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Research Summary

This research is about issues of assessment and pedagogy in Religious and Moral Education (RME) in Scottish non-denominational schools. It is based on qualitative data collected from schools in five Scottish local authorities; as part of a moderation project, the schools put forward various examples of best practice in teaching and learning. The timing of the research was important (it was done during 2009-2011): a new 3–18 Scottish curriculum, ‘Curriculum for Excellence’ (CfE), had been introduced with the aim of improving standards over those of the previous ‘5–14’ Curriculum which had been in use since 1992. The ‘Curriculum for Excellence’ focused on the development of higher pupil thinking skills and competences. However, the research found many teachers still stuck in the former, more descriptive model. The researchers identify five areas of practice that need improvement: planning, religious knowledge, progression, self and peer assessment, literacy and values. These are assessment problems but also count against effective teaching and learning in RME.

Researchers

Lynne Grant & Yonah H. Matemba

Research Institution

University of the West of Scotland

What is this about?

• Assessment in RE is problematical. What should be assessed? How should it be assessed? Can it be assessed? The Scottish case is interesting: until 1981 any form of assessment of the subject was illegal in Scotland. In Scotland, in non-denominational schools, the subject is called Religious and Moral Education (RME).
• Recent policy and curriculum development represent attempts to give sound educational grounds to RME (and other subjects). A new ‘Curriculum for Excellence’ was introduced in 2009-10, with the aims of building pupil learning, citizenship, confidence and participation.
• Regarding RE, it aimed to replace the former descriptive approach to religions with higher-order thinking skills for pupils: analysis, reflection, investigation and research.
• Samples of RME work sent in to a moderation exercise were analysed by the researchers, in order to assess the success of the reforms up to that point. The researchers found that much practice was still stuck in the former model and that the planned improvements were still awaited.
• Five areas of assessment practice that also impact on pedaogy were identified as in need of attention: planning, religious knowledge, progression, self and peer assessment, literacy and values.

What was done?

The researchers analysed a large set of materials from a moderation project that involved a total of 100 schools (with the split being 87 primary and 13 secondary schools) and a total of 355 participants over a two-year period. Participants involved in the moderation work included: (a) 281 teachers with the split being 194 primary and 87 secondary school teachers; (b) 53 headteachers;
(c) 21 classroom support staff; and (d) 5 local authority quality improvement officers (one from each authority). Schools and local authorities submitted self-selected materials for moderation from different subject areas of the school curriculum including RME as examples of ‘best practice’. The materials included teachers’ planners and students’ work. In addition, formal discussions with a number of headteachers and teachers were undertaken.

Main findings and outputs

• Weak lesson planning and poor choice of tasks were evident. In primary schools much of the teaching, learning and assessment were based on simple worksheets involving colouring in, filling in missing words and so on. In secondary schools, assessment tasks were based on mere description of religious phenomena with little attempt at assessing critical thinking and reflective analysis of issues.
• Teachers often failed to assess knowledge of religions. Rather, the findings showed that teachers were more interested in assessing students ’generic skills such as listening or working in groups.
• Primary and secondary teachers did not collaborate on planning and teaching, so secondary teachers were sometimes assessing primary level learning.
• Self-assessment strategies failed to enable pupils to assess how much their knowledge of religions was developing.
• Little attention was given to pupils’ improvement of their knowledge of religious terms or facts about religions.
• There was little evidence that teachers had managed to assess how pupils’ values had developed as a result of their RME work.

Relevance to RE

The findings give a a series of challenges to RE teachers in relation to planning, teaching and assessing RE:

• How can lessons be planned in order to incorporate pupils’ development of higher order thinking skills such as comparison or evaluation? This wil not happen if it is left to itself.
• Teachers have to attend to pupils’ general skills development, but must balance this with appropriately detailed knowledge of religions.
• In the light of the latter point, primary and secondary teachers need to plan teaching jointly, to ensure that secondary teaching represents real progression from primary teaching.
• Teachers need to engage pupils in assessment of how their own values have developed as a result of their work in RE.
• More generally, for policy and curriculum developers, attention needs to be given to the possibility that improved frameworks are insufficient to improve planning, teaching and assessment. Evidently, teacher development issues are just as important.

Generalisability and potential limitations

The findings are based on a large sample of work. The conclusions provide RE teachers with a useful set of quality issues to monitor and assess.

Find out more

Problems of assessment in religious and moral education: the Scottish case, Journal of Beliefs and Values 34.1 pages 1-13 (published online 21 March 2013).

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13617672.2013.759338

Research Summary

This research is a case study of an inner city state school that for a decade (1940s–
1950s) attracted the interest of many educationalists, policy makers, researchers, artists and various press and film media. The school concerned was Steward Street school in Birmingham, where successive headteachers placed creativity and spirituality at the centre of education. The researchers argue that if new, positive educational practices are to be developed, cases of experimental or idealistic schools from the past or present need to be studied. Teachers and others should look at these critically, but they may be inspired by them. Studies of ‘different’ schools should open up questions about what is currently assumed to be ‘good’ in education. These schools need to be understood as complex – their stories can be told in different ways, from different perspectives – but they might offer signs of how education can be improved today. Steward Street school became a beacon for those who believed in the transformative power of the arts. The material will be of interest to RE teachers or any teachers seeking to build child-centred, creative pedagogies in order to encourage learners’ creativity, independence or aesthetic development, or who are simply interested in doing things ‘differently’.

Researchers

Catherine Burke & Ian Grosvenor

Research Institution

University of Cambridge & University of Birmingham

What is this about?

• This is about Steward Street school, an infant and primary school in inner Birmingham and how it became a cause celébre during the 1940s and 1950s.
• The success of the school was associated with two radical headteachers, Arthur Rushington Stone and Ken Scott, who placed creative arts (Stone) and later spirituality (Scott) – rather than reading, writing and arithmetic – at the heart of pupils’ experience of school.
• The ‘experiment’ inspired various educationalists for decades. Its story can be told from different points of view, but might still inspire teachers and others today. The school was surrounded by factories, smoke and post-war urban decay, but the staff were determined that children should be nurtured through experiences of beauty. Other radical measures, such as the removal of all forms of punishment, were added as the ‘experiment’ developed.
• The ‘experiment’ lasted for about a decade, failing to survive Scott’s departure and the pressure caused by the 11 plus examination from 1945 onwards.

What was done?

The researchers analysed all of the available documents pertaining to Steward Street school: school log books, admission registers, a punishment book, a pamphlet written about the school by Stone for the Ministry of Education, Birmingham LEA records and examples from international literature on creative arts-based education that had influenced practice at the school.

Main findings and outputs

• Stone was appointed headteacher in 1940. He shared an educational philosophy with the then Senior Staff Inspector for Primary Education, Louis Christian Schiller, according to which children were inherently creative and their creativity inclined towards beauty.
• Children should be encouraged to paint, build, make and dance: these needs were innate, teachers should simply structure and channel them.
• In 1941, there were 7 visits to the school to observe its approach; by 1948 this had increased to 247 (HMI, universities, Birmingham LEA, the BBC, various teachers, the Ministry of Education).
• Scott succeeded Stone In 1945. Seeking to build on Stone’s legacy, Scott introduced various policy changes, aiming to emphasise children’s spiritual development primarily. He sought to take away fears of failure, punishment, and freedom; to study children’s behaviour and home life; to use the energy of arts-based learning in pursuit of the more general ‘business of learning’, e.g. by using movement to teach arithmetic; he removed all forms of punishment and setting or comparison between pupils, in order to improve their self-esteem. He introduced school Games and provision for those with special needs. Assemblies were conducted by children (though he gave an address); no piece of art was displayed until six months after its execution. Academic achievement increased and pupils’ efforts appeared to intensify (they wrote booklets of stories, gave lectures, held debates, and contributed to school policy through class councils).
• Steward Street’s ‘story’ can offer ‘signs’ of how radical educational experiments could be possible today.

Relevance to RE

The story of Steward Street could offer inspiration to RE departments or teachers who aim to do something radical, different and imaginative in the service of children’s learning and well-being. Many RE departments make use of creative arts approaches to RE – painting, drama, etc. – which could be extended and developed. Ways could be sought to increase pupils’ choice over activities and their responsibility for organising their own learning, at levels appropriate to their ages and abilities. In relation to the removal of the fears of failure and freedom, some ungraded, unassessed work could be introduced into the curriculum. Departmental setting policies could be re-assessed.

Generalisability and potential limitations

This is a study of one particular school, based on the belief that in-depth consideration of particular schools can raise interesting educational possibilities, especially if those schools are ‘different’.

Find out more

The Steward Street School experiment: a critical case study of possibilities, British Educational Research Journal 39. 1 pages 148–165 (published online 10 January 2013), DOI: 10.1080/01411926.2011.615386

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1080/01411926.2011.615386/abstract

Research Summary

Religious experience – communication with God, or spiritual realisation of ultimate reality – is normally held to be an unusual form of experience. However, does it share features in common with ordinary experience of the world? If so, religious experience might be viewed as realistic, in the senses of being experience of a real object and telling a credible story. Often, people object to the idea that religious experience can be compared to ordinary experience. They argue that its object is a highly unusual one, that it takes place in highly unusual circumstances and that unlike ordinary experience, it varies substantially from religion to religion. The writer responds that religious experience, like ordinary experience, can be predictable; that not all ordinary experiences are straightforward; that moral or aesthetic circumstances can be just as unusual as religious experience circumstances; and that religious traditions may only be incompatible on the surface. The material will be of direct use in teaching about religious experience on A level philosophy and ethics courses.

Researcher

David Brown

Research Institution

University of St Andrews

What is this about?

• Philosophically speaking, is religious experience realistic?
• The question can be interpreted in two ways: is the object of religious experience (usually God) a real object? Are religious experience accounts credible?
• The writer’s approach is to show how religious experience may not be so different from ordinary experience as is often assumed. Like ordinary experience, it may be predictable. Ordinary experience can be just as complex as religious experience. Ordinary experience can depend just as much on the emotions.
• Religious traditions describe religious experiences in different ways, but this is also true of how different cultures and languages describe ordinary experience.

What was done?

This is a scholarly philosophical essay, reviewing ideas on religious experience and whether it can be compared to ordinary experience and drawing original, interesting conclusions.

Main findings and outputs

• Religious experience may be predictable in similar ways to ordinary experience: just as we might predict when we might meet people, so it can be predicted that beautiful landscape or music may suggest divine presence.
• Experiences of God’s love are held to be unusual, but ordinary experience is less than straightforward (a tomato is red only in a certain light, its is hard to explain how we experience that a person is intelligent, etc.). Experiencing all of God’s divinity is as problematical as experiencing a person’s entire personality.
• Religious experience is argued to be impossible without conditions such as joy, awe, orwonder. But the emotions are also involved in aesthetic or moral experience (e.g. appreciation of music, or loving care setting a good example to people).
• It is often argued that whilst it is easy to communicate about ordinary experiences with a range of others, communication about religious experiences is different, because of religious conflicts.
• However, each could be seen as describing experiences which are true within its own ways of describing the truth (as not all languages distinguish between colours in the same way).
• This would not mean that religions cannot communicate and interact. Hindu polytheism seems far from Judaism, for instance, but the quantity of gods could be argued to stop any one from being dominant, guarding against idolatry.
• The argument is not that differences between religions might dissolve, but that the distinction between ordinary perception and religious complexity is simplistic.

Relevance to RE

• The essay has use as a resource for teaching about religious experience in A level philosophy and ethics. If possible, teachers should read it first (it is clear and reasonably concise); if not, use could be made of the main findings and outputs above, perhaps as a powerpoint presentation.
• An outline lesson plan follows. Students might first be asked to mind-map differences and similarities between ordinary experience and religious experience (or, one or more groups to mind-map differences, others similarities). After discussion of the mind-maps the teacher could then introduce the article and talk through the main findings and outputs. Students could then go back into their groups to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the main findings and outputs (or perhaps each group could be given one of the points to work on). They could next feed back their findings. Finally all could offer a personal conclusion, giving the argument of the essay a mark out of 10 and providiing reasons for their marks.

Generalisability and potential limitations

The ideas and arguments developed in the essay are applicable to any discussiion of religious experience, because the writer looks across broad issues and into various religious traditions.

Find out more

Realism and religious experience, Religious Studies 51, 497–512 (published online 12 October 2014), doi:10.1017/S0034412514000389

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/religious-studies/article/div-classtitlerealism-and-religious-experiencediv/092712366074464469A555DBFC37C922

Research Summary

How should Muslims’ religious lives be understood? What does it mean, in everyday life, to live as a Muslim? This research focuses on Muslim women in Austria and their everyday lived religion. 30 biographical interviews were conducted, in 2006, with first-generation female migrants from Turkey and Bosnia-Herzegovina, and later analysed. The findings confirmed those of other studies:
that Muslim religiosity is multi-dimensional. It consists of a belief dimension and a behavioural dimension, with the latter dividing into ‘rituals and duties’ and ‘ethical behavioural principles’.
Furthermore, religion and culture were found to be closely related, especially in the context of migration. These findings are useful to teachers teaching about Islam and also have implications for teaching about religion in general. It is necessary to look beyond accounts of ‘key beliefs’ into other areas such as rituals, duties, ethics and culture if Islam (or, by extension, any religious tradition) is to be taught about accurately.

Researchers

Caroline Berghammer & Katrin Fliegenschnee

Research Institution

University of Vienna

What is this about?

• When Islam is studied from the ‘ground up’ – when practising Muslims are asked about the meaning of Islam in their lives, and how they express it – what is it about? What are its most important features?
• These issues are considered in relation to 30 Muslim women. All live in Austria: some have migrated there from Turkey, others from Bosnia-Herzegovina. That the women are immigrants from different countries is significant to their religious ways of life.
• Religion and culture are closely related. The research shows how Islamic belief and practice can give the women studied a sense of identity in the adopted country, where they are part of minorities.
• The research is also about the dimensions of Islam, or religion in general, and the need to consider belief, practice, knowledge, experience and their consequences (how the first four impact on a religious person’s life).

What was done?

• Thirty interviews with first-generation Muslim female migrants from Turkey and Bosnia-Herzegovina were carried out in Austria. The interviews were biographical, meaning that the women were asked about their life-stories and in the course of this, about the ways in which Islam had impact on their lives.
• The overall finding is that religiosity consists of faith and behaviour. Behaviour can be divided into: rituals and duties; and ethical behavioural principles.
• The link between religion and culture is particularly important for members of
  minority religions.
• Religiosity is strongly influenced by life-events and social networks. It has specific consequences in daily life.
• Within faith, religious knowledge is viewed as very important: how to read the Qur’an in Arabic, how to pray. God is described as omnipresent and all-encompassing. None of the Turkish women doubted God’s existence, even if describing themselves as non-religious: some Bosnian women did (Islam in Bosnia-Herzegovina tends to be more ‘open’). No other religious figure, e.g. Prophet Muhammad, was mentioned.
• Regarding rituals and duties, all of the obligations apart from giving to the poor are mentioned: pilgrimage to Mecca, avoidance of pork and alcohol, fasting during Ramadan. The importance of prayer was stressed intensively.
• There are different opinions about the headscarf. For many women it is unimportant. Others speak of how an event, e.g. childbirth or their mother’s death, intensified their religion and influenced them to wear it. Some saw it as cultural pressure, which knowledge that it is not a religious requirement could help women to resist.
• Ethical principles (no lying or stealing; having a positive attitude and helping others) are very important but no different from those of other religions, e.g. Christianity. The women wish to continue their own culture and simultaneously integrate with Austrian culture.

Main findings and outputs

• The overall finding is that religiosity consists of faith and behaviour. Behaviour can be divided into: rituals and duties; and ethical behavioural principles.
• The link between religion and culture is particularly important for members of
  minority religions.
•  Religiosity is strongly influenced by life-events and social networks. It has specific consequences in daily life.
• Within faith, religious knowledge is viewed as very important: how to read the Qur’an in Arabic, how to pray. God is described as omnipresent and all-encompassing. None of the Turkish women doubted God’s existence, even if describing themselves as non-religious: some Bosnian women did (Islam in Bosnia-Herzegovina tends to be more ‘open’). No other religious figure, e.g. Prophet Muhammad, was mentioned.
• Regarding rituals and duties, all of the obligations apart from giving to the poor are mentioned: pilgrimage to Mecca, avoidance of pork and alcohol, fasting during Ramadan. The importance of prayer was stressed intensively.
• There are different opinions about the headscarf. For many women it is unimportant. Others speak of how an event, e.g. childbirth or their mother’s death, intensified their religion and influenced them to wear it. Some saw it as cultural pressure, which knowledge that it is not a religious requirement could help women to resist.
• Ethical principles (no lying or stealing; having a positive attitude and helping others) are very important but no different from those of other religions, e.g. Christianity. The women wish to continue their own culture and simultaneously integrate with Austrian culture.

Relevance to RE

• The ‘lived religion’ approach is something for RE teachers to consider. Encounters and conversations with members of faith communities can deepen teachers’ subject knowledge and understanding. In turn, they can do the same for pupils, also enlivening RE.
• Another issue for curriculum planning and pedagogy results from the ‘religion as multi-dimensional’ finding. This finding echoes many findings about religion and many recommendations for its study, but that only underlines the importance of those. For balance, accuracy and interest, teachers should plan to cover various aspects of Islam or indeed any faith: not only beliefs but also practices, knowledge, experiences and their consequences combine to build up religious lives. Pupils’ knowledge and understanding of religion can be developed through tasks which ask them to account for and connect the different dimensions.
• Pupils’ might also benefit from considering the impact of migration on religious practice. What are the differences and similarities between the practice of Islam or Christianity in the original country and the new one? What challenges have to be faced or problems solved?

Generalisability and potential limitations

The study is of Islam in a particular context. Though that in many ways provides its interest, the findings may not be generalisable elsewhere. The researchers say that a follow-up study of men rather than women is highly desirable. The principle of a balanced, multi-dimensional approach to religion is certainly generalisable.

Find out more

Developing a Concept of Muslim Religiosity: An Analysis of Everyday Lived Religion among Female Migrants in Austria, Journal of Contemporary Religion, 29:1, 89-104

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13537903.2014.864810

Research Summary

This research is about the Char Dham, a pilgrimage circuit in Northern India. Usually, religion and leisure (or, pilgrimage and tourism) are viewed as different things, but the researcher finds that when pilgrimage is promoted as a tourist activity, its religiosity remains intact, though its form changes. The guidebooks mix up religious and tourist selling points, and the pilgrimage is portrayed as an experience of religious devotion and a holiday at the same time. In half a century or so, the Char Dham has changed from being a relatively small local and local event to being one of the most popular pilgrimage circuits in India, because of the efforts of tourist agencies to promote it. However, it has retained its religious profile, demonstrating that the tourist industry can increase religiosity. The researcher’s account of the Char Dam is very original and offers RE teachers an interesting perspective on Hinduism and also on the relationship between religion and the contemporary world. As well as sacred, the sites are now sold as picturesque and interesting. The researcher wonders whether this applies in other religious traditions. Pupils might consider: does visiting a sacred place because it is famous or beautiful miss the point?

Researcher

Knut Auckland

Research Institution

University of Bergen, Norway

What is this about?

• This research is about the Char Dham, a pilgrimage circuit in Northern India.
• The Char Dam has exploded in popularity since the 1950s. Some 100, 000 – 400, 000 people visit each year. Why? Because of the success of local government and tourist agencies in promoting it as a tourist activity as well as a religious pilgrimage, suggests the researcher.
• Char Dam means ‘Four Abodes’. The researcher describes the sites, their history and religious significance. He tells the story of the associated development of tourism and explores how religion and tourism have interacted in the case of the Char Dam.
• He compares and contrasts the descriptions of sacred sites in traditional religious Hindu texts to those in modern tourist literature.
• He finds that the sites can be marketed as both sacred and picturesque, or interesting, and wonders whether this might now also apply to pilgrimage sites in other religious traditions, such as Santiago de Compostela.

What was done?

Interviews were carried out with people involved in the development of the pilgrimage circuit as a tourist activity (e.g. politicians, guides, officials) and documents were analysed (government policy documents and guidebooks).

Main findings and outputs

• Religious pilgrimage and tourism are usually viewed as very different, but religious bodies and tourist agencies come together to create a ‘tourist-pilgrim’. The Char Dam is an example of this process.
• The original Char Dam was a pilgrimage to the four ‘corners’ of India itself. The Char Dam researched was originally a ‘little’ Char Dam including four Himalayan sites. Its ‘four abodes’ are Yamunotri (dedicated to the river and goddess Yamuna), Gangotri (dedicated to the river and goddess Ganga), Kedarnath (dedicated to Shiva), and Badrinath (dedicated to Vishnu).
• From 1971, government agencies began promoting the Char Dam as a package tour. The idea of a circuit or route was borrowed from the tourist industry (it brings tourists to more sites and increases their expenditure). The Char Dam has a commercial model (market research, a five-year development plan for growth, etc.).
• Texts originally promoting the Char Dam go back to the 4th century BCE and declare that visitors

Relevance to RE

• Firstly, regarding policy and curriculum, the research is a reminder that a broad and balanced study of religion should be offered to pupils through RE. It illustrates the interest and importance of pilgrimage.
• Secondly, regarding pedagogy, it offers teachers a good case study of how a religious tradition interacts with the contemporary world. It illustrates how the interaction can be surprising. It offers teachers a good story to tell pupils. Much more about the Char Dam can be found online, e.g. offers of a pilgrim-tourist experience by helicopter ( see http://www.chardhampackage.com/ ).
• Once pupils have found out more, they might discuss, debate and / or write about critical questions. Should religion be free of consumerism, or should consumerism be used to promote good values? Does visiting a sacred place because it is famous or beautiful miss the point? Should pilgrimage include hardship?

Generalisability and potential limitations

This researcher only suggests that the research may, perhaps, be more generalisable; it is a study of one particular religious circuit – however, it provides a very interesting perspective. It also suggests good ways for teachers to enable pupils to ask and suggest answers to critical questions about religion (see above, Relevance to RE).

Find out more

Pilgrimage expansion through tourism in contemporary India: the development and promotion of a Hindu pilgrimage circuit, Journal of Contemporary Religion, 32:2, 283-298 (published online 11 April 2017), 10.1080/13537903.2017.1298908

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13537903.2017.1298908