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“Encounters, engagement” “and experience: making RE real for 4–11s”

In this article by primary teacher and Learn, Teach, Lead RE hub leader Chris Selway is a summary of some key findings from a Farmington Scholarship into the use of trips and visitors in RE. It is particularly...

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RE as personal development in a digital age

As Editor I have openly expressed my desire to provide a platform for beginning teachers to get involved in research and writing for journals such as this. Below is a contribution from somebody who, at the time of...

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The Country of the Blind: knowledge, know and knowing (part 1)

Over the years there has been much debate about what students should study in RE, that is, what should be the content of the RE curriculum. Just as significant as the question about content is the question about how...

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Outstanding leadership for outstanding SMSC

For various reasons, teachers of RE often play a key role in thinking through and promoting the spiritual, moral, social and cultural (SMSC) dimensions of school life. This article, which focuses on the leadership...
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The future of Islamic education: a case for reform

Muslim communities are currently a focus of much general and political debate. Politically, there has been a tendency to respond to a fear of extremism through legal, security and intelligence measures. Abdullah Sahin is...
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What is meant by‘religious understanding’?

This is one of a series of articles in which a key term used in RE – in this case ‘religious understanding’ – is analysed, explored and explained. Introduction This article sets out to explore what might be meant...
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Shifting ground: why current debate about the future of RE matters to teachers … and to society

There is growing recognition that the situation in which RE finds itself today is a tangled and unhelpful web of different ideas, understandings and structures. Though this might feel like a ‘thousand miles’ from...
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What is meant by … ‘learning from religion’?

Though some key recent documents have dispensed with the distinction between learning ‘about’ and ‘from’ religion as a way of capturing the dynamic of RE, this image of RE has become embedded in the thinking...

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Religious literacy: contesting an idea and practice

The term ‘religious literacy’ is now much used, both in education and elsewhere. But what does it mean, both as an idea and in practice? Adam Dinham explores this in a new book – Religious Literacy in Policy and...

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How solitude will bring us all together

This evocative piece of writing is a powerful reminder ofhow theorising and practical application can combine tothe benefit of both. And what better setting can this be shown as in a school which can, in so many ways,...

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‘Learn/Teach/Lead RE’: a story of teachers’ successful subject leadership

The many educational changes in recent years have had a profound effect on RE in general and on support for RE in particular. Linda Rudge outlines how this led to the setting up of a multi-faceted support and training...

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Professor John Hull: practical theologian and educationist

To mark John Hull’s 80th birthday, we are grateful to Dennis Bates, a colleague and friend of John Hull, for producing an engaging and comprehensive account of the latter’s contribution to RE and beyond.

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A new settlement

Linda Woodhead explains why she and Charles Clarke felt that the time had come to define a new ‘settlement’ for the place and role of religion in English schools. Here, she summarises the contents of their pamphlet...
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‘Ordinary theology’ in the classroom: experience and belief in secondary religious education

Increasingly, as articles in this issue demonstrate, teachers and educators are researching aspects of RE and its impact on, as well as reception by, children and young people. This article suggests that carrying out a...
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A life trying to ‘make sense of religion’

Over the past decade, as national adviser for RE at Ofsted, Alan Brine’s name has loomed large in the RE firmament. Having now relinquished that role (but certainly not an involvement in RE), we were delighted when...
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Learning about children’s learning: One teacher’s journey

Gill Tewkesbury, who qualified in 2001 and has been an RE subject leader for most of the time since, became perplexed about how best to enable all children in her class to learn. Using a Farmington Fellowship to give her...
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The contribution of anthropology to our understanding of religion (and how RE and anthropology might be able to help each other out)

Current discussions around the recent Commission on RE report on religion and worldviews stress the need for school students to understand religion(s) from a number of perspectives. In this article, Dr Jack Hunter...

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A case study in biblical interpretation: knowledge, knower and knowing (part 2) Helen C. John and Rob Freathy

By way of illustration, in this article we focus on a cross-cultural research endeavour. This is a biblical studies project that generates encounters between British and Namibian cultures, Euro-American and African...

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Where next? RE after the Commission

It would be difficult to believe that anyone reading this is not thoroughly familiar with, or at least aware of, the report from the Commission on RE published in September 2018. After all the publicity and commenting...

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An affectionate tribute to Bill

As a student planning to become an RE teacher, my college tutor suggested I apply for a job in the London borough of Redbridge, solely because of the local authority’s RE adviser – a man named Bill Gent. What good...