Category Archives: Uncategorised
Research ethics, rule-following and schools
I recently reviewed an article reporting some research conducted in a school by teachers. One of the issues I feed back on was the school’s rules round research and how the author wrote about research ethics. The approach was to … Continue reading
From face to face to online in one weekend
“Never has so much been done, so quickly, to educate so many. Big shout out for the half a million teachers who taught 9 million UK children online today in what will go down as the most extraordinary education evolution … Continue reading
Reposting Every child deserves an opportunity at school to discover the language for making sense of their world
By Dr Robert A Bowie First posted here: https://blogs.canterbury.ac.uk/nicer/every-child-deserves-an-opportunity-at-school-to-discover-the-language-for-making-sense-of-their-world/ The Final Report of the Commission on Religious Education, which was established in 2016 to review the legal, educational and policy frameworks for Religious Education (RE) has now been published. This is … Continue reading
The quality of public debate in Religious Education – 8 questions
Should Religious Education (RE) debates begin with a generosity of spirit toward the contributors who may argue for quite opposing and diverse visions and conceptions of the subject? What makes someone who feels so strongly about a particular conception … Continue reading
Is it time for religious education to recognise religion is a bit quantum? An irreverent bit of Friday morning writing
These days, if you are a secondary RE teacher doing GCSE, your language of learning will be filled with notions like ‘logical chains of reason” and a lot of stuff about what good evaluation looks like. This is a product … Continue reading
4Bs: Belonging, being, believing, behaving
4Bs: Belonging, being, believing, behaving The conversation around religion and non-religion, belief and non-belief, theism and atheism sometimes treat these terms as interchangeable. I don’t think they are. Religion / non religion is about participation in and commitment to organised communities … Continue reading
In Religious Education, is our approach to diversity too focussed on the ‘positions reached’ and not enough on the ‘ways of knowing’ that led people there?
In Religious Education we often focus on trying to ensure we cover different positions both between and within traditions. But there is another ‘diversity’ that is related to religious ways of knowing, not just positions held. So you could approach … Continue reading
Religious Education and the subject’s title
One of the questions raised by the Commission for RE is about the possible change in subject title. Maybe RE is old fashioned and we need something like Philosophy, Ethics and Belief. I am agnostic to the value of subject … Continue reading
Daughter asks mommy: ‘Are we fundamentalist Christians or liberal Christians’?
It’s not exactly the kind of question my wife expected but when a 9-year-old comes up with that, you just know she has been doing RE at school. Mum -, ‘that’s an interesting question – what makes you ask it?’ Daughter … Continue reading