On reflection

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...