Religious Education as a Dialogue with Difference

Fostering Democratic Citizenship Through the Study of Religions in Schools

Kevin O'Grady

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351064361
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Religious Education as a Dialogue with Difference addresses current issues over the study of religion in publicly maintained schools. Are liberal, inclusive approaches to the study of religion suited to the aims of education in a democracy? Do liberal democratic aims offer the right framework for the study of religion? By presenting research on English secondary school pupils' motivation in religious education, this volume argues that religious education is best understood as a democratic dialogue with difference. The book offers empirical evidence for this claim, and it demonstrates how learners gain in religious literacy, both through the exercise of democratic citizenship in the classroom and towards the goal of life-long democratic citizenship.

1 Motivation in RE

Beginnings

Introduction

This chapter offers an account of the origins of the research trajectory covered in the book as a whole. My academic research on RE is ongoing, but its origins can be traced to the year 2000.

By 2000 I was an experienced RE teacher and subject leader, having taught and led the subject for fourteen years in three very different English secondary schools (for pupils of 11–16 or 11–18 years old). I have written elsewhere about how induction into the craft knowledge of teaching, together with experiences of different school contexts, can build teacher resourcefulness.¹ The English teaching profession—as I am sure is the case elsewhere—passes on a vast repertoire of ‘what works’, integral to its practice and identity. At the same time, changing schools can require teachers to re-think their assumptions, as ‘what works’ in one context may not do so in another, or not in the same way. A change of schools may simultaneously create professional development opportunities and vulnerability.

I do not mean my remark that my research on RE can be traced to fourteen years into my teaching career to devalue the professional knowledge that I had built up beforehand, nor to suggest that my previous professional knowledge had no effect on my research, nor to suggest that researchers have a kind of educational knowledge superior to teacher craft knowledge. My view of research is that it is a disciplined form of inquiry characterised by several linked constraints: researchers must be transparent about the theory informing their work, about the means and methods through which their data are collected, analysed and presented; must integrate their findings into wider findings and debates within their particular field; must show how their conduct of research has been underpinned by agreed ethical principles; must seek to publish their work so that it becomes subject to wider academic scrutiny; and so on.

This is (usually, in practice, though not necessarily) different to what teachers do and how they develop. It consumes time that teachers do not have, as they are properly attending to teaching their pupils and the associated tasks. Also, while educational research has the purpose of finding out about education, or finding out how to practise it well, teaching has the purpose of practising it. However, this latter point suggests potential overlaps between research and teaching. Teachers want to practise education well. Research ought to help them to do this. They can read and discuss published research, or perhaps find time to carry out some research of their own, if they have some training in research methodology. Some of the teaching profession’s traditional ways of seeking improvements to practice are to some extent reminiscent of research methods (for example, discussing learning with pupils, observing and evaluating colleagues’ teaching, analysing data such as test or examination results or surveying samples of pupils’ work).²

That educational research ought to assist teachers or other professionals to solve problems and improve practices in schools or other educational settings is an important quality criterion. What I mean by improvement will be dealt with as the book progresses; as far as RE is concerned, it has been anticipated in the book’s title and introduction. It is not narrowly conceived, instrumentalist, impact-based improvement, in the sense of boosting ‘results’ or other outcome measures. It consists in improving the quality of pupils’ experience of learning in school, with consequent benefits to the well-being of society.

Returning to the origins of my research, what distinctively happened in 2000 was that I began my first attempt to take a potential overlap between teaching and research and change it into an actual fusion between teaching and research: research in the formal, academic sense of the word, characterised by the constraints described previously and managed through a university. Retrospectively, this first attempt at combining teaching with academic research became a pilot study for a later one, but it was also valuable in itself (and, perhaps, continues to be so, as a possible model for teachers who are interested in beginning to research their own lessons).

In this chapter, the story of the first study is told, grounded in my teacher biography and the attempt to solve a problem arising in a particular school at a particular time. In the next section, I account for the study’s background and academic context. In subsequent sections, I report the study’s methodology; its findings; the subsequent discussion of those findings in terms of the debates over RE pedagogy that were current at the time; and, finally, how the study pointed to the need for a longer follow-up version.

Developing a First Action Research Study: Background, Context, Influences

In September 2000, I simultaneously moved schools and began studying part-time for a master’s degree in RE. I left a post I had held for nine years as Head of RE and Sociology in one of the city of Sheffield’s most successful comprehensive schools, known for high academic standards and integration of a culturally diverse pupil population, and joined a nearby school soon to be judged as failing by the Office for Standards in Education. The contrast between the two schools was striking. The disaffection of pupils and the frequent occasions of disorder, violence and racism at my new school made a strong impression on me. The new school was almost entirely ‘white’. RE was one of my areas of responsibility, and I was concerned about the lack of respect that was shown to minority religious and cultural traditions by many of my new pupils.

I tried to build a counter-culture around RE, insisting on considerate and thoughtful behaviour, planning classroom tasks to build the interest and confidence of the pupils and displaying the results around the school as well as in RE classrooms. The year 7 (entry year, 11–12 years old) pupils were open to influence against the anti-school, anti-social attitudes prevalent among their older peers. Together with them, I organised demonstrations against the depressing situation in the school, sometimes by presenting material from RE lessons in assemblies. Six months after my arrival, an inspection placed the school in Serious Weaknesses, one step away from failing the school. Yet RE received an excellent report, and the inspectors praised my efforts at transforming the school’s culture.

These first six months in the school coincided with the first few units of the master’s degree programme in RE, organised by the University of Warwick Religions and Education Research Unit (WRERU). In the course of my academic work, I sought ways to address what I read to issues arising in my work as a school teacher and department leader: for example, what constitutes effective teaching in RE, what pedagogical models are most appropriate to the nature of religion and to pupils’ learning needs or how a particular religious tradition should be presented to pupils.

The master’s units were interesting, but sometimes connected with my work as a teacher in an incidental way. They were expertly modelled to build understanding and evaluation of significant issues concerning religion and education, but could not have been prepared so as to address pressing problems in the context of a particular school. Of course, issues such as the nature and presentation of religious traditions are vital: yet my particularised experience, as a teacher of RE in a school with many disengaged or even hostile pupils, forced me to prioritise issues of pupil motivation. In fact—as will be shown later—issues of pupil motivation relate strongly to those of presenting religious traditions, but once the problem of pupil motivation was established as my point of departure, my master’s studies changed. No longer limited to an interesting academic pursuit with some professional relevance, they began to open up ways to transform my practice.

Once the pupil motivation focus was identified, my university tutors were able to support my work with even greater expertise, personalised to my interests. Eleanor Nesbitt encouraged me to begin to look at action research as a framework for structuring a small-scale research investigation.³ Robert Jackson helped me to locate sources within RE literature on the issue of pupil motivation and discussed those sources with me. An overview of those sources, as undertaken in preparation for my first research study, follows.

Jackson’s own interpretive approach to RE has been a reference point throughout my research; in some ways, my work constitutes an attempt to apply Jackson’s theoretical position to my changing professional circumstances, though I have sometimes had to extend or combine it with different theories or methods.⁴ The interpretive approach has three linked pedagogical principles: representation (religious traditions must be presented not as bounded systems, but in ways that recognise the uniqueness of each member and the fact that each member is subject to many influences); interpretation (in studying religious traditions, pupils should not be expected to set aside their own presuppositions, but should compare their own concepts with those of others, their own perspectives being an essential part of the learning process); and reflexivity (through their studies of religious traditions, pupils should re-assess their own personal ways of life; they should be constructively critical of the material they study; and they should maintain an awareness of the development of the interpretive process, reflecting on the nature of their learning).⁵

Jackson’s principle of interpretation, with its emphasis on pupils’ views being essential to RE’s learning process, has salience to the issue of motivation—teachers can hardly expect pupils to engage if their own views are not taken seriously—and resonance with other findings on motivation in RE. For example, Harold Loukes’ 1961 book Teenage Religion is often seen as a turning point in RE’s development.⁶ Loukes reported research undertaken in English secondary modern schools, where discussions in Religious Instruction lessons, as they were then called, were audio-taped and school pupils interviewed about their content. A high level of negativity towards Religious Instruction was expressed by the pupils. Many accused teachers of marginalising their own experiences and ideas, and interpreted lessons as attempts at indoctrination into Christianity. Loukes responded by recommending a problem-centred syllabus focused on relationships, responsibilities and other issues of approaching adulthood, which would be personally and socially relevant to pupils.

Though my view of the purpose of RE was different from that of Loukes, I was interested in the possibility that my pupils’ motivation might be increased if I could genuinely give some prominence to their own experiences and ideas.⁷ As in Loukes’ time, there was resistance to RE in my new school. In my case, however, the causes were, perhaps, more complex. There continued to be a perceived lack of relevance of RE to those of no religious persuasion; but now, pupils were suspicious that an ostensibly open, multifaith RE might be a cover for underlying indoctrinatory intentions, while also hostile to the idea of learning about religions that were not ‘white’. I was intrigued by Loukes’ practice of taking into account pupils’ views when designing the RE curriculum, but I realised that it might be hard to do so, as some of the views that they were likely to express would be unpalatable.

Linda Rudge’s analysis of RE’s marginalisation—as she saw it—of those with no religious affiliation was more or less contemporary with the beginning of my research.⁸ Rudge charted the development, through the 1990s, of RE syllabuses that assumed the study of six religions but failed to acknowledge that a majority of British people claimed allegiance to no religion. For Rudge, these syllabuses perpetuated inequality and discrimination. They took no account of the generalised spirituality of the silent majority and, given their closed, compartmentalised definition of religion, could hardly do so. Rudge took encouragement that some RE syllabuses appeared to recognise the need for an inclusive exploration of beliefs and values: RE, she argued, must take as its central role the spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of all, without leaving out pupils’ own beliefs, values and commitments. Rudge’s work is now even more relevant than when originally published, as can be seen in the recent debate over whether or not RE should include the study of non-religious worldviews, to which I return in Chapter 7.⁹ At the time, it made me consider that there was little point in asking secularised teenagers to study religion for its own sake. Bridges must be built to their own worlds of meaning.

A further influence on my earl...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Motivation in RE: Beginnings
• 2 RE, Adolescence and Creativity
• 3 Action Research, Ethnography, Epistemology and Ethics
• 4 RE as a Dialogue with Difference
• 5 Democratic Citizenship or Religious Literacy? Aims and Values for RE
• 6 Dialogue and Conflict in RE
• 7 Democratic Citizenship and RE Revisited
• 8 Does RE Work?
• 9 Review, Recommendations, Questions for the Future and Final Remarks
• Index