Teaching Religious Education 4-11

Derek Bastide

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781134444182
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This long-awaited second edition is an accessible, practical guide for primary teachers. It covers the teaching of religious education at the Foundation Stage, Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2. Taking account of the changes to RE over the last decade, it maps out and considers the implications for teachers of:

• changes that have taken place over the last few years with regard to changing aims and objectives in the subject
• the legal framework
• the broadening understanding of the notion of religion
• concern for spiritual development
• emergence of citizenship as an additional component of the curriculum
• introduction of formal guidelines to the content of RE
• teaching Christianity and other world faiths
• tackling important topics and contemporary issues
• planning RE across the primary school
• planning a unit of work
• using different teaching approaches
• monitoring and assessing progress.
  

The book is full of practical examples and will also contain a uesful resources section. In addition there will be a chapter on key religions, which will look at Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Sikhism.

Planning the teaching

6
Some preliminary considerations

Over the last quarter of the twentieth century, RE was broadening its subject base considerably. All these developments which we have seen already were confirmed in the National Framework for Religious Education which identified two prime focuses:

• Widening inclusion, understanding diversity and promoting tolerance.

• Providing pupils with a wide range of experiences to enable them to develop a realistic and positive sense of their own beliefs and ideas.

At one time, world religions were taught so that white British pupils could gain an understanding of the main faiths which had settled and were growing in Britain. Now the overall aim is that groups can understand each other so that, for example, Hindu pupils can begin to understand the Christian base of British society and also develop an awareness of Buddhism, Islam, Judaism and Sikhism, as well as looking afresh at their own tradition, Hinduism. The hoped for outcome of this is that all pupils will feel that they belong in this society and that, through the awareness and understanding of this diversity, there will be greater tolerance of difference. This in turn should lead pupils, through knowledge and understanding, to be confident in what they themselves believe and value.

Avoiding mishmash

Although six religions are to be taught, educational considerations were brought into play when it came to planning how this might happen. Given the usual timetable allowance of one hour per week and so roughly forty hours per year, and with Christianity normally occupying half of that, it would be completely unfair to the great religious traditions to allocate them four hours per year each, as well as creating that phenomenon, mishmash, the mess of many undifferentiated stories, facts and beliefs, in pupils’ minds. To avoid these pitfalls, there has been a strong national steer on agreed syllabuses to require that in Key Stage 1, pupils should study Christianity and one other faith, and in Key Stage 2 Christianity and two other faiths. As each agreed syllabus determines which religions those should be, often from their own local situation, it means that there is considerable diversity across the country. Many, however, appear to nominate Judaism for Key Stage 1 and Hinduism and Islam for Key Stage 2. In an authority which has this pattern there is no embargo on doing some further work on Judaism in Key Stage 2, nor for that matter on making reference to Buddhism and Sikhism, perhaps in connection with a festival, but Christianity, Hinduism and Islam would be the principal focuses.

If pupils are to learn about different faiths, subject content is vitally important but so also are all those qualities that RE is expected to foster: empathy, interest in other people’s situations and cultures, understanding, tolerance and respect. Content alone is not enough, as religions can be taught in a negative way which can create and reinforce prejudice. On the other hand, understanding, empathy, tolerance and respect cannot be fostered unless there is knowledge about the different faiths and the knowledge is taught in such a way that the adherents of those faiths are content with the teaching.

Stepping stones not stumbling blocks

If the teaching is to be successful, then teachers have to think very carefully about the age and stage of their pupils. What they are teaching must relate or attach in some way to pupils’ current experience and this to some extent will depend on the situation. It is, for example, much easier to teach about world faiths if the school is multifaith in composition, as the pupils naturally have first-hand experience of other faiths which sparks off their curiosity. It is also probably not a good idea to teach 5-year-olds the Christian doctrine of the Trinity nor to talk to them about the Buddha’s diagnosis of the human condition in the Four Noble Truths, as there is little in their experience which is likely to foster understanding. They might use the right words but these will be hollow. On the other hand young children experience birthday parties and Christmas and these are excellent ways to move into an understanding of festivals and special occasions. The selection of teaching material should be designed to act as stepping stones to a positive and developing understanding of religions and not stumbling blocks. It became popular in recent years to develop a topic in Key Stage 1 called ‘Festivals of Light’. This topic included the three autumn and winter festivals in which light is a powerful feature – Diwali (Hindu), Hanukkah (Jewish) and Christmas (Christian). Stories were told, lamps were made and a good time was had by all. However, from an RE point of view the topic often proved to be less than satisfactory. Pupils often became very confused about the boundaries between the festivals and the faiths from which they were drawn and were left with a welter of confusions and misconceptions. Not a stepping stone but a stumbling block.

The role of the teacher

Whether a teacher is committed to a religious tradition or not does not matter as far as teaching RE is concerned. The teacher is there to be a guide and help to the children so that they can fulfil the two main attainment targets of RE: to learn about and understand the major religious traditions in Great Britain, and to have the opportunity through that to begin to formulate their own approach and path and to learn tolerance and acceptance of other people’s differences. The teacher’s role is not to try to commend any one path or no path at all. It is bad practice to say ‘we believe in … but they believe in …’. It is good practice to say ‘Christians believe … Muslims believe …’ and so on. This is part of the professionalism of the teacher.

In that sense, teachers are neutral. However teachers cannot remain neutral if they hear pupils mocking the religious faith of others or acting in a prejudiced way towards particular religious groups in the school. Such behaviour needs to cease and the virtues of tolerance, acceptance and inclusiveness need to be emphasised.

Organising RE in the school

Schools have to consider the question of how RE, and other subjects too, can best be organised within the curriculum. As far as RE is concerned there have been two main approaches: integrating RE within topics or planning RE as a discrete subject.

Integrating RE into the class topic can make planning easier for the teacher, but as the only approach it would make the job of meeting the requirements of the agreed syllabus very difficult. At its worst the relationship of the RE in a topic has often been only at the level of word association. Noah’s Ark has appeared frequently in primary schools in topics which can range from water, to boats, to animals, to weather. However the story of Noah’s Ark is not really about any of these things. Integrating RE into the class topic works more successfully if the topic is, for example, journeys. In that case the school could plan a sub-topic on pilgrimage (religious journeys). This would make for better RE. However, even with such more suitable ex...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Setting the scene
• Planning the teaching
• Background
• Index