On reflection

For generations, particular people – for a variety of reasons – have kept notebooks in which they write and record poems, thoughts, proverbs and sayings etc. Anything, in fact, that takes their fancy. Some of these...

For generations, particular people – for a variety of reasons – have kept notebooks in which they write and record poems, thoughts, proverbs and sayings, etc. Anything, in fact, that takes their fancy. Some of...

In the first of a new occasional series of REflections, our previous and much-loved editor, Bill Gent, recounts, in a way that only he can, a memorable day at an ancient Cambridge college. I recently attended a day-long...

Dear Sir,I hear that many schools are now teaching Celeb-RE-ty instead of the usual RE lessons. In the place of tired old favourites such as Gandhi, Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King, the RE teacher is now using pupil...

The scene: as a local authority education adviser, being invited to a girls’ grammar school in order to assist at the interview for the head of sixth form.

For this edition we have Ben Wood to thank for these honest and humble reflections on his role as a successful head of RE and as Chair of NATRE. Many of you will have heard or seen Ben representing our subject when...

In our story section this term you will find two parables to use with your learners in different ways. Spot the connection to the theme of ‘The beginning and the end’. The parable of the twinsTwo twins got the same...

So many of us in RE draw inspiration from the trail-blazers in our subje

A sideways look at any phenomenon is always illuminating. Take judo and RE, for example… I am not aware whether anyone has brought RE and judo together before. My simple hope, therefore, is that this original article...

A new year appeal – or reminder – to those who work in RE, in school departments or elsewhere. It’s scary just how close these two words appear to each other in the dictionary: ‘Relic – an object of interest...

Dear Editor The gloom of 2016, with depressing world events, the deaths of celebrities and final pronouncements of Sir Michael Wilshaw, has hit RE teachers hard. With the new exam syllabus specifications, stressed RE...

We hear a lot nowadays about the importance of teaching being based on accessible research; indeed this is precisely what Professional REflection aims to do. Many readers may remember that in Autumn 2017 we published...

We hear a lot about research-informed teaching. However, as James Robson points out here, in reality teachers have little opportunity – for the reasons he so clearly points out – to engage with research, although...

We often hear about the need for a healthy work–life balance. There was even a case recently when a teacher who had decided to leave the profession claimed that teaching was not conducive to family life! Andy Lewis is...

I’ve always hated the term ‘cross-curricular’ – it seems to water down subject expertise and knowledge in favour of generic skills or themes. As with many things in education, a well-meaning idea (I can’t...

How and why a teacher might make use of contemporary popular culture, or popular items that could be classed as a craze, is always potentially controversial. Here Neil McKain satirises the potential use of them as...

The perfect stormAre things looking up for RE? If 2010–13 were the years of the perfect storm, can we detect signs of a coming calm? The litany of disasters from the last four years is familiar enough to many of us, so...