15 minutes). In the plenary, some pupils would state their estimates and reasons, others being invited to counter-suggest and comment; the complete set would then be displayed, for pupil reaction and teacher questions, e.g. how would you explain the fact that Muslim young women are slightly more likely to discuss religion with their mothers than fathers, or that 11% do not believe in God? And: what, overall, have you learned from this activity? What further questions would you ask (do you think that the statistics leave anything out)?

Research on classroom interaction tells us that pupils gain more knowledge of religion when they are able to ask and answer questions about which they are curious or unsure.[ii] Making use of pupils’ natural curiosity is certainly one way to teach effectively and enjoyably.

[i] We have reported the research more fully at What does it mean to be a Muslim young woman in Britain today?

[ii] You can find this research at Knowledge development of tweens in RE – the importance of school class and communication

I’d anticipate several answers to the above question. Some people might ask why that’s important, others might reply ‘not enough’, others (such as me) might say plenty, potentially. I’ll reflect back over two very recent conference sessions then look at each view in turn.

Firstly, the national ResearchED conference on September 7, held at Chobham Academy, London, included an interesting talk by Michael Eggleton on creating a mentally healthy school. Michael is a deputy head at Charles Dickens school, leading there and in other schools on the use of the RULER system developed at Yale University to foster children’s emotional intelligence.  [i] I have no doubts about the sincerity and positive effects of the approach, but it does seem to beg wider questions about twenty-first century schools. Research shows that their dominant accountability culture causes or exacerbates mental health problems in children and young people. [ii] Michael Eggleton spoke of some difficulty in persuading his colleagues in school that lessons on emotional intelligence were worth interrupting the ‘normal’ processes or aims. I understand this but wonder where we have arrived when schools seem not to be driven by basic purposes of promoting pupils’ well-being.

This misidentification of pupil well-being as an insertion into or interruption of normality also came up at the conference of the British Educational Research Association held from September 10 – 12 at the University of Manchester. Josie Maitland is a researcher at the University of Brighton and presented on her work on a school which was attempting to develop a whole-school approach to mental health. Shared community values, a sense of belonging and of school as a kind of family were all important, as was pupil voice, but what was good often happened in spite of the agenda that the school was a business and needed to generate outcomes. Government policy initiatives don’t seem to address these factors. [iii]

Why are these issues important for RE and research? The reasons are legal and educational, based on the purposes of the curriculum in England, which include promoting the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils and society, preparing pupils for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life and providing pupils with an introduction to the essential knowledge they need to be educated citizens.[iv] Note that these provisions apply to all schools and all subjects and that subject knowledge isn’t an end in itself. RE, like all subjects, should be justified by its contribution to these purposes and, I’d argue, research should support us to develop the subject appropriately. The CORE report echoes the same mandate.[v] It might be replied that mental health and well-being aren’t quite the same as personal development and citizenship, but impaired mental health and well-being would put at risk pupils’ personal development and citizenship chances (and vice versa).

On the argument that RE research doesn’t offer any perspectives on young people’s mental health or well-being, it would probably be made on the basis that no or few published articles or books exist on this. In fact, the field’s only just emerging, as a clearly defined one. [vi] Researchers in Japan and the Philippines have just provided a useful overall review of where the material is, internationally, concluding that whilst internalisation of religious attitudes can have positive or negative effects, where that is an aim for RE, exploring issues within and across faiths can improve adolescents’ healthy sense of connectedness. [vii]

The article from Japan and the Philippines doesn’t go deeply into relations between RE, mental health and well-being, but plenty of RE research does, if re-interpreted with those concepts in mind. Let me just give one example, referring back to my August and September blog. [viii] I wrote there about classroom-based research I’d done in collaboration with Bob Jackson, a group of RE teachers and a group of year 7 pupils. The pupils referred to RE as a ‘touchy subject’. They valued the changes their teacher had made, influenced by the research to which we’d introduced her: establishing a discussion framework sufficiently safe to discuss religion, asking them to make use of family or community contacts to research religion and teaching them to look at a religious text from different angles. They said that they now felt more able to benefit from the subject, especially in relation to what they saw as its main advantage, their understanding of difference in society. Something I didn’t mention in the blog was that at an early stage in the project, the teachers had told me that their pupils lived in a climate of fear. They were worried by many aspects of life (crime, war, Brexit, their own uncertain futures) and looked to teachers for help. This isn’t easy, for either young people or teachers, so it was good to record the gains in comprehension of religious difference and confidence in speaking about it which accrued through the research process. It only takes adjustment of language to see these as promoting pupils’ mental health and well-being.

Young people’s mental health and well-being are not an initiative, or a bolt-on, or an extra purpose for RE or any other subject. The point is rather that RE’s rich subject content can be taught and learned about in ways that promote them, based on the legal and educational reality that that’s what it’s for. In the right affective context, as our research showed, teachers get to teach more of it and better. [ix]

[i] See https://www.londonsouthtsa.org.uk/school-to-school-support/sles/michael-eggleton.php and http://ei.yale.edu/ruler/

[ii] See Merryn Hutchings, “Exam Factories? The Impact of Accountability Measures on Children and

Young People,” available open access  at https://www.teachers.org.uk/files/exam-factories.pdf, p.55 ff.

[iii] See https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/transforming-children-and-young-peoples-mental-health-provision-a-green-paper

[iv] UK government Department for Education, “Statutory Guidance: National Curriculum in

England: framework for key stages 1 to 4,” available at

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-curriculum-in-england-framework-for-key-

stages-1-to-4/the-national-curriculum-in-england-framework-for-key-stages-1-to-4

[v] See CORE, p.3: “Young people today are growing up in a world where there is increasing awareness of the diversity of religious and non-religious worldviews, and they will need to live and work well with people with very different worldviews from themselves.”

[vi] https://ijmhs.biomedcentral.com/track/pdf/10.1186/s13033-019-0286-7

[vii] Crystal Amiel M. Estrada, Marian Fe Theresa C. Lomboy , Ernesto R. Gregorio Jr. , Emmy Amalia , Cynthia R. Leynes , Romeo R. Quizon and Jun Kobayashi, “Religious education can contribute to adolescent mental health in school settings, ” International Journal of Mental Health Systems 13:28 (2019): available open access at https://ijmhs.biomedcentral.com/track/pdf/10.1186/s13033-019-0286-7

[viii] Kevin O’Grady, “What do Year 7 pupils think of RE? That it’s a ‘Touchy Subject’.” Blog available at

https://www.reonline.org.uk/blog/what-do-year-7-pupils-think-of-re/

[ix] As we illustrate in the original article, the improved learning atmosphere meant that the teacher could use her very good subject knowledge more fully, to pupils’ advantage. See Kevin O’Grady & Robert Jackson (2019) ‘A touchy subject’: teaching and learning about difference in the religious education classroom, Journal of Beliefs & Values, DOI: 10.1080/13617672.2019.1614755

You might not think there’s anything touchy about the above photo. It’s a happy scene where a whole Spanish pueblo is out on a sunny September afternoon to celebrate one of the two annual occasions when their most loved religious image, Padre Jesús, is processed through the streets. Yet controversy’s rarely far beneath the surface when it comes to religion; and within the living memory of some of those in the procession, during the Spanish Civil War, the same image had to be hidden in a barn for three years to prevent anarchists and communists from destroying it. There’s an agreement amongst the villagers to try to forget about those events and not discuss them, which holds up most of the time.

Moving back into the RE classroom, it isn’t easy for teachers to handle the conflict dimensions of religions and worldviews with pupils. Moreover, we could do with knowing more about what pupils think about this element of RE. That’s why I hope you’ll forgive me for featuring recent research by myself, together with Bob Jackson, in this month’s blog. In a 2018 project, we worked with RE teachers in a South Yorkshire academy to create some research-enhanced pedagogy. We discussed some already published research with the teachers, in terms of how it might help to engage and stretch able Year 7 pupils within a topic on Christianity and the environment, and we assisted the teachers to re-plan some of the lessons on that basis. I then observed the lessons and gathered questionnaire and interview data from a pupil sample, later also interviewing some of the teachers about their experience of the project.

I can’t cover all our findings here but will give you some of the headlines. Firstly, some of the topic content was controversial (e.g. disputes between Christian groups around dominion or stewardship and conflicting pupil views over religion or the environment); clear, agreed ground rules for discussion meant that the controversies could be engaged without too much rancour or reduction, especially because the pupils helped decide the rules. Secondly, direct contact with members of faith groups made the RE more relevant and engaging for the pupils – they interviewed relatives or family friends that self-identified as Christian and reported back enthusiastically to the whole class at the start of the next lesson. Thirdly, small group discussion of Biblical texts was effectively supported by a hermeneutical questioning structure: what might this have meant when originally read or heard? What different interpretations are possible? How might people of different backgrounds or interests interpret it today? Fourthly, for the teachers, working with the researchers and research gave extra angles on teaching, built confidence, improved class management and was much more productive than the generic, data-driven CPD to which they had become used.

The description of RE as a ‘touchy subject’ comes from the pupil interview record. But the pupils also said that the chance to investigate difference (between religious and other views of the world, and between one another) is what makes RE valuable and interesting. For the teachers, thinking about research had enhanced their capacity to provide such interest and value to pupils. This is something we want to hear much more about at CStG.

You can read more about this research at ‘A Touchy Subject’: Year 7 pupils’ views on when RE is good (and RE teachers’ views on the benefits of engaging with research)

The reference for the full published article is: Kevin O’Grady & Robert Jackson (2019) ‘A touchy subject’: teaching and learning about difference in the religious education classroom, Journal of Beliefs & Values, DOI: 10.1080/13617672.2019.1614755

There may still be some free, open access downloads of the full article available via this link: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/hr8fZwcXS8VSH8izyItI/full?target=10.1080/13617672.2019.1614755

The aim of the Farmington Institute (part of Harris Manchester College, Oxford University), is to support and encourage teachers of Religious Education in schools. This can be in either primary or secondary settings or other centres offering RE teaching including places of worship, and often encompasses being released for a fixed period of time to research a specific area pertinent to RE, be it literacy, teaching of a specific religion or something a bit more unique.

We, as a collective, became one of the first group scholarships, with the brief to provide support to secondary RE teachers in Suffolk.

If you asked somebody to name something about Suffolk, my guess is that most think of Ed Sheeran. They will have heard of John Constable. Some might think of the Adnams or Greene King breweries or Aspall’s cider. They might mention Ipswich Town Football Club (they’ll look unhappy if they do), or they may talk about our beautiful coastline. My guess is that they might not know that the honeycomb in the centre of a Malteser is made in Suffolk, or that we are home to an endangered species – the Suffolk Punch horse.

But I can almost guarantee that they will not think of multiculturalism, or a large amount of different beliefs and worldviews being prevalent. And they would be right.

Of a population of around 750,000 people, 61% of those claim to be Christian according to the latest census. The closest belief next to that are the ‘nones’ at 30%, with each of the other major belief systems all being in the 0 point something percent. While the increasing rise of the ‘nones’ reflects UK society in general, for each of the other beliefs, Suffolk lags behind with every other belief in the country. Resultantly, many students in Suffolk are less exposed to the diversity of beliefs in the UK and, we would argue, this makes RE even more crucial in their development as citizens of our country.

And yet, RE has found itself increasingly on the margins; squeezed into PSHE schemes, given a couple of cursory drop-down days every now and again, or just purely forgotten about. And, for those schools that do commit to it, do see the benefit in it and fulfil their obligations to their students, RE teachers are often left to fend for themselves, largely in single-staffed departments. Energetic and talented NQTs often find themselves leading subjects in their first year in the job, even having to create the programmes of study on the fly. RE departments are often led by well-meaning, non-specialists crying out for a bit of guidance and no knowing where to turn for it.

And then there are the practical Suffolk issues: how can I get my students used to different places and ways or worshipping when the closest Synagogue or Mandir is 90 minutes away? Can I afford the time to drive 60 minutes for a network meeting to then drive 60 minutes back home again? How can I keep up to date with new resources and ideas to keep RE interesting? Who do I turn to when I need some support and advice?

These were the questions that the four of us were hearing through our roles as Professional Advisors to Suffolk SACRE, where we update local faith representatives and politicians about developments in RE, both nationally and locally, providing us with a clear insight into the status of RE in the county. Thanks to some clear guidance and support from passionate people such as Jan Maguire and Helen Matter on SACRE, as well as those at Farmington, Suffolk Resolve was created. All of us are subject leaders (as well as, somewhat typically for RE teachers, having other roles in our schools), but most importantly, we all care deeply about RE being done and done well.

There have been a number of outcomes from the project. Firstly, we were able to offer teachers the chance to go on an organised trip to Coventry, to look at two places of religious significance; Coventry Cathedral and the Sikh Gurdwara. This was done to show that it is possible to expose our students to wider religious beliefs and practices, as well as providing valuable CPD for teachers.

Secondly, we made ourselves available for coaching and mentoring across the county (and a little bit beyond the borders too!), especially for those aforementioned who might not have much subject specific support. The intention is that this is ongoing. One colleague who benefited from the coaching said that it was particularly beneficial to have “a subject specialist observing me for a day, giving feedback, suggestions for improvement and sharing expertise and experience. To have an experienced practitioner as a go-to, at any time has been exceptionally useful.”

Finally, our website (www.suffolkresolve.co.uk) was created to host our project and share our learning. On the website, we have made the latest research and developments in RE easily accessible in a single location, so that we can keep improving our practice in order to benefit those we teach. This includes articles, podcasts and signposting to various RE influences, including RE:ONLINE. The website also hosts a plethora of resources developed by one member of our team, with ideas based on requests from local teachers as well as looking to cover the range of specifications, topics taught and worldviews that our students should encounter. These will remain available and we hope you find them useful too.

We are yet to see the full impact of our project, but many have stated a greater confidence, a greater feeling of support and a sense of relief that there are people there to help, and who want to help. They now know that they are not on their own. This is something that we have all felt when working on the project together – the benefits of talking to each other regularly about what we are doing and why, either in person or online has made us all better teachers; as the saying goes ‘iron sharpens iron’. Despite our geographical distance and various contexts, we have felt that we are a team who have experienced each other’s struggles and successes and it has become more and more apparent that too many RE teachers feel like individuals out there in the wilderness and we want to be a part of the solution to these issues.

Teaching is a team game and this is most certainly true for RE, so we believe that we should be treating it more like that and we will be endeavouring to continue to play our part. For us, there is more and more evidence that as experienced professionals, we need to share. Share resources. Share experiences. Share ideas. Share our struggles and share our successes. So we will keep sharing, and hopefully play our small part in making this great subject a little bit better.

Find out more about us at www.suffolkresolve.co.uk

Martin Cobbold, Debenham High School

Sarah Cobbold, St Benedict’s High School

Wayne Buisst, Ormiston Denes Academy

David Yaroslaw, Debenham High School

For more information about Farmington scholarships, visit http://www.farmington.ac.uk

REvitalise was a one-year project funded by AREIAC and CStG, it supported 20 teachers already starting to lead RE training for others outside of their school.

Having had the privilege to be part of the REvitalise project has enabled me to have a far better understanding of how to improve RE provision within my own school, as well as for others, allowing me to grow as well as help develop the leadership qualities in others.

Every minute of my involvement with this project has been extremely useful, as I have been immersed in high quality CPD with the best people and have been given amazing opportunities to meet other organisations such the 3 Faith Forum and The Ismaili Centre in London. It was useful to find out more about these organisations so that I could impart my new-found knowledge with my RE leaders’ group. I found out about the Faith and Belief Forum’s diversity workshops and their school linking programme: I have since shared this information with other RE leaders in Frimley. The visit to the Ismaili Centre was a fantastic opportunity to find out more first-hand about a branch of Islam that I didn’t previously know much about. This subject knowledge has since been used to inform my own planning and that of other leaders’. Being part of this program has allowed me to have a year’s membership to AREIAC- a fantastic opportunity to meet and work with advisers and consultants- learning from highly experienced people in the field of RE!

One of the best things I have learnt, which has had a huge impact on my training of other teachers, was learning about andragogy. It answers the ‘So what?’ and ‘Why should I be interested?’ questions that many teachers ask when involved with CPD at the end of a day’s teaching. The power of effective andragogy is vital in order to give teachers worthwhile ideas for the classroom and a wealth of resources to take away. I now use a variety of practical and engaging ‘starters’ at the beginning of my training sessions which make teachers think deeply about the content of the training- compared to ‘jumping into’ the training content that I used to do. I feel that I now conduct useful, interesting and highly relevant CPD for all- I now look at what I do with ‘a fresh pair of eyes’!

Attending the AREIAC conference in Manchester this July seemed like a natural progression as I come to the end of my year on the REvitalise project. It was evident that within the RE community, it is vital to make connections between organisations, supporting each other and helping to grow new leaders for the future- in essence just what the REvitalise project has aimed to achieve.

It was an honour to hear the wise words of the high calibre of speakers at the AREIAC conference. Mary Myatt’s words about ‘High Challenge, Low Threat’ made me think about offering a training session for the RE planners in my school and within my trust, based on examining closely, the quality of lessons being offered to pupils. During Mary’s speech, I found myself questioning myself about the quality of texts and images being used in my own classroom. Ed Pawson gave a brilliant speech which made me think about how the CORE report translates into what we do next as an RE community. Ed’s speech also highlighted the need for preparing training for teachers of RE to prepare for ‘deep dive’ inspections. This is something I hope to do in the next academic year. It was a fantastic experience to hear about Dr Richard Kueh’s multi-disciplinary approach to stressing the importance for subjects to be more linked. I now understand more about finding a strategic way to improve the standards in my trust and to influence change with respect to RE planning and ultimately, the quality and content of what pupils are learning. Dr Kevin O’Grady made me think about research opportunities: consequently, I would like to ask my local group members if they would like to research any area of our subject, with a view to sending a research proposal to Kevin in the future. To summarise, all speakers made me think clearly about curriculum design and how my leadership can be used to help develop the quality of the subject for others. I am particularly interested in looking at previous research with a view to how it can inform my planning and teaching of RE, which in turn, will be of benefit to the teachers I train.

REvitalise has also given me the opportunity to network with others in similar roles.  I now feel empowered to ’push further’ and work with other advisers to coordinate a pupil conference for higher prior attainers in RE, with a view to providing a conference for RE teachers in Surrey. Without this incredible project, I would never have broken out of my ‘comfort zone’.  Now I have the courage to keep striving for excellence in RE on a much larger scale and taking others with me on this journey. I am so grateful for being part of the REvitalise project- I will never look back!

For more about research in RE visit Research

The CORE report recommends attention to the conceptual category of religion. [i] This is welcome. What do we mean by the word? The discussion needs opening, at both professional and classroom levels. It won’t be an easy one, as the field of religion is so varied that religion is hard to define.

According to CORE, religions are worldviews, and worldviews are philosophies of life.[ii] At the same time, the report recommends greater attention to individual lived experience and how worldviews work in practice.[iii]

Is this a conceptually clear account, or is there a tension between emphasising beliefs or philosophies on the one hand, but experiences and practices on the other? Which should be RE’s primary focus, and how should the foci relate? This month’s Research of the Month is chosen for suggesting some promising answers to these questions. It’s a book by the US scholar Christian Smith, Religion: What it is, how it works, and why it matters. [iv]

The definition of religion given by Smith has been described by one reviewer as ‘the best theoretical and analytical definition I know’.[v] It reads as follows:

‘Religion is a complex of culturally prescribed practices that are based on premises about the existence and nature of superhuman powers. These powers may be personal or impersonal, but they are always superhuman in the dual sense that they can do things which humans cannot do and that they do not depend for their existence on human activities. Religious people engage in complexes of practices in order to gain access to and communicate or align themselves with these superhuman powers. The hope involved in the cultural prescribing of these practices is to realize human goods and avoid bads, especially (but not only) to avert misfortunes and receive blessings and deliverance from crises.’[vi]

Thus, the primary focus is on practices, but the practices are seen as based on beliefs or ideas. As he develops the argument, Smith offers supporting points. Religions also have secondary aspects including the forms of identity, community or aesthetic expression associated with the primary practices. Participants don’t necessarily hold the ‘established’ related beliefs, so religion consists in the cultural meanings handed on; these are realities apart from individual experiences, and it is as religiousness rather than religion that individual experiences matter hugely.

What might Smith’s analysis mean for RE teaching? To sketch it out, teachers would engage pupils in an enquiry into a range of religious practices. Firstly: what happens during these practices? For what goods do they aim? There would then be two secondary layers of enquiry, one into how repeated religious practices flow into aspects such as social identity, aesthetic expression and power, another into religiousness at the individual level.

This form of RE might flow from a clear conceptual account of religion, but it has limitations. It doesn’t include a philosophical element, so pupils don’t exercise a right to be critical about truth-claims that may be associated with the practices and meanings. It doesn’t include a reflexive element where pupils reflect on their own viewpoints, how these affect their own views of what’s studied and how their own ideas and values may have developed through their studies. Still, the approach could be compatible with both elements. The study of non-religious worldviews might have to come from a different angle, because it may not be possible to view these primarily in terms of practices. Nevertheless, I would certainly recommend Religion: What it is, how it works, and why it matters as stimulus to further thinking and discussion regarding the conceptual category of religion within RE.

[i] RE Council of England and Wales, Religion and Worldviews: The Way Forward. A National Plan for RE, London (RE Council of England and Wales): 2018, page 31.

[ii] Ibid., page 4.

[iii] Ibid., pages 30-31.

[iv] We’ve reported part of the book at What is religion?

[v] You can read Jose Casanova’s review of the book at https://academic.oup.com/jcs/article-abstract/61/1/126/5303792?redirectedFrom=fulltext

[vi] Christian Smith, Religion: What it is, how it works, and why it matters, Princeton and Oxford (Princeton University Press): 2017, page 3.