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This month’s blog looks over two recent conferences, a research report and a research idea. There’s been plenty of debate (and some controversy) about whether non-religious world views such as Humanism should be included in the RE curriculum. I think the debate is largely settled in favour, given RE’s democratic, inclusive credentials and the need for young people to investigate difference, and I sense that the discussion is moving from whether to how.

It isn’t just a recent issue. Through the 1970s and 1980s, Ninian Smart pressed gently and genially for a redefinition of Religious Studies as World-View Analysis. He saw Marxism, for example, as comparable to religious traditions, in some ways, and thought that it might be profitably studied in the same framework as them. In RE, Linda Rudge wrote about the ‘I am Nothing’ generation as a silent majority whose generalised spirituality should not be ignored by the subject. The article first appeared in 1998 but is even more relevant now.

I don’t think Linda’s convinced by the vogue for ‘Nones’. The term has some unfortunate effects, not least sounding as if people are actually discussing nuns. There’s a problem with identifying those of no particular religious or world-view abode, though: there isn’t a category that works. As Neil McKain pointed out at the July 10 Humanists UK conference, atheist, secularist and humanist are neither synonymous nor necessarily opposed.

Moreover, if you look at Ben Clements’ research on whether religious belief has declined in the UK, you’ll quickly see how mixed the situation is. He covers the decades since 1981 and uses survey data to show that although belief in God has declined, belief in life after death hasn’t. Another finding is that women are significantly more likely than men to believe in God, life after death and heaven. The big evidence base, attention to detail and problematising of some too-neat assumptions make this my research of the month and I would recommend it to all readers. The Research for RE link is given at the end. I must add that I don’t see non-religious world-views as simply the removal of religion. It’s more that Ben Clements’ research may blur the line between religion and non-religion and affect the way it’s drawn across society.

Some of my questions at the June LTLRE Bath conference seemed to result in a bit of tension. However, I’m not trying to create obstacles. I want to understand what good practice looks like. I wonder about how to handle the complications, and whether to present non-religious world-views in the same way as we present religions, given that we need to represent them with integrity. I wonder how the term world-view fits in, too, since there are people who don’t see Science as one amongst several world-views.

I thought that the Humanists UK conference carried promise. Sophie Colligan is someone very capable of communicating the lived experience of Humanism at the personal level, with the added advantage that she can do so to younger children. At the organisational level, Humanists UK is, well, an organisation, formed in 1896 and with a tradition to draw on and stories to tell. There’s a profound ritual dimension, with celebrants conducting naming ceremonies, weddings and funerals (I’m hoping to provoke a response on whether ritual or celebration is the right word). The ‘happy human’ logo offers symbolism, and at the level of Humanist belief, there’s a clear connection to experience – that is, several speakers spoke of how beliefs should be formed through reflection on human experience, including mortality. Humanists UK have provided a range of lesson plans and resources for all key stages on their website (again, the link’s at the end).

I hope it’s clear by now that I’m far from categorising all those with non-religious world-views as humanists. Rather, as far as I can see, Humanism offers the best starting-point for research on good RE practice on non-religious world-views. I’ve seen the lesson plans and resources; next, I’d like there to be a kind of forum on what are the features of good teaching and learning about Humanism. This would be followed by some visits to schools for observation and documentation of good practice, for sharing with the profession. My research idea is posted at https://researchforre.reonline.org.uk/research_idea/good-teaching-and-learning-about-humanism-in-re/?show_me=&about=&taxes=; if you’d like to help get the research going or take part, the link to express interest is in the same post.

See Ben Clements’ research at Has religious belief declined in the UK? Which kinds of people are more likely to hold religious beliefs?

The Humanists UK website is at https://understandinghumanism.org.uk/

I haven’t been teaching for long, but during my PGCE I remember it being a time full of reflection, questioning and often self-doubt around what I was doing and whether I was actually making the impact that I thought that I was. During my NQT, as the pressure kicked in and I focused on the things that worked. Well, at least I think they worked. At the very least they worked well enough. But actually, I wasn’t interested in what worked ‘well enough’, I wanted to know what was working the best and I started yearning again for the academic vigour that had been a requisite of my PGCE course.

I knew of a few people who had completed a Masters in Education, but when I thought of myself in the same situation I had those imposter syndrome feelings, those people who could do a Masters at the same time as working full-time were superstars in my eyes and on top of that the cost of the courses seemed out of reach for someone new to the teaching profession. I resigned myself to the fact that it was a nice idea, but probably not for me.

Then one morning whilst checking my emails, something I always do just before checking the football transfer gossip (a habit I’m not entirely sure how I got into) and sat there in my inbox was an email (probably the last email I can distinctly remember receiving that didn’t have ‘GDPR’ in the subject line), it was from Culham St Gabriel’s Trust and it was advertising their 3forRE scheme. I had already benefited from their funding during my PGCE, without which I may never have been able to afford teacher training in the first place, and this time it seemed like an even more remarkable offer.

The scheme works with an agreement between Culham St Gabriel’s Trust, your school and yourself. The agreement means Culham St Gabriel’s and your school agree to part of the funding and you fund the remaining amount. Whilst there is an obvious financial benefit to this agreement, it also means that the school is invested and will directly benefit from the research that you are completing throughout your masters course. The process and procedure is incredibly straightforward. There is a selection of Universities that are associated and aware of the funding arrangement, so you still need to ensure that you have secured yourself a place on one of these courses to actually benefit from the funding.

I’d already completed my PGCE at the University of Oxford, knew the Masters course director from then and still lived ‘locally’ so it was the natural choice for me to apply for the MSc Learning and Teaching. The course is well structured around the professional commitments of a full-time working teacher. That’s not to say that other courses are not, I’ve just no personal experience of them and others that I have known who have completed Masters at other establishments have absolutely loved their course.

Now, the obvious question is why would I need a Masters just to reflect more on my teaching practice, couldn’t I just take the time myself and to critically reflect and engage with research in my own time? Well, yes. However, the reality is that sometimes we need a nudge or additional incentive to do so when our teaching loads are so high and the additional workload at times feeling insurmountable. Most importantly for me, however, was the ability to learn from and interact with experts on a range of educational issues and to receive high-quality supervision to ensure that I could engage with the research as effectively as possible. On top of that, the course gives you the ideal opportunities to share and reflect on the teaching practice and research of professionals in the same situation as you.

This isn’t to say that opportunities like this aren’t available to you outside of a course such as this, we’ve all worked with teachers who are well versed in the latest research and are keen to reflect upon and develop their own practice, but we also know teachers who will scoff at the idea that research bears any relevance to the realities of the classroom and therefore they won’t be taking part.

The course ran for two years part-time, the first year my research was focused on the perspectives of Hindu pupils in the teaching of Religious Studies, it fitted my school context well and allowed for real developments in the teaching of the subject, addressing concerns about misrepresentations within religions. My second-year piece represents the piece of work, to date, that I am most proud of ever completing. I tackled the under-researched role of EdTech in Religious Education (for those who are interested, my exact title being ‘The role of technology in the assessment of RE’ Find it on the ResearchforRE website at http://researchforre.reonline.org.uk/research_report/the-role-of-technology-in-the-assessment-of-re/).

The research was fun, rewarding and informative, the write-up was one of the most labour intensive things I have ever done and there are many people who I am thankful to during times at which I may have neglected them to focus on the work. My teaching practice and the implications for the school have been enormously beneficial, I have led CPD sessions, I’ve been asked to blog and speak at a range of events and asked to work on different research projects. Throughout I’ve met a range of fantastic people, from fellow course-mates, to academics and importantly the supervisors that I was given.

After all the hard work that went into this, the saddest part was submitting my dissertation, psychologically that felt like the end and I hadn’t been prepared for the change of intensive study to an email of recognition that my assignment had been received. The wait for the result was nerve-wracking, initially I was convinced that I’d have failed (the imposter syndrome sneaking back in), then I managed to acknowledge that this was a much better piece than my first assignment, so it must be a pass, surely…

On what I’m now certain was the first day that I’d not woken up with the MLT on my mind, I started my day like normal, breakfast, football gossip while I let the coffee brew, then the short cycle to work. At lunchtime I checked my phone, the battery was low, so I’d had to manually refresh the emails, I dragged down the screen and in my inbox appeared a few emails, one from a major high street sports retailer informing me of their latest sales, one from a major online retailer suggesting products that I might be interested in, the last from the Education department at the University, my result was ready.

A tense few moments as my phone struggled to download the attachment and I had to log back in to my computer, this time the attachment loads, I read it through once but cannot take it all in, so I have to go through a second and then a third time. This time it sinks in, I hadn’t failed, nor had I only just passed, I’d managed to get a distinction for my dissertation and I was speechless.

A few months later and I was getting ready for my graduation. When I’d graduated from my Undergraduate degree it had rained, really hard, the only pictures are taken in an overcrowded marquee. This time I managed to graduate in the snow (the man in the shop where I hired the gown claimed that it had been the first graduation in the snow in all the time that he had worked there in 30 years – I’m not sure if that’s true, but it is certainly the account that I’m going with). Graduating at Oxford is unlike anything I’ve done before in my life, it really is a special place (not one that I thought I’d ever be graduating from). It topped off an experience in my life that was brilliant in so many ways.

The point is that the Masters course was, professionally and intellectually speaking, the most rewarding thing I have ever done in my life and personally one of the most rewarding things (I have to play it safe there, some of my family and friends read these blogs). I cannot recommend doing a Masters enough, it will challenge and excite you in so many ways and the support from Culham St Gabriel’s (and the two schools I worked in during the course) through the 3forRE scheme was invaluable in helping me to achieve so much. It is a kind and supportive offer that I fully encourage you to take advantage of.

Sam McKavanagh teaches RE and Philosophy at a secondary school in Oxfordshire and regularly blogs on his website My Teaching Life (http://www.myteachinglife.co.uk). He’s passionate about teaching and keen to try out tech and new teaching ideas.

For more information on the 3forRE Master’s Funding see http://www.cstg.org.uk/how-we-help/3forre/

Religion is hard to understand. What does it mean to be a Buddhist, a Christian or a Muslim, living your life by your faith? Most of the time we have to ask pupils to answer the question from an outsider perspective, which increases the difficulty. Still, as teachers, there are tricks of the RE trade that we can use to help them.

One is to explain the spiritual ideals held by religious adherents and ask pupils to imagine problems that those people might face when putting the ideals into practice in today’s world. This gives a real-life aspect to the discussion, engages the imagination and brings out ethical issues that the pupils can also weigh up for themselves.

Research into lived religion gives us rich resources for this kind of pedagogy. My RE research of the month for July is a case in point. During 2011, the American religious studies scholar Daniel Capper spent sixty days in a Buddhist monastery in Mississippi, participating in its various activities and interviewing its monks. He uncovered complications faced by Buddhists when they tried to put very pure spiritual ideals into practice. You can read a report of Daniel Capper’s research, together with a link to the original article, at http://researchforre.reonline.org.uk/research_report/how-eco-friendly-is-buddhism-really/

The monastery in question was founded by the Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, who taught that every Buddhist practitioner should be a protector of the environment, because everything in the universe is interconnected, humans are equal partners in a larger system and no distinction should be made between inanimate and animate beings. The Buddhists in the monastery saw natural beings as enlightened and as spiritual teachers to people. They tried to consume little, their diet was vegan and they strove to avoid harming any living beings, even those normally regarded as pests. When they practiced walking meditation, this included an attitude of deep appreciation for the surrounding natural environment.

Yet Daniel Capper points out how there are various Buddhist beliefs which offer slightly different attitudes to nature and the place of human beings within it. In Thailand, trees have been symbolically ordained as monks; but still, Buddhists are taught that for purposes of attaining enlightenment, a human rebirth is the most favourable of all.

Do these differences underlie the compromises that were sometimes made in the monastery studied? For example: two stray dogs who were interfering with the contemplative atmosphere were eventually removed. The researcher himself was asked to do this, though it might be considered that for purposes of karma, asking somebody to do something is not very different from doing it yourself; in a compromised act such as this one, it may be worse. In another case, pesticides were used against red fire ants whose bites are very painful and can be fatal.

These acts can be seen as last resorts, but the Buddhists ultimately placed their own human comfort and safety higher than the intrinsic value of the dogs or ants. Sometimes their ecological lifestyle seemed to be motivated by their own spiritual wishes.

Nevertheless, Daniel Capper’s tone is far from judgemental. The issues are not simple. I would add that within the complexity lies the RE potential. The material challenges and assists pupils to understand and to engage critically.

In an outline teaching plan derived from it, they could first be asked to suggest possible practical difficulties in leading a life based on the principle that all living beings are equal. They could then be introduced to Daniel Capper’s ‘story’, perhaps also looking up the monastery online at http://magnoliagrovemonastery.org/ Finally, some general questions might be debated, also forming bases for extended writing where older or more able pupils are concerned. If you believe that all of life is equal and interconnected, can the use of pesticides be justified? If you believe that all of life is equal and interconnected, must you have a vegan diet? And in the final analysis, is it possible to live in a way that truly and completely reflects a belief that all of life is equal and interconnected?

Enjoy Daniel Capper’s research on the Research for RE site and please remember to leave your feedback there. If you happen to try out the teaching ideas suggested above, we would be delighted to hear about how these have gone and to include your reflections in future blogs, so do get in touch. We are also looking for nominations for future RE research of the month features, so if there is a research report which you have found particularly interesting or useful, email details to Kevin@cstg.org.uk

Whilst I’m not a total advocate of philosophical approaches to RE, their benefits are undeniable. The subject can’t do without a critical layer. Though religious beliefs and practices shouldn’t be conflated with philosophical ideas – the nature of religious beliefs and practices can, often, be very different from that of the rationally worked-through principles found in philosophy – in approaching what we might call the formal claims on truth made by different religious traditions, some engagement with the philosophy of religion seems necessary.

I enjoyed philosophy of religion as a university student and even more as a teacher. Questions about the existence or qualities of God, religious experience, miracles or the problem of evil appear to engage and stretch the minds of upper secondary age students in powerful ways. I guess this explains the phenomenal recent success story of Religious Studies A level. In 2017, 23,856 entries were recorded, compared to 11,132 in 2003. This is an increase of 114%, greater than for any arts, humanities or social science subject. 23.3% of entries for Religious Studies A level were awarded an A or an A*. [1]

Many of you will be busy preparing to teach Religious Studies A level lessons and, given the curiosity and appetite of your students, looking for enhancement material beyond that provided by the standard textbooks. Well, the Research for RE website contains a very varied set of materials, relevant in different ways to different aspects of RE, including research that can be applied directly to Religious Studies A level teaching. The definition of research adopted for the website is broad, including the kind of scholarly or philosophical activity highlighted in this blog post. This month I’m featuring research by the philosopher Patrick Todd. [2]

The new generation of Religious Studies A level specifications continue to include philosophical arguments for and against the existence of God. Research for RE reports an article in which Patrick Todd demonstrates how God can’t have qualities which are impossible to have. [3] This point affects arguments against the existence of God in important ways. Let me elaborate. An argument against theism could be that God is supposed to possess a certain quality, such as omniscience; but that having the relevant quality is impossible (no being knows everything: it would include knowing that you knew everything, but this knowledge would be based on your knowing everything, and something cannot be based on itself). Therefore God does not exist. But Patrick Todd sees such arguments as ineffective. If having a given quality is impossible, and God is the greatest possible being, God need not have that quality.

There are better ways of arguing for atheism, continues Patrick Todd. You could argue that God would have to have a quality (e.g. perfect goodness) in order to be God; then prove that its possession is impossible. Or that an existent God would have to have a certain quality, and prove this to be inconsistent with the facts of the world. Evil, for instance, is a fact of the world, incompatible with a good, all-knowing, all-powerful God. Patrick Todd introduces some interesting vocabulary. An ‘OmniGod’ possesses all ideal qualities. A ‘MaximalGod’ possesses only those ideal qualities that are possible. Nevertheless, a ‘MaximalGod’ is no solution to the problem of evil: the existence of the greatest possible being is still brought into question by the existence of evil.

You could give your A level students a bit of an edge by getting them to register on Research for RE, read the report of Patrick Todd’s research and perhaps consult the original article. A print-out of the Research for RE report gives you an excellent lesson plan and resource, moreover. In its ‘How RE teachers might make use of it’ section, we are advising that teachers of A level Religious Studies could use the material directly with students, when teaching about the nature of God, or arguments for and against the nature of God. The students could, for example, evaluate the ‘OmniGod’ / ‘MaximalGod’ distinction. Is ‘MaximalGod’ an adequate concept of God? How far is it compatible with other important beliefs such as creatio ex nihilo or miracles? Is Patrick Todd correct to argue that ‘MaximalGod’ is no solution to the problem of evil? In these ways, the students would deepen their understanding of the issues, extend their subject specialist language and be challenged to be critical.

We would be very interested indeed to hear about how it goes. You are encouraged, of course, to leave feedback on Patrick Todd’s research on the Research for RE website. Additionally, if you leave comments below, or email them to Kevin@cstg.org.uk , we will follow them up; we hope in future to publish case studies of how Research for RE reports are being used by teachers or other RE professionals. Finally, if you have found a Research for RE report to be particularly interesting or useful, you may wish to nominate it to be featured as RE Research of the Month – again, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

1 https://www.religiouseducationcouncil.org.uk/news/a-level-religious-studies-entries-remain-high/

2 You can meet Patrick Todd virtually at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xmi5d4tibXY

3 Read the report at God can’t have qualities which are impossible to have (you can also find a link to the original article there).

Why should RE teachers read research? That’s what my blog’s going to be about. As well as answering the question, I’ll be illustrating the answer. In fact, most of the blog will be spent illustrating the answer, because we’re fortunate in having a great many examples to use.

I visited a secondary school last week, a successful academy, and spent the afternoon talking with the RE staff. I had some questions for them, including: what’s been the impact of the British Values agenda on your work, in comparison to, say, the pressures from data and exams? What was interesting was less their answer (data and exams continue to press hardest) than the fact that they had to think and talk it through as they gave it, explaining that they don’t really get time to consider such questions. One colleague then reflected that on a part-time MA course a few years previously, she had had to get above the daily routines and think outside their boxes. She said that it had made her approach her teaching differently.

That’s how I relate to research. Teachers are so busy that time to pose questions about and reflect on what we’re doing is scarce, but we’re energised when we find some. And if we need some stimulus material to help us to pose the questions and prompt our reflections, there’s no shortage of research to use. Some research literature is based on field data, presenting the results of e.g. interviews or questionnaires with pupils, teachers or others; some is based on scholarly discussion of different ideas and perspectives, and some mixes the two broad approaches. To me, what counts is whether it helps us to understand what we’re doing and how to do it. You can find numerous examples in the Research section of RE:ONLINE, reported for you in a concise and practical way.

Let’s consider one of them, a research essay in which Karen Walshe and Geoff Teece identify a difficult and necessary question about RE teaching. What is understanding religion, or religions? We often talk about it, but what does it really mean? Does it mean understanding as a believer, based on faith? Or does it mean understanding as an outsider, perhaps through appreciating parts of the history of a religion, or its influence on society? Or, might a religion be understood ‘religiously’, that is, in its own terms, whether by a believer or by an outsider?

Karen Walshe and Geoff Teece go further than posing this question. They consider what RE teachers might do in response to it. They suggest that soteriology (beliefs and practices concerned with salvation, or with the ultimate meaning and purpose of human life) is essential to religions. Religions are essentially concerned with how people can fulfil the ultimate purposes of human life. In order to help pupils to understand religions in their own terms, therefore, RE teachers should focus teaching on the soteriologies of the religions.

And then the writers go still further, concluding with some concrete teaching and learning suggestions. They give the example of Sikhism, where there are key soteriological beliefs and practices to understand. Haumai (self-centredness) is the root of earthly life’s frustrations, but a life of sewa (selfless service) leads to gurmukh (God-centredness) and a state of mukhti (spiritual liberation). Serving in the gurdwara expresses these beliefs. During a visit to the gurdwara, pupils could ask Sikhs about how it does so.

Does this piece of research help us to understand what we’re doing, and how to do it? Different people will have their own views, but it seems clear that it raises a vital question: when we teach about a religion, how can we get to what’s essential? Karen Walshe and Geoff Teece suggest an answer and offer some practical strategies. I think that what’s needed next is for teachers to try these out with their classes, evaluate the results and share the findings with as many others as possible, so that we get more and more evidence and a richer and richer discussion. This applies not just to the present piece of research, but research in general. Teachers are well placed to offer what we might call research on research.

We would love you to add your voices. Here’s what you can do. If you haven’t already done so, register on the Research for RE website. You can find more about Karen Walshe and Geoff Teece’s research there (see our research report Religious understanding. What is it? How do you help pupils to get it?). You’ll be able to leave feedback and, at a later stage, if you’ve decided to develop some teaching around the research, you could come back again and post an account of what you did. Perhaps the research report could provide a good focus for your department meeting, or for INSET. You could try adapting its ideas to plan teaching about a different religion to Sikhism. The report is one of many on Research for RE, all there with the aim of using research to help us to further the conversation about what we’re doing and how to do it.

Note: In April 2021 the Research for RE website was retired and the reports moved into RE:ONLINE

Teaching is a profession where continued development and regular reflection on progress is integral to what it means to be a teacher. However, managing growing workload commitments and responding to what seem to be ceaseless government initiatives, the time to stop and reflect on what got you here and why you teach may be diminishing. It was in part this sense that the one thing I didn’t have enough of was time and feeling, as many teachers do stretched and overworked, that for many years put me off further study. Despite having loved academic study, I was also dissuaded by the cost attached to university courses and had some concerns that having been so many years out of it, I may even struggle to write an essay! Putting reservations to one side, I knew I was keen to do something that would refresh my outlook on Religious Education and give me the chance to think critically about the subject I love. Having done my PGCE in RE at Warwick University I was familiar with their distance learning Masters in Religions and Education and looking at the flexibility of the programme and the time I would have available to study I concluded that I would be able to manage work commitments alongside studying. Around about the same time, a colleague sent me a link to the 3 for RE scheme which offers financial support (60% of fees or £1000) on the condition that your employee also pay at least 10% and that you are prepared to share any work of interest with Culham St Gabriels. My school were very supportive so I applied and am now in my second year of study.

It would be disingenuous to suggest that getting back into studying at university level has been without challenge. The Distance Learning Programme in particular has required a great deal of self-motivation and organisation especially at those busy times of the year when exams are approaching. Now in my second year though, it is clear to me that the benefits have outweighed any such challenges though. In practical terms I have been given new ideas for content and activities. More than this though the study and the numerous questions raised have had an impact on the way I think and speak about religion and education. Does religion even exist? Is it an imposition from outsiders[i]? What is RE for? Should we as educators be given only time for critical study of religion or is it appropriate to allow opportunities for spiritual development? One of the things I’ve found most valuable has been sharing with my students, in particular Sixth Form, what I am studying and getting their feedback to some of the questions above. The conversations that we have had as a result, which would not have come about were it not for my MA, have offered insight into my own practice which after nine years of teaching, has certainly been refreshing. It has also been valuable for them to see me as a learner too and I was able to share with them feedback from my own work, both good and not so good!

Engagement with students has been at the forefront of my experience of the course so far and this was particularly so with the module last term on Interfaith Dialogue. Dialogue and sharing ideas is a feature of any classroom, particularly the Religious Education classroom. The value of this is fairly obvious, students can learn from one another’s views and experiences and faced with difference are giving the opportunity to negotiate and be more confident about their own position. In the RE classroom of course the main focus may be around matters of faith and religious practice but of course it is not likely to be limited to this. The value of dialogue is not solely in what students can learn from one another but also in development of thinking skills including listening and questioning. However the potential for dialogue to achieve all this is dependent on how it is organised and managed by the facilitator. Dialogue is not just about talking, understanding does not just come about through discussion. When it comes to interfaith dialogue, perhaps more so than other form of dialogue, this needs to be clearly acknowledged with regular reflection and agreed upon guidelines. Should dialogue be about highlighting differences or focusing on similarities? Can dialogue strengthen relationships or could it actually accentuate divisions?

To help explore these questions practically I set up an interfaith group, made up of students from different year groups and importantly different religious backgrounds (including those from none). This was made possible as I teach at a highly diverse school in Birmingham but in a different context, email contact and other forums can be facilitated to make links with other communities.[ii] Early on in our first meeting we agreed guidelines for discussion, guidelines being of great importance if dialogue is to be inclusive and student centred. Those set out by The Inter Faith Network for the UK suggested that effective dialogue should involve self-reflection and awareness that dialogue is as much about listening as it is talking[iii]. It may be difficult to communicate this clearly to younger students and that is why it is important to agree together the aims and guidelines for dialogue. The facilitator must take a prominent role in ensuring these guidelines are adhered to. Through the meetings of the group I also came to understand that one of the roles of the facilitator is to at times limit criticism so that dialogue can develop into understanding, not debate. Whilst dialogue would be limited if students were not able to disagree and question, at time there needs to be acceptance that some practices and even beliefs cannot be rationalised – it does not follow that they are any less meaningful to someone’s way of life.

It is difficult here to explain here fully the positive impact that the MA as a whole has had on my teaching but simply I wonder why I waited so long before applying! In relation to the group, I believe it has been a success in building relationships and though is very difficult to measure, this is in part reflected in the continued attendance of students who give up their lunchtime with no obligation. In terms of meaningfully breaking down barriers and reducing prejudice the impact may have been limited bearing in mind that the members of the group self-selected and tended to already be interested in different views and open to sharing their own. Nevertheless, the popularity of the group has grown and student voice has shown that at the very least, students have valued the opportunity to discuss openly without pressure of academic achievement. In terms of my own teaching though where dialogue is a feature of virtually every lesson, the group and the reflection on the effectiveness of interfaith dialogue has had an impact on my organisation of discussions. I have provided students with guidelines for discussion and in some lessons this has been modelled by volunteers before dialogue takes place. I no longer hold the assumption that just because students are talking about the topic, effective dialogue is taking place. The opportunity to reflect on theory and put it into practice in this way is one that I have valued and would recommend strongly to other colleagues as a reminder of why we teach this fantastic subject.

[i] For some interesting responses to this question see Edward Said (1985) Orientalism, Penguin, London and Wilfred Cantwell Smith (1978) The Meaning and End of Religion, Harper and Row, New York

[ii] For evaluation on the effectiveness of the use of technology in dialogue see Julia Ipgrave (2009) ‘The Language of Friendship and Identity: children’s communication choices in an interfaith exchange’ in British Journal of Religious Education 31:3 pp213-226

[iii] See The Inter Faith Network for the UK (1993) Building Good Relations with People of Different Faiths and Beliefs http://www.interfaith.org.uk/

In my last series of blogs I attempted, among other things, to show exactly why I think RE research is important and particularly why it is important that RE teachers are research literate. By being research literate I mean that teachers should be aware of emerging research and able to integrate it into their professional practice, while also developing understandings of rigour and research methodologies that will improve their own personal classroom based research activities. This is good: staying up to date with research can help teachers improve their subject knowledge, develop their teaching and wider professional practice, and, engaging with new ideas and methods can be a great source of energy.

The problem, as many teachers know all too well, is that finding relevant research is a hugely time consuming process beyond the means of busy professionals and access to published research can be impossible if you’re not a member of a university. So RE teachers need a way of accessing information on relevant research that takes into account the busy realities of being a teacher. The information needs to be easily digestible, concise, understandable and with clear relevance to RE.

Therefore, in this blog, I’m going to build on my previous posts (particularly Research in RE (part 4): How Should RE Research be Shared? and outline a new innovative model for achieving this in much more concrete terms than I have done before.

However, the first point to make is that when we talk about RE research, we understand it in very broad and inclusive terms. I argued in <Research in RE (part 1): What is RE research? Broadening our perspectives that RE research should be thought of as research about RE and research for RE. Research about RE is often the default position people take when talking about RE research – it is work on pedagogy, RE teacher classroom practice, RE teacher identity, RE history etc. In other words it is research that generally comes out of the RE world, is often published in journals like the BJRE, and where the object of analysis is specifically related to RE as a classroom subject.

Research for RE, on the other hand, can be thought of in terms of research that isn’t specifically focused on RE, but has implications for RE teacher knowledge and practice. It could be research on religion, religions, belief traditions or philosophy coming from theology, anthropology, sociology, psychology etc that has a bearing on teachers’ subject knowledge. It could be general research on pedagogy, assessment, educational technology etc, which has implications for broad professional knowledge and practice. This kind of research, although often coming from outside the RE community, can have a huge impact on teachers. In fact, many RE teachers are more interested in this kind of research, particularly work related to RE subject knowledge, as their love of studying belief traditions is often what got them into the profession in the first place.

All too often RE research is understood too narrowly as simple research about RE. However, when talking about the kind of RE research that teachers want and need to access, I think it is essential that we broaden our definition and make sure that we understand RE research as both research about RE and research for RE. This broad, inclusive understanding is what I’m talking about here.

So having reiterated a need for a broad understanding of RE research and highlighted the importance of helping RE teachers to access information about research that is concise, digestible and relevant, the question is – how can this be achieved?

In my fourth blog on this issue I outlined the need for a website for both RE teachers and researchers. The researcher side of the site would offer an interactive form that provides researchers with guidance on presenting their work and allows them to distil the essence of their projects and key findings into a format that is concise, accessible and relevant to RE teachers. The content would then be approved by an editor (or team of editors), automatically turned into an attractive and appropriately tagged webpage and released into the public domain onto the teacher side of website. At the same time, the content would automatically be turned into a newsletter that would be pushed out to RE teachers directly via an automated emailing system.

Statistics and feedback would play a huge role in this system. The website and emailing tool would automatically gather statistics on the number of times pages had been accessed and the number of emails opened, also recording levels of engagement. On the teacher side of the site, users would be given the opportunity to provide qualitative feedback describing how they had used the research and providing them with the means of directly communicating with researchers in order to discuss the relevance (or lack) of the research to the messy reality of the classroom and to highlight areas for further study the researchers may not be aware of. Offering researchers project specific quantitative and qualitative data would likely be a key factor in motivating them to engage with the system since they would be provided with direct evidence of impact (useful for funders and the REF).

Although this all sounds relatively simple, there are clearly a great number of extremely complicated aspects to producing such a website. The first is the fact that it all hinges on getting the form right. In order to publish coherent, useful material, minimize the workload placed on editors, and ensure the system is as automated as possible, a great deal of work will have to go into producing the form used by researchers. This will require careful collaboration with RE teachers, consultants and researchers in order to ensure the form is fit for purpose. A successful form will be beguilingly simple but rooted in a great deal of knowledge and experience of RE, education, and research.

Secondly, no website is a ‘field of dreams’. Researchers won’t come and share their work simply because it’s been built. There will need to be a huge amount of interpersonal work undertaken behind the scenes making universities and researchers aware of the site and the benefits it can bring. Although organisations such as AULRE will be able to help with some of this, if a broad understanding of RE research is used, links will have to be made with institutions and researchers that go well beyond existing networks in the RE community. A good starting place for this task would be to look at some of the major research funders in key subject areas (e.g. ESRC, AHRC, Templeton etc), highlight key projects and contact the PIs. However, a major role for the website editor or team or editors would be reading journals, contacting researchers, attending conferences etc in order to develop, build and maintain a network of researchers, academics, university outreach contacts, press officers etc. who would promote or contribute to the site.

Similarly, RE teachers won’t automatically come to the site simply because it’s been built. Careful communication with a wide range of RE teacher networks will be required if the site is to be used properly by RE teachers. As such an obvious home for the site would be RE:ONLINE, a key website for RE teachers with an already large group of user and with an existing reputation for excellence in the RE world. An additional key stakeholder would be NATRE and I would argue that a fully collaborative partnership would be required for this project to be successful. However, there are other key groups, networks and local hubs that would need to be targeted to properly promote the site.

Thirdly, although the vision for such as site is for the research reports to be produced by the researchers themselves, developing such a network will, as I’ve highlighted above, take time. Therefore, alongside developing links with researchers and promoting the site to RE teachers, an editor or team or editors would also need to be engaged with emergent research and willing to produce reports about projects themselves in order to populate the website with research related content in the first instance. The importance and time-consuming nature of this task shouldn’t be underestimated

Finally, although both the teacher and the researcher sides of the website should appear relatively simple, they will require a fairly complicated backend system in order to process the research forms, publish/ disseminate the reports, generate qualitative feedback and provide report-specific use statistics and feedback to the researchers. This will require careful thought and collaboration with researchers, teachers and web developers to ensure the site is user friendly, robust and fit for purpose.

So lots to think about and lots to do. I suggest it would take around 18 months to get to an operational state, but in the spirit of being concrete, here is a list of tasks that need to be done in order to get things moving and get to the point where research materials and ideas are successfully being shared back and forth between researchers and teachers.

Establish a budget and secure funding (a biggie!!)
Employ a project lead/ lead editor and a wider team of editors
Develop a collaborative partnership relationship with NATRE
Create a working group of RE teachers and consultants and develop the form (the key document).
Create a working group of researchers, academics and web developers to draw up a plan for quantitative and qualitative feedback.
Work with a web developer to produce the site.
Forge links and develop a network of researchers, academics, university outreach officers, press officers etc through targeted approaches, conference attendance, drawing on existing networks etc..
Develop a mailing list of RE teachers.
Develop content alongside developing contacts.
User test; user test; user test.
Promote; promote; promote.

I think the RE world is crying out for exactly this kind of reflexive communication between researchers and teachers and, in this time of policy debate and (potentially) policy change, this is the perfect moment to ensure that we, as professionals, are all fully engaged in a wide range of emergent research and empowered to use our knowledge and enthusiasm to improve RE in the classrooms across the whole country.

Dr James Robson is the Knowledge and Online Manager at Culham St Gabriels and a lecturer at Oxford University Department of Education where he is Learning and Technology Pathway Leader for the MSc Education and Masters in Learning and Teaching.

I’ve made the case that RE research refers to public research on a broad range of topics about and for RE, and that all teachers should be research literate (i.e. aware of emergent research and able to refer to it or reflect it in their teaching if they think it’s appropriate). This means that teachers should be engaging with potentially an enormous amount of research literature emerging from universities, trusts, think tanks, government departments etc. This is clearly impossible. The time required for an individual to seek out and read all of this material would be beyond anything any teacher could spare. In the real world, the issue of time is compounded by issues of access and the fact that much research is published in academic journals and held behind often absurdly expensive pay walls. Therefore, some mechanisms need to be put in place to bring relevant RE research directly to teachers in an accessible form that takes into account the busy realities of teachers’ lives.

As already mentioned above, in his review of educational research, Ben Goldacre understandably compares the teaching professional to doctors and argues that most doctors do not have time to read original papers in academic journals. Instead they read the British Medical Journal (BMJ) which has short articles summarising important international research. He suggests something similar for the world of education in the UK, citing What Works Clearing House (http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/default.aspx), a web project by the US Government aimed at sharing educational research, as a potential model. Although excellent in theory, anyone who has actually tried to find anything on the What Works Clearing House will quickly appreciate its practical shortcomings. However, the principles behind it arguably offer a good starting point for the RE world.

When conceptualising an appropriate mechanism it’s important to remember that there are two key stakeholders in any system that gets put in place: researchers and teachers. An effective solution will benefit both parties: researchers want their work to reach and help the wider community and, particularly importantly for those working in universities, need to be able to show evidence of impact to their funders and departments as part of the Research Excellence Framework (REF). Having research directly influencing teachers’ professional practice at a national level is potentially an excellent way of showing the impact of that research. Teachers on the other hand want easy access to a range of relevant research presented in a way that quickly makes it clear how it might feature in their professional practice or improve their subject knowledge.

As part of my role as a lecturer in educational technology at Oxford University and my work as knowledge and online manager at Culham St Gabriel’s, I’ve spent a lot of time discussing the issue of research dissemination with various stakeholders and thinking about possible solutions to the problem. So, as this is my blog, I’m now going come of the fence and to take the bold step of outlining a system that I think would properly facilitate the sharing of research in the RE world. Given that I’ve made a career out of working in educational technology, it’s probably not surprising that I am proposing an innovative website as a key part (but not the only part) of this system.

This site would have three core functions: first, following careful collaboration with teachers, consultants, etc., it would provide a template that helps researchers to summarise their work in a way that is appropriately tailored to the needs of teachers. Second, the site would use these short summary reports to automatically produce accessible and visually appealing newsletters, which would then be distributed directly to teachers through an integrated mailing list. Third, the site would collect analytical data on the reach of these newsletters and engagement with them by end users (for example, by recording clicks on links to research project websites and by integrating feedback forms to generate qualitative data on classroom impact and allow teachers to suggest new areas of research). Researchers could then log in to view this data, which they could then use as evidence of direct impact for the REF and funders and, particularly in relation to qualitative data, think about new avenues for research.

In the past I’ve described this model of research dissemination in terms of an hourglass: the top of the glass represents the broad range of individuals and institutions engaged in research activity feeding their work into the system; the middle of the glass is the digitally led framework that sorts and formats the research; the bottom is the distribution list of teachers who receive the research. But like any good hourglass, you can turn it upside down and the evidence of impact, qualitative feedback, ideas for new research etc flow back through the system from teachers to researcher. The idea is that both stakeholders at either end of the glass will participate in the system because both benefit from it – teachers get research and get to offer feedback and highlight new research areas, researchers get quantitative and qualitative data offering evidence of impact as well as important feedback from practitioners.

Now, with the right groundwork and partnership work with stakeholders, I think a great deal of this system can be automated once the proper networks have been established. However, it’s important not to underestimate the human element of this system. A great deal of networking skills would be required to develop trust in it oversight would be necessary at the dissemination stage to ensure the relevance, appropriate formatting etc of the automatically generated newsletters. I think NATRE has a key role to play in all these areas. If the organization took ownership of the system it could provide expert oversight and, as the RE subject organization, establish key networks by validating the system in the eyes of the researchers and teachers. Existing networks of NATRE members also provide an excellent starting point for distribution!

So where does this all leave us? Well, I would argue that it’s time for funders to get actively involved in this issue. Although I was very pleased to participate in an RE Today thinking day on research, I think it’s time to start being pro-active and investing in appropriate systems. But this involves careful thought and potentially bold innovation that goes beyond safe existing structures and ineffective relationships between researchers and teachers.

I’ve outlined a way of conceptualizing research in the RE world and a system for linking teachers and researchers and disseminating research effectively. I think this model has a lot of potential, but I’d love to hear what you think!

Read Research in RE (part 1): What is RE research? Broadening our perspectives
Read Research in RE (part 2): Why is RE research important?
Read Research in RE (part 3): Who should do RE Research?
Read Research in RE (part 4): How Should RE Research be Shared?

Dr James Robson is the Knowledge and Online Manager at Culham St Gabriel’s and a lecturer at Oxford University Department of Education where he is pathway leader for the MSc in Learning and Technology. His blog represents his personal opinions and does not reflect those of either of his employers.

So who should do research? Ok I’ll admit it, this is clearly a loaded question and one that I’ve asked as a way into critiquing current discourses emphasising that all teachers should be ‘research active’, i.e. ‘doing research’. Personally, I think all teachers should be research literate, but I don’t think asserting that all teachers should do research is terribly helpful. Active engagement in research isn’t for everyone and to demand it of every teacher risks flooding the public research space with an overload of poorly thought out and poorly implemented research done half-heartedly to fulfil professional goals. Of course I’m not saying that teacher-led research is inherently bad, I’m saying that bullying people who don’t want to do research into feeling they have to will lead to reluctant researchers which leads to poor research. It risks fatiguing participants, cementing assumptions about educational research as non-rigorous (criticisms frequently levelled at the field already) and making wading through research such an onerous task that to find good research could become almost impossible.

Arguably discourses emphasising that all teachers should do research arise from the fact that, in their everyday professional lives, teachers engage in activity that looks a lot like research. Normal professional practice necessarily involves testing what works in the classroom: what pedagogies are most effective, what technology supports teaching and learning; what kinds of formative assessment work best for progress; how professional development is best supported etc. However, as numerous academics have pointed out, this kind of work is rarely systematic, rooted in academic literature or based in any coherent research methodology; rather it is subjective and unsystematic. Though absolutely vital for individual professional practice, such work is very hard to generalise and in the public sphere is more anecdotal than rigorous.

I don’t want to diminish this crucial work, but I think it’s important to try and make a distinction between individual-focused professional research and research that is systematic, rigorous and rooted in literature, theory and a rich understandings of research methods. Perhaps a working distinction should talk of personal research that facilitates localised professional practice and public research that should enter the public sphere and has the bearing on wider professional practice. I suspect that when people use the general word ‘research’ they mean the latter.

Should all teachers be doing personal research? Absolutely it’s a key part of their professional practice and professional development! Should all teachers be doing public research? Absolutely not – this requires significant time and dedication that many teachers cannot afford to give. It requires detailed planning rooted in a firm knowledge of educational research, theory and research methods that can take years to achieve!

Making this distinction is helpful when trying to discuss teachers’ relationship with research as, all too often, the concept of personal research gets conflated with public research. This leads to unclear debates and muddy thinking. Making the distinction allows us to get to grips with the ways in which research can feature in teachers’ lives and clarifies what we mean when we talk about teachers ‘doing’ research. As such, I would argue that teachers should be literate in public research and actively engaged in personal research. Any more than that is a luxury not a professional necessity.

Next I want to discuss the question of why we think educational research is important at all. I toyed with starting with this question, it’s clearly vital, but wanted to clarify my terms first. Why should the busy teacher, possibly a lone subject specialist in his/her school, with hundreds of students and an enormous workload, care about research? Naturally lots of people have lots of different opinions on this issue, but for me it comes down to two main reasons: practitioner-based issues and profession-based issues. At a practitioner-based level, engaging in emergent research is an excellent way for teachers to continue their professional development by staying up to date with ideas about practice, theory and subject knowledge. Furthermore, teachers who can use and discuss research are better placed to negotiate and advocate for their subject, students and colleagues in a context where management and policy makers may be drawing on research to justify decisions and changes. Being research literate can be highly empowering.

At a profession-based level teacher engagement with research has implications for the identity of the teaching profession as a whole, beyond the RE-specific context. In 2013 Ben Goldacre was commissioned to write a report on ‘Building Evidence into Education’ (http://media.education.gov.uk/assets/files/pdf/b/ben%20goldacre%20paper.pdf). Although personally I disagree with his positivist and reductionist view of educational research as simply something that answers the question of ‘what works’, the wider aim of turning teaching into an evidence based profession is important. In this report Goldacre describes the way in which, prior to the 1970s, medical practice was primarily dominated by charismatic experts advocating particular procedures based on their own experience, with little large-scale generalisable evidence. It was only through the determined work of Cochrane, the promotion of randomised control trials and the sharing of evidence that many procedures were shown to be damaging to patients. Since then medicine has become evidence based with large-scale trials on what works best guiding practice and appropriate mechanisms put in place to ensure that all practitioners work in accordance with the evidence.

Goldacre argues that the teaching profession is currently at the stage medicine was at in the 1970s: too much practice is based on assumptions and opinions of self-appointed experts with little evidence to back it up. In some cases practice actively goes against existing research evidence. A good example of this is the now fairly well discredited Brain Gym intervention that, at a substantial cost to schools implementing it, advocates that students rub ‘brain buttons’ and drink water through the roof of their mouths for rapid absorption, among other exercises with pseudo-scientific explanations! The popularity of Brain Gym is fortunately on the wane, but it still exists in pockets of the education system despite the fact that there is no evidence of its effectiveness and many of its techniques fly in the face of medical and biological sciences.

Personally, I think it is a noble aim to move guidance on education and teaching practice away from the clutches of gurus, experts and commercial companies (almost all with some kind of financial stake) and base professional practice on research evidence. This is what I mean by research being important at a profession-based level. By understanding and using educational research in everyday practice, teachers can not only avoid getting involved in dubious pseudo-scientific fads, but also contribute to a shift in the identity of the profession, making it truly evidence-based and so more effective.

Of course this is necessarily utopian and in the messy realities of the RE world it is questionable whether the kind of evidence Goldacre demands actually exists. Regrettably a great deal of research both about and for RE is small scale and often qualitative in nature. As a researcher myself who has primarily undertaken small-scale qualitative studies, I think these are extremely valuable. However, I also think it’s time for academics, funders and teachers to be bolder in the kinds of research projects undertaken; to work collaboratively to put together large-scale (and probably very expensive) projects that will generate evidence that will really help teachers. We all need to ask key questions about RE and be brave enough to attempt to answer these questions in a generalizable way that embraces innovative research methodologies. Everyone has a part to play in this, but if we are going to shift our research culture, I think it’s important for funders in the RE world to reflect carefully on what they mean by ‘impact’ (a key part of any funding proposal) and consider whether greater impact could be achieved through funding a small number of large-scale ambitious research projects each year rather than a large number of small ones.

Dr James Robson is the Knowledge and Online Manager at Culham St Gabriels and a lecturer at Oxford University Department of Education where he is pathway leader for the MSc in Learning and Technology. His blog represents his personal opinions and does not reflect those of either of his employers.