Eclectic RE or integrated RE? Case studies in learning method and learning practice

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Eclectic RE or integrated RE? Case studies in
learning method and learning practice
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If pedagogy in RE is about the varied means by
which people take learning intentions into action
(through planning, teaching, motivating and
assessing pupils) then...

• Instruction will always be an inadequate default
  for RE learning
• Good pedagogy will be sensitive to learners
  needs (and therefore can learn from e.g.
  multiple intelligence theory, learning styles
  research, other disciplines)
• Good teaching will be informed by clear aims and
  objectives - of course! These may be subtly
  shaded by the pedagogical processes in action.
• I will argue here that it is in the connections
  between the different pedagogical approaches we
  use in RE that best practice may be discerned.
  Each approach is incomplete without the gifts of
  some of the other approaches.
• This is the practice of many excellent RE
  teachers, who are perhaps learning intuitively
  from their situation of daily work with hundreds
  of pupils that effective RE is unconfined by one
  research or practice model
• I will further argue that REs current needs are
  to spread good pedagogy more widely and to
  encourage an integrated vision among good
  teachers, so that learning without barriers is
  facilitated

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• In this interesting example, 13 year olds can
  express their own current ideas about God in the
  light of their learning about the processes of
  theology and philosophy at a simple level. Their
  creative insight is alert to different cultural
  and social contexts in which religious enquiry
  occurs.

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Each school of thought in RE implies some
particular learning methods
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Learning the phenomena of religion
In this piece of work the pupil Holly, 12
shows simply a piece of learning that comes from
study of sacred story in Buddhist tradition. The
work then jumps to relate a point about wider
Buddhist vision to her ideas about greed did
the teacher want more than facts?
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• In this interesting example, Danny, 9, has
  explored the practice of the festival of Sukkot.
  His model of a sukkah and his description of the
  festivities add up to a good understanding of the
  meaning of this festival. Its a wide kind of
  phenomenological RE

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• In this piece of work Dan, not a Muslim,
  collects information about the life of the
  Prophet that might be significant for Muslim
  children. This task asks for facts and an
  editorial judgement. We might recognise AT1 work.

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To become human personal development goals
through RE

• Grimmitt gives these accounts of the purposes of
  RE. To give pupils
•  the opportunity to acquire skills which enable
  them to use their understanding of religion in
  the interpretation of their own personal
  experiences. (RE and Human Development, page
  216, 1987).
• pupils should evaluate their understanding of
  self in religious terms the evaluative process
  of learning from religion(s) should be fully
  integrated into how, within a secular educational
  context, pupils are learning about religion in
  the first place. (Pedagogies, page 15, 2002)

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My soul painting depicts a hand stopping aspects
of my personality getting through how I feel
sometimes. It feels like I have to stop saying
some of the things I do and that I have to hold
back what I really think or feel about certain
things. So, in a way, the hand represents public
opinion or morals. The darkness on the right is
to show the aspects of my personality on that
side arent shown often. The ones on the left
are those I show often are in the light. There is
a space in the top right hand corner where the 2
sides mix. It shows that sometimes you cannot
hold back emotion.
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Spirituality at the heart of RE through
experiential learning methods
Religious education provides opportunities to
promote spiritual development through

• discussing and reflecting on key questions of
  meaning and truth such as the origins of the
  universe, life after death, good and evil,
  beliefs about God and values such as justice,
  honesty and truth
• learning about and reflecting on important
  concepts, experiences and beliefs that are at the
  heart of religious and other traditions and
  practices
• considering how beliefs and concepts in religion
  may be expressed through the creative and
  expressive arts and related to the human and
  natural sciences, thereby contributing to
  personal and communal identity
• considering how religions and other world views
  perceive the value of human beings, and their
  relationships with one another, with the natural
  world, and with God
• valuing relationships and developing a sense of
  belonging
• developing their own views and ideas on religious
  and spiritual issues.
• National Framework, QCA, 2004

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• This piece of work comes from a guided fantasy
  activity in which learners imagine having an
  opportunity to ask one question of God / who
  knows everything. They receive a reply from an
  ambiguous source in a letter does it come from
  who knows everything / God They imagine what
  the reply might say.
• The activity intends to model the ambiguities of
  religious or spiritual experience but in this
  example, a specific expression of faith emerges
  from the pupil.
• Good RE?

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Religious literacy modest aims?

• Concept cracking a learning method
• Skills of religious literacy to be religiate
• Questions focus evaluating issues of meaning and
  truth
• Increasing capacity to handle truth claims
  (handling is what we do with dogs isnt it?)
• REs frontier with philosophy building close
  reasoned connections

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• This interesting example of work from David, 13,
  makes use of the tools for learning he is
  acquiring to explore a range of views about
  questions of origins.

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Constructing human life big goals

• RE has moved from being owned within
  Christianity to being multi-religiously owned,
  and including e.g. Humanism
• Does the subject now need to take account of the
  post-modern perspectives of the self that are
  forming our next generation?
• Does that provide a model for REs function in
  constructing the shifting kaleidoscope of
  worldview or meaning making or self?

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• This interesting piece of work from Nadine, 12,
  is a wide ranging reflection on her own identity,
  the product of chosen routes through her learning
  about Buddhist and Christian responses to
  questions of identity and belonging.

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Interpretive skills for all learners
Reflexivity the skills of open hearted, broad
minded engagement with the religious views and
world views of others in such a way that my own
perspective is challenged, affirmed, criticised,
evaluated. Edification the personal gift that
the learner acquires through the encounter with
other minds and lives (Note how she gets into the
process of RE from the content)
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• This work from a pupil in year three is
  characteristic of a fully rounded interpretive
  RE developing the language of RS with 8 year
  olds and exploring sacred story, teaching and
  belief, symbolism and forms of expression, the
  work links

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Enquiry all the tools in the pedagogic toolbox
of the RE teacher need to prompt and promote
enquiry, search and discover as a set of
processes. What would you ask God?
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• How can the broad range of pedagogical tools
  available to the RE teaching profession be more
  widely understood and better used?
• What impediments to better pedagogy are we sure
  about? ITE weaknesses? Subject knowledge?
  Planning models? Safety First teaching?
  Professional confidence? Curriculum time?
• Solutions?

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Integrating the learning approaches of RE for
higher standards
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Proposals for better learning in the RE classroom
would include
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• Leila Abdullah, 9 This is my idea about where
  is God? My family goes to the mosque to pray to
  God, but Allah is not just at the mosque. In my
  window, I have made a picture of churches and
  temples from all the different religions. People
  search for God in lots of places.