Teaching Religious Education: Researchers in the Classroom (original) (raw)

This book investigates a selection of important topics in contemporary Religious Education (RE), which are also relevant to teachers in UK. Most of its content derives from a series of six seminars held by RE professionals and researchers in different places in the UK during 2005 and 2006. The aim of this series was to exchange ideas on different aspects of RE education. The themes of these seminars are neatly and professionally put together in this book by Professor Julian Stern, Dean of the Faculty of Education & Theology at York St John University. The main topics of the book are: RE and the sacred text, dialogue and its significance, inclusion, pedagogy, human rights and values, and ethnography. The central focus of the book is how to help improve Religious Education in school classrooms, exploring some educational issues in teaching and learning RE in schools. Therefore, the author attempts to provide RE teachers a practical way to make them more involved and active in RE as well as to improve the quality of their teaching in RE. The base of this practical way is the use of research by teachers and their pupils as an educational method to gain proper knowledge and understanding of religion and communities. For this purpose, there are around 21 exercises (ways) provided in the book to guide teachers to how to use research in classrooms. According to some surveys, the majority of students find RE lessons boring. See, for example, the Cornwall Religious Education Survey 2004, conducted by Dr Penny Jennings. However, applying the practical advice and approach offered in Stern's work will most likely help RE to be a more interesting and challenging subject to both teachers and students. It is supposed to stimulate them to acquire more research and thinking skills, and to benefit from recent research in the field. There are some overarching issues related to teaching RE which the book handles effectively. In Chapter 2 (Investigating Text and Context), for example, Stern identifies certain issues regarding approaching a sacred text (e.g., the Bible and the Qur'an) in classroom. He shows with examples (pp. 12, 15716, 17718) how teachers and pupils can handle any sacred text comfortably and how to encourage pupils to use their creative skills to come to understand the text. The exercises contain a helpful approach to deal with the subject especially for those who are sensitive when approaching scriptures in classrooms. One of the distinctive features of this book which deserves credit is the existence of a separate section at the end of the book which highlights the significance of the value of sincerity in teaching and researching RE. This point, as the author underlines, is ''.. . rarely addressed in the literature'' (p. 105). Sincerity, to him, is searching for the truth, and by that it becomes a single concept that can illuminate