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Following a turbulent summer filled with conflict and disorder fuelled by misunderstandings of the ‘other’, you might be thinking of the best way to shift prejudicial views held by your students. Schools linking is a great educational tool that can be used to address misconceptions, develop respect and tolerance, and lead to community cohesion. It is a programme based on Gordon Allport’s (1954) social contact theory whereby two classes from different schools link three times during the academic year to take part in workshops that explore identity, diversity and community. As part of my Masters study at the University of Birmingham I completed a dissertation titled ‘A critical analysis of the influence of ‘Schools Linking’ on student comprehension of Religious Literacy and the British Values of Tolerance and Respect’, which was kindly part funded by Culham St. Gabriel’s. I surveyed and interviewed a group of Year 8 students who took part in the study and this is what I found:

Overcoming Misconceptions

Schools Linking helps students to understand worldviews on a more personal level than they are able to do in the classroom. The programme gives students a safe space to ask those ‘awkward’ questions that they may shy away from in the classroom, which gives them the opportunity to correct misconceptions about the beliefs and practices of religious adherents.

I found that 82% of students agreed that meeting people of a different faith helped them to understand their faith better, and 87% reported learning something new about the religion of their link school. Misconceptions such as ‘Sikh’s believe that the cow is sacred’, and ‘Sikhs believe in multiple gods’ were resolved through simple conversations with Sikh students during the programme, showing the importance of dialogue between people of different faiths.

However, extra care is needed when facilitating schools linking as students may conflate religion and culture in their minds. After schools linking I found that students believed that Sikhism prohibits the consumption of meat as a result of the link school only serving vegetarian food in the canteen. Students were not aware that Sikhs could make the choice to be vegetarian or not. So, be warned, debriefs are needed to clarify some of the experiences that students may have on the day! That is something I will be doing differently this year, as well as carving out time during the programme for students to discuss religion in particular to reduce the risk of students leaving with further misconceptions.

Attitudinal Shift

Allport (1954) suggested that people are more likely to shift prejudicial views towards each other if they get to know each other on a personal level. In my experience, schools linking helps students to do just that. I found that 92% of students indicated that they had formed a friendship with at least one person from their link school. I suggest giving students extended unstructured time during breaks and lunches to help them form stronger bonds.

Students were more likely to feel good about the programme and to make friends if they felt ‘similar’ to the students from their link school, suggesting that they viewed ‘difference’ as a negative. So, one thing I will be doing differently this year is stressing the positive impact of diversity on our society throughout the programme, not just during the second workshop.

In my case, schools linking proved to be a useful tool in encouraging community cohesion. 77% of students felt more able to communicate with people of different faiths after schools linking, and 84% of students agreed that the programme had made them more tolerant and respectful of others. I highly recommend adding schools linking to your teacher tool kit!

References:

Allport, G. (1954). The Nature of Prejudice, 25th Anniversary Edition. New York: Perseus Books Publishing.

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

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

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

Keynotes

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

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

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

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

Seminars

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

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

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

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

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

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

So what as you return to school…

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

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

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

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

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

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

Keynotes

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

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

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

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

Do listen to the recordings of these two keynotes.

In conversation

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

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

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

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

Seminars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Religion, Belief and Worldviews Hub has been created to address some key, relevant issues concerning religion. The first issue was ‘Religion and Belief’ in the Equality Act (2010). We were aware that OpenLearn had an excellent and award winning ‘Race and Ethnicity Hub’. We wanted to create another Hub which was useful to teachers and others in the public sector – for example, healthcare – and in professions such as law, in thinking through the implications of ‘Religion and belief’ as a protected characteristic in the law. The second issue we wanted to address was the growing importance of ‘Worldviews’ or a religion and worldviews approach in education. We wanted our hub to help people think through the implications of this development and support them in the classroom.

The Religion, Belief and Worldviews Hub is a platform which offers quality, free resources on religious and non-religious worldviews developed by academics at the Open University. You will find animations, videos, articles, short courses, and longer courses; for example, teachers will find resources for the classroom – from ’60 seconds in religion’ films (narrated by David Mitchell) to our 360 degree tours of London’s religious buildings. Teachers might want to start with our new animation called ‘Why Worldviews?’ to introduce our approach to the Hub. We also commissioned another animation, ‘Religion, Faith, Spirituality and Worldviews’ to explain what these different categories mean and why we use them.

We hope that this resource can help teachers of RE where there are gaps in teacher knowledge. The feedback we have had so far has been very encouraging. There must be close to 100 individual resources on the hub, addressing everything from individual festivals and events in the religious calendar, to key pedagogical issues such as decolonising religious studies. There is a rich range of materials here, which can highlight the sheer internal diversity of religious and non-religious worldviews. There is also much for continuing professional development, for example around teaching worldviews. We also have some highly innovative pedagogical resources, such as our Badged Open Course on making ‘Docutubes’ (short films) in the classroom about religious diversity, toleration and peace.

Teachers and those working in Higher Education (HE) need to learn to from each other. It should be a two-way conversation. The more we are talking to each other, aligning and making consistent  what and how we teach, the better the experience for students as they move through their education. The HE sector can also assist where there are issues of capacity in teaching RE in schools. We know about the lack of resourcing for RE in the UK, and that it is sometimes taught by teachers who might be excellent but are not necessarily experts in the area and may be time poor. Where the HE sector can help by providing relevant resources which help these teachers, I think it should do so.

There is some remarkable work going on now in our subject. The move towards a religion and worldviews approach is extremely positive and groups such as the Religious Education Council, Culham St Gabriel’s and others are doing important work developing this agenda. This approach is important because it allows students to ask a different set of critical questions about religious and non-religious worldviews. In this way, it aligns well with the ‘lived’ or ‘vernacular’ religion emphasis in Religious Studies. This moves us beyond the idea of homogenous traditions and sometimes unhelpful binaries like ‘religion’ and ‘secular’.

Teachers might want to check out our free course, which lives on the hub, ‘An education in Religion and Worldviews’, which goes into the religion and worldviews approach in greater depth.

Visit the Religion, Belief and Worldviews Hub

Previously I have written about how and why my department have moved towards using booklets in RS. Here I explain how we have implemented the use of booklets for GCSE RS classes, and what we will change for the next academic year.

Context

In my school, RS is compulsory. All students sit the full GCSE. Students have RS three hours a fortnight with student who have elected to take three sciences at GCSE, having RS only once a fortnight. Ultimately, there is a lot of time pressure on staff and students to complete the course.

As a result, efficiency matters. Booklets are a way of cutting down on wasted time (sticking sheets in, for instance) and student voice found that students did not find their books helpful for their revision as they were poorly organised and had ‘too many sheets’ and not enough ‘useful notes’.

1. Start with a house style

It might seem superficial, but the attractiveness and professional quality of the booklet matters. My view is that students are more likely to treat something with respect if it looks good.

Therefore, I spent time designing a ‘house style’ for each GCSE booklet.

• What will the front cover look like?
• What size will the font be?
• What will the font be?

Although this took time, it made the booklets recognisably ‘RS’, rather than any other booklet students receive during their school career. When staff plan lessons for me and make booklets from these lessons, they adhere to this style and this helps ensure consistency for all.

2. Explicitly teach students how to use booklets

Before booklets, I would print copies of the specification and lesson overviews and students would stick them in before starting the topic. However, unless you micromanage a 14 year to stick sheets to your exacting standards, these sheets invariably looked like they had been glued in by a child.

Therefore, each booklet has a copy of the specification as well as a host of other useful things: links to previous learning, links to other subjects and QR codes with links to online resources to help with revision. This is explained to students at the start of the lesson. Students are also remined not to ‘race ahead’ and try to complete the booklet without teacher guidance.

Although this might seem like I am penalising proactive students, the rationale is that the teacher many go above and beyond the contents of the booklet, they may even not complete sections and therefore students need to listen.

At the start of each topic, students are explicitly reminded about how to use their booklets, that they are there to help with their studies and why what is on the specification is important. This might seem obvious, but we can sometimes assume students know this when they don’t.

3. Booklets, not book less

Each lesson ends with some form of exam practice. This year, students completed this exam practice in their booklets. However, on reflection, students often did not complete as much as if they were writing in their usual exercise books. For next year we are moving to a booklets, not book less approach. Here students will complete their ‘do now’ and exam practice in their exercise books and everything else in their booklets. It also gives teachers more flexibility to adapt lessons as they see fit: the booklet is a pedagogical tool, not a tool to confine teachers.

Overall, our department and students find booklets useful. They are not a replacement for great teaching, high student attendance, revision etc, but I have found them very helpful in the context in which I teach. Naturally, our department are frequently reflecting on how we use booklets, making adaptions to lessons, and will continue to make changes in the future. The key elements I have found to be important when implementing booklets at GCSE have been:

1.  A house style
2. Explicitly teach students how to use booklets
3. Booklets, not book less

Booklets are like marmite; you love them or hate them.

My own view on booklets had been a high- minded scepticism. I knew of teachers, entire schools and even academy trusts that implemented a ‘booklet-based curriculum’. My view was ‘you do you’, but not for me. I viewed booklets as all the things I did not want teaching to be; reductive, inflexible and uninspiring.

However as Subject Lead I agreed to give them a try, persuaded by others in my team who have had a positive experience. And so, inevitably, came my Damascene conversion.

This was both pragmatic as well as pedagogical. Practically, no precious RS time was taken up with ‘Sir, I don’t have a glue stick!’. Moreover, I spent no more time fixing a jammed photocopier, something we have become so adept at, it should be on Teacher’s Standards.

Pedagogically, I found booklets were not a barrier to the sort of curriculum we are working towards, that is, ambitious and academic. Such a curriculum needs to be coherent and well-sequenced, which booklets allow. I realised booklets at the appropriate level of challenge provided clarity and consistency for the team as well as students. Expectations are clear, and high.

My first booklet was for Year 9 about the existence of God. As a booklet novice I provided every explanation, every keyword, every activity. For some students, this was helpful, for others it was stultifying. For teachers, it was a straitjacket. I had created exactly the type of booklet I did not want.

I completely changed my approach. Out went activities and in came the ‘non-negotiables’ such as reading a high-quality text, well thought-out explanations and questions which teachers could choose how they deliver. For instance, a lesson may feature reading a text and completing a table. This new approach shows what the main focus of the lesson should be, the non-negotiable, but gives plenty of time and space for exploration and discussion.

Students certainly needed time to learn how to use the booklets so they were a springboard and source of support, but not a prison. Teachers are free to go beyond the booklets in conversation, and we tried to avoid the sense that the booklet just needs to be finished as fast as possible.

We as a teaching team have had to adapt. Some booklet- based lessons have been great and others have bombed; whether too long or too short, or suitable for one class and not at all for another. I now bring a spare booklet to each class and scrawl notes at the end of a lesson. The adaptation process has provided some extremely helpful professional conversations. The booklets have been helpful for our non-specialists in supporting them to grasp the trajectory of a scheme of work and give high quality explanations, but they do not replace the conversations we have had as a team, addressing misconceptions and identifying improvements.

When it comes to graphic design, I am about as talented as someone on the Apprentice. However, a clear and attractive design is important. We include lines and extra lines for writing, in response to student feedback.

Despite my reluctance, booklets have transformed my practice. In the next blog, I explain exactly how we structure our booklets to help students prepare for GCSE study.

My top tips:

1. Non-negotiables, not activities
2. Teach students to use the booklets
3. Be prepared to adapt
4. Present clearly and attractively

Want to know more? Read my next blog Booklets, not book less: Implementing booklets in GCSE Religious Studies.

I was out taking the dog for a walk around the village the other day when I noticed that one of the oak trees on the back lane was tagged. It was only a small metal disk nailed to the tree’s trunk, but it was there to show that it was a protected tree subject to a preservation order.

When I thought about the tree later that evening, I began to think about our role as teaching practitioners in protecting and preserving our subject in the face of the challenges education can throw at us. How can we effectively achieve this?

We need to “shout” about how important our subject is and it’s role in the school curriculum. It is not just the senior leadership team that need to hear the message but so should the school governors, the pupils and their parents. I’m not suggesting that it’s easy or that it does not need some careful planning and thought but there are some good starting points.

Firstly, make sure your RE curriculum is both progressive, engaging and stretches pupils’ learning. This is important to ensure long term pupil engagement. Help to develop the pupil voice in RE by providing ample opportunities for discussions and debates; not every lesson needs to include written work. Consider using visual evidence of pupil engagement, photographs can say a lot more than books filled with worksheets. Talking of visuals, a good way to demonstrate RE’s importance is to carry out a human mind map. This something I have used regularly at the start of each academic year. I have an A4 visual for each of the subjects on the school curriculum and I ask for a volunteer at the start explaining that the role requires someone who is very strong; I give this pupil the visual for RE. Another pupil holds up one of the subjects and the group discuss any links they can think of, once they have suggested two or three links then a string is held between them linking them together. The discussions continue in this way until all the subjects have been linked to RE. Videoing the activity with an iPad helps with the summing up at the end. Some subjects are easier to link than others; for example, history can be linked to RE because historical facts play an important role in religions. Other subjects are harder for example, physical education but with a little prompting pupils suggest things such as the issue of athletes wearing hijabs.

Some of you might think I’ve gone slightly mad, but it is a good idea to volunteer a lesson during the next round of lesson observations. As well as making sure that the lesson has plenty of evidence that meets any lesson observation briefing but include opportunities to address common misunderstandings and misconceptions. Let the pupils show that they are making links in their learning and don’t be afraid if the observer wants to talk to them. You already know that they are fully engaged and committed to their learning in your lessons. The observer will leave your lesson feeling very positive about RE and will share their thoughts with other colleagues.

Invite school governors to join one of your lessons or to observe a whole school RE activity. In my experience both as a teacher and a school governor, governors like to take advantage of opportunities to observe and learn about what goes on in our lessons. If this is not possible then volunteer to talk to the governor’s curriculum sub committee about the RE curriculum and how it strengthens the other subjects. If you can get the pupil voice and their positive thoughts on RE then so much the better. Make sure governors understand the non- academic role of RE in helping to develop pupil’s understanding and tolerance towards other peoples beliefs and how this helps them to develop their ability to be effective members of the community.

If there is a local RE Hub in your area, then make sure you join it. They are a wealth of knowledge, experience and ideas. My own local hub is called the “Pathways RE Hub,” the founding members came up with the name early and it simply stands for the “Pinch and tweak hub,” where ideas are shared and tweaked to an individual school’s need. Hubs also offer fantastic opportunities for networking and informal CPD. My other suggestion linked to hubs is to offer to host a meeting within your own school. Don’t forget to invite senior leadership and a governor or two!

As a final thought, if you are new to leading RE then in addition to joining your local hub, consider the RE Quality Mark. It can offer an excellent and effective framework for you to develop your leadership of the subject against. When you gain the quality mark whether it is bronze, silver or gold then you will have a very visual acknowledgement of how effective your RE faculty is, in the form of the certificate which can be displayed prominently for all to see.

Using faith visitors to support RE lessons is a fantastic way to develop pupils’ understanding. Encountering someone who lives their faith, who can draw on real and authentic experiences, can really make the religion come alive.

In an essentialised, world religions paradigm, using faith visitors was simple, essentially, ‘this person represents their religion, children, and whatever they tell you is what all of the other people in their religion believe as well.’ However, in a religion and worldviews approach, the relationship between faith visitors and the curriculum needs to be more nuanced. No longer do we want pupils to equate the experiences, values and beliefs of one person with all members of a religion. Faith visitors in a religion and worldviews approach is exciting, but also tricky. How to tease apart the institutional and personal elements of a visitor’s worldview, for example? Below are three practical tips:

1 – Notice essentialism in the curriculum

In the past I have certainly been guilty of posing questions such as, ‘What do Hindus believe?’ When we ask questions like this we are broadcasting to pupils that there is only one way to be a ‘proper’ Hindu. In a curriculum like this, when pupils meet a faith visitor they make all sorts of simplistic assumptions. In being aware of essentialism we can acknowledge that members of a religion act and think in very different ways, and this is completely normal. This allows pupils to interact with the knowledge in a much more explorative way.

2 – Listen to many voices

Another way that we can help pupils to explore diversity is make sure pupils hear a variety of voices. This might not always be easy or straightforward, but there are ways and means. While a real-life interaction has the greatest impact academically, if this isn’t an option then there are a plethora of videos to be found on the internet by all sorts of people on a huge array of subjects. The inclusion of any of these in lessons, will help to build up pupils’ understanding and normalise diverse perspectives for when a visitor does come in.

3 – Introduce hermeneutics

Hermeneutics seems like a complicated word, in fact Ofsted’s 2021 Research Review describes hermeneutical thinking many times without mentioning the word!  Essentially hermeneutics is the idea that everyone interprets things differently. You can find a fantastic guide to it here: RE:Online – Hermeneutics. When pupils are used to exploring different interpretations, including their own, it becomes much easier to see a visitor’s interpretation as just that; one view among many. In a religion and worldviews approach, faith visitors are able to represent their religion in their own way and not answer for all other members.

As well as intellectual benefits of diverse voices, there are social benefits too. For many teachers who work in areas of low diversity, there may be local prejudice towards people who are perceived to be ‘different’. Welcoming a faith visitor provides an excellent opportunity for pupils to meet those they might not encounter outside school. These contact experiences can develop understanding and interest, and potentially decrease prejudice.

Moreover, as the religion and worldviews approach deliberately avoids associating one visitor with an entire religion, it is possible that prejudicial views will decrease as reductive and essentialising ways of seeing are no longer on the menu.

I would suggest that following a religion and worldviews approach means faith visitors are just as welcome to the classroom, for academic and social benefits. It could be argued that with this renewed emphasis on cultural context and diverse voices, faith visitors can have an even bigger impact in allowing young people to explore the connected, complicated world we live in.

In this blog, Hayley discusses how her school approaches facilitating challenging current affairs conversations in the RE classroom.

As a department, we are passionate about providing our students with opportunities for informed and honest dialogue about religion, ethics and life. Recently our Year 10 students specifically requested, through a Form Captain meeting with the Head, information about the current Israel- Gaza conflict. They wanted to better understand the history and the terminology they were being exposed to through the media. We felt this request for information should be honoured by teachers, and set about the uncertain and time-consuming task of designing a new resource.  

We felt it was extremely important to give an opportunity for students to have this knowledge as well as tackling issues such as misinformation. This current crisis is very present in our students’ concerns, but we respond to other global or sensitive issues in the same way as educators; we agree that students must have the information they need to make sense of the world. In previous years we have developed lessons about the Holocaust for a KS3 scheme of work. Rather than avoiding painful, emotionally-charged topics, we have learnt that staff and students are best supported when they have well-designed, accurate information, as well as different ways of seeing the information, to explore, discuss and come to a conclusion of their own.    

Therefore, we created a resource which both delivered information as well as allowed students (and staff) to view the information from different perspectives. The resource begins with an exploration of the meaning of the word ‘conflict’ and moves to the historical roots of conflict between Israel and Palestine, the emergence of Hamas and the role this group plays in the situation. We termed this process ‘looking at’; seeing historical information from different points of view. This is such a valuable process in itself for teenagers as they learn to make sense of the world, whatever the topic. Then we encouraged students to ‘look beyond’ the current conflict and potential resolution through words. The words used came from two sources; interviews with a Rabbi and Imam.  

We took very seriously the need to avoid a sense that anyone was ‘taking sides’, or taking a biased stance, in the terminology of the recent DfE guidance1. We are aware of powerful currents of pain, shock and fear in our students’ communities. After consulting with senior management, we took the decision to explore this resource in the classroom as part of the fortnightly Core Ethics programme for KS4. Teaching staff were briefed and given the options to take part or all of the lesson to deliver. After the lessons we completed a debrief and feedback session with staff.  

We found that each lesson varied due to the shape of the questions students asked and the ensuing discussion. Generally, students were very keen to understand the history of Israel and Palestine especially as they had previously studied the region in a KS3 unit on Jesus and early Christianity. Teachers found that this process of simply understanding the current crisis led to discussion reflecting students’ concerns about others’ perceptions. It was interesting to see that this was as much of a issue to students as a desire to gain knowledge. Teachers also found that groups spent time discussing ideas around conflict resolution. 

We plan to introduce the resource to Year 9 with a wider set of voices considered as part of the ‘looking beyond’ section. We have shared this resource with our local RE network. A member of staff will be running a workshop for teachers in the wider network before they bring the resource to their students. This model has shown us that schools can provide a space for students to make sense of some of the planet’s most urgent conflicts, where the suffering seems incomprehensible, when staff work together, take responsibility for identifying accurate information, and are also able to explore the information from different perspectives. It is surely our job as teachers to help our young people make sense of the world.  

Recommended by NATRE, you might find this curated list of resources to support schools when addressing contentious topics helpful. 

The first thing I need to say is that I am a non-specialist Head of RS. Yes, we exist! You might know someone similar. My specialism is actually English. At a time when I was looking to get back into teaching, having taken time out to raise my daughter, there was an urgent shortage of RE teachers in my area. Having grown up in a religious family, where my father was an elder of the Evangelical Free Church, I have always had a strong interest in religion, so I jumped at the chance. I imagined it would be ‘safer’ than diving into teaching English.  Looking back this seems like a very naive view!

As I got used to the department, I began to see limitations in the curriculum when it came to teaching about Christianity. Lessons in no way explored the wide variety of views, traditions and beliefs that I was aware of.  I wondered how far this must be the same for other faiths too.  When my head of department left I applied to become the subject lead for RS, and then my journey as an RS teacher really began.

In many ways English and RS compliment each other. Both are about observing small details and using them to make sense of the whole.  English however offers constant opportunities to explore different interpretations of a source, different arguments and is completely open to the idea that views change over time. This could be part of RS, but it is not as established as English at present. For me this would be what a shift to Religion and Worldviews could look like.

I found the multitude of conversations I had with students each day fascinating. The biggest challenge has been to distill thousands of years of history and belief, especially when there is no curriculum that supports this. I have spent my first two years on the job building a Religion and Worldviews curriculum.

When we gained out first GCSE cohort, I was delighted to discover the Big Ideas approach for AQA Christianity at GCSE on RE:ONLINE (referenced below).

The curriculum covers all the main points of the GCSE specification and is fully resourced, but what I like most is the Big Ideas approach itself. There is a big question to answer every couple of lessons, and content is framed by a mixture of philosophical, ethical, historical and theological questions. These are the Big Ideas in effect. Framing the subject content with the Big Ideas has allowed me to use examples from different Christian traditions. I found my students enjoyed the philosophical questions especially, which enhanced engagement and progress.

I have used the Big Ideas curriculum for my current Year 10s and can see already that they retain much more conceptual information than students did last year, before we adopted Big Ideas. The approach gives students an accessible way to think about religion, a subject many do not know anything about.

Inspired by this success, I am now embarking on creating my own GCSE curriculum following the same approach for Buddhism. Watch this space!

I am interested to see how this approach to teaching influences our teaching and curriculum design at KS3. We have found separating knowledge into different Big Ideas helpful for so many reasons, but mostly because it allows students to explore complexity, retain information and make connections.

Read about the Big Ideas approach and check out the GCSE Christianity and Islam curricula for yourself https://www.reonline.org.uk/teaching-resources/big-ideas-curriculum/

Find out more about the Big Ideas approach, including lessons and teaching material: https://bigideasforre.org/