Making Every RE Lesson Count E-Book

Dawn Cox

• Herausgeber: Crown House Publishing
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Serie: Making Every Lesson Count series
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 212

Beschreibung

Writing in the practical, engaging style of the award-winning Making Every Lesson Count, Louise and Dawn provide teachers of religious education with the means to help their pupils unpick the big questions of religious belief and practice, and of morality and philosophy - the things that make us human. Making Every RE Lesson Count is underpinnedby six pedagogical principles - challenge, explanation, modelling, practice, feedback and questioning - and shares simple, realistic strategies that RE teachers can use to develop the teaching and learning in their classrooms. Each chapter explores a different principle in theory as well as in practice, and concludes with a series of questions that will inspire reflective thought and help teachers relate the content to their own work in the classroom. Furthermore, the book brings together two key strands in RE teaching - namely, what RE teachers teach and how they teach it - and the authors consider these strands through the disciplinary lenses of theology, philosophy and the social sciences. And, in doing so, Louise and Dawn place these disciplines at the heart of teaching and learning in the RE classroom. Written for new and experienced practitioners alike, Making Every RE Lesson Countwill enable teachers to improve their students' conceptual and contextual understanding of the topics and themes explored across the breadth of the RE curriculum. Suitable for RE teachers of pupils aged 11 to 18.

Leseprobe

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Praise for Making Every RE Lesson Count

Hutton and Cox have expertly turned their current classroom expertise into a really useful and practical guide to improving teaching practice in the RE classroom – it’s considered, well thought-out and clearly articulated. The Making Every Lesson Count principles are utilised and demonstrated with RE examples, giving immediate guidance to help improve even the most experienced of teachers’ lessons. I found myself nodding along while reading it, realising that things are so well explained and justified that this could raise standards in RE in a way few other resources could.

I implore every single RE teacher to get a copy of this book.

Andy Lewis, Deputy Head Teacher, St Bonaventure’s School, and author of 100 Ideas for Secondary Teachers: Outstanding RE Lessons

This is a really exciting contribution to the ongoing conversation about what makes for great RE. It is a celebration of the richness and complexity of human identity and world views, and a clarion call to teachers to share this with their pupils in the classroom. Making Every RE Lesson Count provides practical tools that empower teachers to challenge and support young people to think beyond their own experience of the world, and it rightly acknowledges teachers as those who effect meaningful change. I am sure that this book will play a significant role in the continuing evolution of RE in secondary schools.

Gillian Georgiou, RE Adviser, Lincoln Diocesan, and co-developer of the Balanced RE approach

Making Every RE Lesson Count is a tour de force. This book is precisely what the RE community needs: by linking educational theory to the six principles of great teaching and learning, it raises the bar for all involved in curriculum planning. Louise Hutton and Dawn Cox have produced an invaluable resource for colleagues to think about, discuss and plan really cracking RE.

Mary Myatt, education thinker, writer, and curator of https://thesoak.educationB

Making Every RE Lesson Count contains so much that can help every single RE teacher, at any stage of their career. Louise and Dawn have read the research and listened and talked to the experts, but their key strength is that their every thought is about the classroom and how applying what they have learned can improve their pupils’ learning. As a consequence, this book does what they suggest any good curriculum does: it enables growth beyond the articulated content. Any teacher of RE can read this confident that it will enhance the teaching and learning in their classroom.

Benjamin Wood, Subject Leader for Religious Studies, Haslingden High School

This book is written in a wonderful conversational style with questions for self-reflection as well as numerous practical suggestions. Readers will benefit from the wisdom and insights of Louise Hutton and Dawn Cox, who draw on a wealth of classroom experience rooted in research and evidence-informed practice. They outline the benefits of using disciplinary lenses such as those of theology, philosophy and the human/social sciences. They demonstrate this very effectively through approaches to content selection, types of questioning and giving feedback. They explain the merits of a hermeneutical approach as well as advocating for a fluid approach to curriculum design. Through their numerous and diverse pragmatic examples, such as using story, pictures, analogies and knowledge organisers, the authors demonstrate that every teacher of RE can make every lesson count.

Dr Kathryn Wright, Chief Executive, Culham St Gabriel’s Trust

This is essential reading for all RE teachers whether they are NQTs or experienced subject leads. Louise and Dawn confidently lead the call for ‘team RE’ to embrace research and pedagogical theory. With a keen eye on what works and minimising workload, this book covers a diverse range of topics from disciplinary perspectives to effective feedback. The reflective questions at the end of each section also make effective prompts for department meetings or CPD sessions.

Nikki McGee, Subject Specialist Lead for Religion and Philosophy, Inspiration Trust

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Making everyRE lesson count

Six principles to support religious education teaching

Louise Hutton and Dawn Cox

Edited by Shaun Allison and Andy Tharby

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the following for their generosity of time, inspiration, wisdom and guidance while writing: Rebecca Atkins, Derek Attrill, Bob Bowie, Richard Kueh (director of teacher training and development at Inspiration Trust), Andy Lewis, Jenny Pinch, Katy Salter, Paddy Winter and all of those in #TeamRE who regularly join in the conversations on social media.

We would also like to thank our families for their patience and support, especially Paul and Roy who provided the comedy interludes, cups of tea and, most of all, loving support.

When we planned to write this book, we had no idea what 2020 would bring. We didn’t know that Zoom would become such a big part of our lives. We also didn’t know that we would become great RE friends and learn so much from each other along the way. We are both better teachers from this whole experience and we hope that you will be too from reading it. ii

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Contents

Title PageAcknowledgementsIntroduction1:Challenge2:Explanation3:Modelling4:Practice5:Feedback6:QuestioningFinal ThoughtsBibliographyCopyright

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Introduction

Why are we here? What a question! We are here in lots of senses. Let’s start with two stories.

Louise: I had my first existential crisis when I was about 11. I really want to tell you that I was at the top of the Grand Canyon, or reading Keats, or immersed in the words of the Bhagavad Gita, Torah or Bible. I wish I could tell you it changed my life forever, but that isn’t what really happened. However, I do remember it as vividly as if it were one of those great stories. It was a pretty miserable day, cold and wet. I was a greasy haired, lanky, spotty, almost teenager. Locked out because I had forgotten my keys, I had taken to the garage for shelter. Garages, it turns out, are great places to think. And a thought, out of the blue, hit me straight between the eyes. What if I don’t exist? How do I know I exist? I stood, panicked, almost frozen in time as I pondered the metaphysics of the universe. And that is where this journey started for me. I know that every RE lesson counts because it helps our students to ponder these big questions.

Dawn: I love to travel and see how other people live their lives and how this may be different to how I live mine. During my travels I’ve experienced real people living their everyday lives with religion and with fascinating levels of diversity in beliefs, practice and adherence. I’ve lived in many different communities, including with Bedouins in the desert and with Druze in the mountains near2where Elijah slayed the prophets of Baal, and I have climbed Mount Sinai in the middle of night wearing the most unsuitable footwear possible! These experiences made me realise that studying what people believe is not only about the past but also about the present and the future. For me, teaching RE is about opening up this world to our students, some of whom may never have had the opportunity or inclination to see it first-hand themselves. Religion is fascinating and it is our job to teach students about it, regardless of their own beliefs and experiences.

This is why we know that every RE lesson does count. RE gets to the heart of what it means to be a human, to live and to be part of this amazing and wonderful planet. It provides a framework and a structure to help students unpick the big questions of religious belief and practice, of life and death, of society and culture, of morality and philosophy – all the things that make us human and help us to understand the shared identity of what it means to be human. In Living with the Gods, Neil MacGregor says that ‘one of the central facts of human existence is that every society shares a set of beliefs and assumptions – a faith, an ideology, a religion – that goes far and beyond the life of an individual. These beliefs are an essential part of a shared identity.’1 RE helps students to explore those beliefs. What could be more important?

3Every teacher thinks that their subject is special; we know that ours is. All subjects have challenges, but some are unique to that subject:

♦ RE does not have a national curriculum; instead, locally agreed syllabuses across the country outline different content and different ways of teaching RE.

♦ Debates surrounding the name of RE continue. In this book, we have chosen to use religious education (RE) to refer to any and all RE teaching, although we will also refer to religious studies when referring specifically to the GCSE and A level specifications which have that name.

♦ Parents have the right to withdraw their child from any or all religious education.

♦ RE has been removed from the curriculum in many schools. The National Association of Teachers of Religious Education (NATRE) report that almost 40% of community schools and 50% of academy schools without a religious character do not meet their legal or contractual requirements for RE at Key Stage 4.2

♦ The GCSE religious studies examination includes the option of short course and full course entry, with some schools giving time allocation on a par with other subjects and others having reduced contact time.

♦ Some schools offer Key Stage 4 core RE, while others have no provision or minimal contact time as part of a carousel with other humanities subjects, personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) education or citizenship, or drop-down days.

♦ Frequently, RE teachers are in small, one-person departments.

4♦ RE departments are often formed from teachers with other specialisms.

We wanted to write a book that would be helpful for all RE teachers in all contexts. We think that it is unique because it brings together the latest curriculum developments with evidence-informed practice and provides practical strategies for use in the RE classroom. We hope, therefore, to appeal to those who are new to teaching and those who have been teaching for some time but would like to develop their practice and keep abreast of recent changes. We also wanted to write a book for those teachers who may suddenly have been given five hours of RE on their timetable! Because now, possibly more than ever, every RE lesson does count.

What Makes Great RE Teaching?

Two factors that lead to the strongest student outcomes are outlined in the Sutton Trust’s report, What Makes Great Teaching?:

1 (Pedagogical) content knowledge – effective teachers have deep subject knowledge and understanding.

2 Quality of instruction – reviewing learning, providing models and ensuring there is sufficient time to practise are all important.3

This book brings together these two strands: what we teach and how we teach it. (Pedagogical) content knowledge includes what is taught as well as guidance on how a subject is structured. We will consider this through the disciplinary lenses of theology, philosophy and the social sciences – and, in doing so, we are placing ourselves at the forefront of discussions surrounding content knowledge. The foundations 5laid out by Shaun Allison and Andy Tharby in Making Every Lesson Count – challenge, explanation, modelling, practice, feedback and questioning – provide an effective framework to consider how we teach it.4

When thinking about what to teach, many schools are moving towards a knowledge-rich curriculum – with a considerable shift in emphasis towards coherent curriculum design. Schools are also working hard on developing a sequential curriculum where knowledge and skills build over time. This means that there is more of a focus on the knowledge that we want students to learn. A knowledge-rich RE curriculum approach recognises that:

All children need to acquire core knowledge and understanding of the beliefs and practices of the religions and worldviews which not only shape their history and culture but which guide their own development. The modern world needs young people who are sufficiently confident in their own beliefs and values that they can respect the religious and cultural differences of others and contribute to a cohesive and compassionate society.5

While the head of RE may have responsibility for curriculum design, we think that it should be a collaborative exercise for the whole department to undertake, so throughout the book we will be exploring how the six principles can support all teachers to get involved in curriculum development.

In order to consider what we want our students to learn, we need to think about what RE is and what it isn’t. Clearly, an 6important aspect of studying RE is that students get an opportunity to think about the big questions in society and develop both their own understanding and an appreciation of the views of others. However, we believe that there are some things which fall outside the remit of RE – for example, it should not be confused with PSHE or citizenship, with the delivery of social, moral, spiritual and cultural education or with cross-curricular ideas. While there is some emphasis on individual development, it is not the primary aim of RE to make children into better people or to develop twenty-first century life skills, such as creative thinking or teamwork. These may be a by-product of learning about RE, but they do not represent the subject itself.

The disciplines of RE

RE is a multidisciplinary subject. This is why – unlike a history student who is called a historian or a geography student who is called a geographer – students of RE can be a theologian, philosopher or even a scholar of religion. There is not one all-encompassing term. To help define our subject, the RE community is currently discussing a framework of the three core disciplines of theology, philosophy and the social sciences.6

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This may be a new way of considering the structure of RE for some teachers. However, these three disciplines provide both teachers and students with specific lenses through which to study religions and world views. When in conversation with Richard Kueh, he made an analogy comparing the study of religion to the disciplines of ball games. Rugby, football and lacrosse are all ball games, yet they all have different rules and different languages. When you are playing these games you need to understand the distinctive terminology in order to play effectively. For example, each of these sports uses the word ‘foul’ or ‘pass’, but what constitutes a foul or pass will vary. The same can be said of the three disciplines. You can look at the same subject content from three different perspectives, and to do so you need to understand the rules or conventions, and shared discourse and language used in the different fields of theology, philosophy and the social sciences. 8

By using these disciplinary lenses, we can consider different types of questions to ask when studying religion and belief:

Taking a balanced view of the disciplines helps us to create a challenging curriculum and give students the tools they need for future study. We will look further at how the disciplines can be explored across the principles in the book.

As teachers, understanding our own lens is also essential. We may have an unconscious bias towards one or more of the disciplines. A leader with an interest in philosophy, for example, may well change the name of RE to PRE (philosophy and religious education) or to philosophy and ethics, and place more emphasis at Key Stage 3 on these topics; 9ditto for theology and the social sciences. We both realised when reviewing our curriculum using the Church of England Education Office self-audit tool that we were both erring towards our own disciplinary backgrounds and personal interests.7

Students also come with their own lens which will have developed from their life experiences and learning. We want them to understand that when studying religion no one is entirely neutral in their approach, because everyone views the world from their own perspective. As a result of developing their knowledge, students will implicitly sharpen their lens. This will provide them with a deeper understanding of the world they inhabit, and so their personal lens may change as they learn and experience more. RE also helps students to develop an understanding of their own presuppositions, their ‘epistemological and ethical biases’,8 which enable them to critique their own world view as well as the world views of others.

It is not the purpose of RE to develop a ‘better’ lens in our students in a direct way, which might be seen as character development or as confessionalism, by promoting an obligation to a particular religion. We should not try to measure our students’ lens through assessment either, because we believe it is unquantifiable. It is also not to be confused with some interpretations of attainment target 2 (AT2 – learning from religion), which assumes that learning about religion makes people better or more moral. A student’s lens is not their opinion on an aspect of belief or practice, rather it is an understanding of what has formed their opinion or perspective. For example, a student may hold the opinion that 10abortion is wrong. This in itself is not a lens. The lens is about recognising that this viewpoint has been formed through many things: the way they have been brought up, conversations with others, personal experiences and the impact of other beliefs will all have helped to form their view. In the classroom, talking about our own lenses alongside the disciplinary lenses helps young people to understand the plurality and complexity of religious and non-religious beliefs.

Once we have reflected on what to teach through curriculum design, we will then consider how to teach it through the six Making Every Lesson Count principles. These principles, while simple to follow, are not a plan for every lesson or series of lessons. However, we believe that high-quality RE teaching happens when we think about how, when and why we use these principles. They help us to focus on the important things that are happening in the classroom and dispense with the superfluous.

Each chapter explores a different principle in theory as well as in practice. This is significant. Sometimes teachers try things in their classrooms because they have seen someone else do them or because they have been told to do them. However, they do not always understand why they are doing them. Dylan Wiliam argues that asking teachers to practise their craft without explaining the theory is like ‘treating each teacher as a kind of “intellectual navvy” who is told 11where to dig, but not why’.9 By outlining the theoretical framework we can understand why we are doing what we are doing in the classroom and, most notably, why some things have a higher chance of success than others.

However, we are pragmatists and recognise that not everything works for everyone. Our classrooms are incredibly diverse, so while some strategies will work immediately, you may need to practise others or even ditch them. It is up to you to decide what you think will be the best approaches for your context. We also know that our small book cannot cover everything, but working with the techniques in this book, adapting and refining them, will undoubtedly improve your classroom teaching.

At the heart of every good RE lesson is challenge. We are fortunate that our subject covers some of the most challenging material that has ever been thought. At GCSE, the concepts of transubstantiation, the Trinity, predestination and salvation are all complex. At A level, the philosophies of Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant and Wittgenstein afford incredible cognitive challenge. However, we are also able to provide challenge throughout our subject because we are constantly examining otherness – taking students out of their comfort zones to consider the views, opinions and beliefs of others. In their 2014 report, the Commission on Religious Education maintain that the study of different world views provides access to and ‘unlocks knowledge and understanding of important aspects of our cultural and intellectual life’.10 We should challenge our students to think way beyond their own lives, and how we plan for that through the curriculum is central to student enjoyment and outcomes.

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13Explanation and questioning are inextricably linked and crucial to great RE teaching. The subject is full of stories, analogy and imagery, and skilful RE teachers have the art of opening up that unknown world to their students. They make the abstract concepts in religion and the beliefs of others relatable by providing carefully structured explanations which help students to develop their understanding. When coupled with great questioning, teachers can get students to think hard about these ideas and formulate their own, well-informed and reasoned arguments.

Through modelling and practice we can help students to pull together these complex concepts into their own schema. By modelling our thinking and practice, we can train them to think deeply and critically about what they are learning. Central to this idea is developing domain-specific metacognition in our students by helping them to plan, evaluate and monitor their own progress. Learning is a complex and time-consuming process, so we need to allow students to practise in various ways if we want learning to stick for the long term.

Feedback is also essential. While we know that feedback is very effective in helping student progress, we also know that there are huge discrepancies in its effectiveness – for example, Avraham Kluger and Angelo DeNisi discovered that two in every five pieces of feedback have a negative effect on progress.11 We will discuss what good feedback is and how you can make feedback effective in the classroom. The practical strategies stem from the research in these areas to provide a framework to apply what we know about learning and student achievement.

As fans of the original Making Every Lesson Count book, we know that the principles work in all classrooms. We are really excited about Making Every RE Lesson Count, which 14gives us the opportunity to apply the six principles to our own subject. Shaun Allison and Andy Tharby wrote the original book in 2015, and since then there have been huge developments in how research is used in education, with teachers being far more evidence informed. This book takes the most recent theory and places it at the heart of classroom practice. It can be read from cover to cover or it can be picked up and dipped into. However, we would caution against trying to do everything at once: evolution is better than revolution, and little differences in the classroom can make a big difference over time.

Religious education is in a period of transformation – as well as recognising its disciplinary nature, a potential name change, national entitlement and legal changes are all being considered.12 We hope that our book will be part of wider discussions about the subject and its curriculum. We are inviting you to join with us in that transformation, because as Richard Kueh puts it, ‘any ambitions for a collective movement towards subject excellence and meaningful change must work from the basis of active teacher agency’.13 We, the teachers in the classroom, are at the forefront of that change.

Let’s go!

1 Neil MacGregor, Living with the Gods: On Beliefs and Peoples (London: Penguin Random House, 2018), p. vii.

2 National Association of Teachers of Religious Education, Number of Schools Flouting Religious Education Laws Rises [press release] (27 September 2019). Available at: https://www.natre.org.uk/news/latest-news/number-of-schools-flouting-religious-education-laws-rises.

3 Robert Coe, Cesare Aloisi, Steve Higgins and Lee Elliot Major, What Makes Great Teaching? Review of the Underpinning Research (London: Sutton Trust, 2014), p. 2. Available at: https://www.suttontrust.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/What-makes-great-teaching-FINAL-4.11.14-1.pdf.

4 Shaun Allison and Andy Tharby, Making Every Lesson Count: Six Principles to Support Great Teaching and Learning (Carmarthen: Crown House Publishing, 2015).

5 Michael Gove, Foreword. In Religious Education Council of England and Wales, A Curriculum Framework for Religious Education in England (October 2013), p. 5. Available at: https://www.religiouseducationcouncil.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/RE_Review_Summary.pdf.

6 Social sciences can be further divided into several disciplines including, but not limited to, anthropology, archaeology, economics, law, linguistics, politics, psychology and sociology. Richard Kueh suggests a fourth discipline called historical-critical: see Richard Kueh, Disciplinary Hearing: Making the Case for the Disciplinary in Religion and Worldviews. In Mark Chater, Reforming Religious Education: Power and Knowledge in a Worldviews Curriculum (Woodbridge: John Catt Educational, 2020), pp. 131–147 at p. 142. See also Gillian Georgiou and Kathryn Wright, Disciplinarity, Religion and Worldviews: Making the Case for Theology, Philosophy and Human/Social Sciences. In Chater, Reforming Religious Education, p. 149.

7 This self-evaluation tool aims to help RE teachers and subject leaders assess how well balanced and suitable their RE curriculum is for all contexts: see Jane Chipperton, Gillian Georgiou, Olivia Seymour and Kathryn Wright, Self-Evaluation/Audit Questions (Secondary). Church of England Education Office (March 2018). Available at: https://dioceseofyork.org.uk/uploads/attachment/4000/self-evaluation-audit-secondary-sept-18.pdf.

8 Rebekah J. Atkins, Teaching the Language Not the Phrasebook, Psychagogia (4 June 2020). Available at: https://psychagogia.org/teaching-the-language-not-the-phrasebook.

9 Dylan Wiliam, Teaching: Not a Research Based Profession, TES (30 May 2019). Available at: https://www.tes.com/news/dylan-wiliam-teaching-not-research-based-profession. The term ‘intellectual navvy’ is from Lawrence Stenhouse, Research As a Basis for Teaching: Readings from the Work of Lawrence Stenhouse, ed. Jean Rudduck and David Hopkins (London: Heinemann, 1985), p. 5.

10 Commission on Religious Education, Religion and Worldviews: The Way Forward. A National Plan for RE: Final Report (September 2018), p. 27. Available at: https://www.commissiononre.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Final-Report-of-the-Commission-on-RE.pdf.

11 Avraham N. Kluger and Angelo S. DeNisi, The Effects of Feedback Interventions on Performance: A Historical Review, a Meta-Analysis, and a Preliminary Feedback Intervention Theory, Psychological Bulletin 119(2) (1996): 254–284.

12 Commission on Religious Education, Religion and Worldviews.

13 Richard Kueh, Towards Subject Leadership in Religion and Worldviews: A Plea for Subject Plenipotentiaries. In Mark Chater, Reforming Religious Education: Power and Knowledge in a Worldviews Curriculum