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RE-Framing Education About Beliefs and Practices in Schools

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RE-Framing Education About Beliefs and Practices in Schools RE-framing education about beliefs and practices in schools a lens and tools (concept based) approach University of Cambridge/Woolf Institute Acknowledgments want to express my profound gratitude to the many Woolf Institute, also in Cambridge. I am extremely grateful teachers who have contributed to sections of this book to them both for supporting me over the three years of this I despite the intensity of their professional lives. They project. Sue Ward, working for Cambridge County Council, represent many more such scholar practitioners whose contributed significantly by sharing her huge expertise work is nothing short of heroic. I look forward to presenting as Cambridge’s RE advisor. Laurie Hogen, whose idea this more of their work in further editions of this book. project originally was, has never let me give up – and Mohammed Aziz has been both an enormously erudite I am indebted to all those who have adopted the idea and a wise project advisor throughout. I would also like to of a RE-framing toolkit and given their time, enthusiasm, thank the many head teachers who allowed us to observe, creativity and commitment to ‘imagining’ a new way in both sets of school contexts, teachers’ classroom practice of approaching the teaching of beliefs and practices in and who released staff, in both the US and UK, to come to schools – and trying to help me realize it. The materials our ‘RE-framing’ conference at the University of Cambridge here, in particular those produced by Sahra Ucar, Martin in March 2014. Lee, Paddy Winter, Penny Kite, Zach Beamish, Clare Jarmy, Charlotte Orrock and Hollie Gowan, are truly original and We are most grateful to several US friends, Louise Garland, yet, because they are also tried and tested in classrooms, Olga Votis and Julia Bator Duggan for their financial reliably useable. Their willingness to follow me into and support to print the Toolkit and to Marcia Beauchamp, through this venture has been humbling for me to witness. Laleh Ispahani, Maha Elgenaidi and the Rt. Rev. William Their critical friendship is of singular importance to me, too. Swing for their encouragement. Sometimes one just needs to talk in order to clarify ideas. It goes without saying that the twenty or so US and UK In that respect I am lucky to belong to ‘the coffee club’ teachers who were part of our original study, who wrote and to have received so much wise advice, largely in the case studies and questionnaire responses, allowed their early mornings, from my colleagues John Beck and John lessons to be observed and then met face to face to share Finney. John Finney’s previous work has enabled me, in their own practice have been the real driving force of our particular, to develop study booklet three, on cultural work. Without them, and without their commitment to the understanding. Other Faculty colleagues, including PhD project, this toolkit would never have been started. students, have given generously of time and energy to help me explore these ideas – and some also helped with Finally, I want to thank Sahra Ucar and Alice Thompson very conference presentations. much for their hours of proof reading and thank, too, Andy Harvey of H2 Associates who has been patience itself in There are many organisations which have played significant making sure that the Toolkit made it into production. roles in supporting the development of this RE-framing toolkit. The project has been run under the auspices of the Mary Earl University of Cambridge’s Faculty of Education and the Author First Published 2015 By University of Cambridge Faculty of Education 184 Hills Rd, Cambridge CB2 8PQ and by The Woolf Institute 12–14 Grange Road, Cambridge CB3 9DU © 2015 Mary Earl Design and print management by H2 Associates (Cambridge) Limited Typeset in Myriad Pro 2 University of Cambridge (Faculty of Education) / Woolf Institute Contents Foreword 4 A word to teachers 5 Introduction: Teaching about Beliefs and Practices in School 7 What are we RE-Framing? From theory to practice. Principles and aims. Planner for Teachers 16 Study Booklet One: Cultural Understanding of Beliefs and Practices 18 Part One: Ordinary Culture; Part Two: Finding Cultural Depth; Part Three: Liquid Culture; Part Four: Cultural engagement within contemporary schooling. Study Booklet Two: Identity Formation 29 Looking at how being nurtured in different beliefs and practices affects human behaviours – and at how studying practices which have grown up around ‘identity’ issues (e.g. rites of passage) can help school students to understand spirituality as relational consciousness. Study Booklet Three: Issues of Evidence, Truth and Proof 35 Making abstract ideas concrete. How students ‘make progress’ in learning; developing enquiry skills; lesson planning. Using the Toolkit: Enquiring into meaning-making (beliefs and practices) 52 What is the meaning-making focus about? Examples of ways of working with the three lenses. Examples of ways of working with the three tools. Ten of the Best: Ways of working in the classroom (methodologies) 77 Different ways of making it easier for children and adolescents to access theological and philosophical (including ethical) subject matter. Useful resources for beginner story-tellers. A short glossary of key Islamic terms. Reader: Resources for teaching about beliefs and practices in schools (narratives) 100 Narratives from Judaism, Islam, Christianity, World culture, Atheism, Humanism and Buddhism. Each narrative comes with ideas about how to involve children and adolescents in understanding the ‘big picture’ of a belief and practice by looking, first, at a small example of it. Resources – and the US context 104 Organizations which provide classroom resources; organizations that provide speakers on multiple religions; internet resources. Afterword 146 Contents 3 Education Project Foreword t has been a privilege to be a member of the team person, Mary Earl, senior lecturer at the Faculty of Education, steering this project, and a real honour to be asked to Cambridge, and the main author of the materials that have I write this foreword on behalf of the team. come out of this project, including this toolkit. The work on this project, for me personally, started many At the heart of this toolkit is the idea of reframing Religious years ago, when my eldest child was still just 8 years old. Education (RE) so that we align it as closely as possible to I went one day to pick him up from his Saturday Islamic other subject areas of the school curriculum. This includes School. He looked very upset. Previously, he had been rethinking why, what and how we teach young people bullied at the school and I assumed it must have been a about our own and others’ religions, beliefs and practices. repeat of the same. Initially, he did not want to speak about Our strong conviction is that doing this rethinking in it. As we walked towards my mother’s house, I squeezed his a systematic way and presenting it in a toolkit such as hand in mine and enquired again. He looked up almost in this, will not only benefit individual RE teachers and their tears, hesitated and then explained that one of the teachers students, but may also change perceptions about the at the Islamic school had told him that only Muslims will go subject at the policy and the management levels, which to heaven and everyone else will be ‘dragged to hell’. ‘I see’, may in turn help to reverse the present poor perception I said, encouraging him to go on. ‘But that means grandpa and investment the subject currently suffers. will also go to hell’, he cried back. This toolkit reframes RE through what we have called I pulled my son towards me and held him tight as we ‘meaning-making’ in the world we live in – this is our walked – to comfort him and to give myself a little time to response to the ‘why’ question above. We pursue this think how I might respond. Grandpa, my wife’s maternal concept of meaning-making through three lenses: culture, grandfather, is a heritage Christian – though he still plays identity formation, and putting truth-claims to proof – this the organ for his small local church. But, importantly for my is our response to the ‘what’ question. We then consider son, he is a scientist (a chemist), with bags of patience to sit the three tools we may use to explore these lenses: key on the phone endlessly answering all his questions, from enquiry questions, text and context, and difference and the dinosaurs to the planets. My son loved his grandfather diversity – our response to the ‘how’ question. The toolkit very much and was clearly very hurt by what had been said. also includes a section outlining ways of working in the classroom, a reader or resources section, and finally, a In the circumstances, I tried to explain as best I could that teachers’ planner. the god we believe in is a kind, merciful God; that all but one chapter of the Quran starts with this claim; and that He The aim of the toolkit is to provide a set of ‘tools’ that could alone will judge who goes to heaven and who goes to hell. be helpful for school departments, individual teachers or I remembered and quoted some words of advice from Ali, trainee teachers to teach about and from our own and the fourth Caliph of Sunni Islam, and the first Imam of Shia others’ beliefs and practices. The toolkit remains, however, Islam. Ali had advised one of his governors that his subjects at the start of a journey. We hope you will use it, benefit were either his brothers and sisters in faith or his brothers from it, but also that you will give us feedback on it so that and sisters in humanity.
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