Lynn Revell

This handbook explores the important ideas, policies and practices in religious and moral education. It offers comprehensive coverage of the main issues and provides:concise explanation of the theoretical, policy and research developments suggested classroom strategies for teaching and learning suggestions for activities and questions to help examine the issues and encourage reflection further study including web links. Divided into three sections:Part one – Exploring the Subject – gives a well-rounded view of current pedagogical approaches to teaching religious education, the teaching of faith traditions and the teaching of new alternative spiritualities Part two – Spiritual, Moral and Global Citizenship Education – provides guidance and strategies for teachers’ spiritual and moral education, summarizing important developments in recent research and professional practicePart three – Enabling Learning – focuses on the learner and includes the latest research and policy initiatives on inclusion, English as an additional language, behaviour for learning, assessment and attainment, and a host of government initiatives relating to RE and SMSC. This is an essential handbook for teachers, coordinators and student-teachers of Religious Education in primary and secondary schools.

This handbook explores the important ideas, policies and practices in religious and moral education. It offers comprehensive coverage of the main issues and provides:concise explanation of the theoretical, policy and research developments suggested classroom strategies for teaching and learning suggestions for activities and questions to help examine the issues and encourage reflection further study including web links. Divided into three sections:Part one – Exploring the Subject – gives a well-rounded view of current pedagogical approaches to teaching religious education, the teaching of faith traditions and the teaching of new alternative spiritualities Part two – Spiritual, Moral and Global Citizenship Education – provides guidance and strategies for teachers’ spiritual and moral education, summarizing important developments in recent research and professional practicePart three – Enabling Learning – focuses on the learner and includes the latest research and policy initiatives on inclusion, English as an additional language, behaviour for learning, assessment and attainment, and a host of government initiatives relating to RE and SMSC. This is an essential handbook for teachers, coordinators and student-teachers of Religious Education in primary and secondary schools.

The notion of Britishness and national identity have rarely been examined with such intensity in education and society as they are today. Although the requirement to promote a sense of nationhood in schools is not a new one, the politicised nature of the values associated with Britishness and the security agenda in which schools now operate has intensified greatly in recent years. This timely book provides a critical analysis of the statutory requirements to promote Fundamental British Values in schools, universities and other childcare groups in the UK. It begins by charting the development of Britishness and British values in the post-war period and highlights how even in the recent past British values have been understood and executed in policy in relation to schools in very different ways. In the past Britishness and national identity was either assumed or conveyed through the employment of cultural forms; it is only now that Britishness in education, in the form of fundamental British values is articulated through explicitly political language. The book continues by examining the impact of fundamental British values on teacher professionalism. It will show how the legislation and policy that structures the way teachers (and other educators) must engage with fundamental British values works to reposition the status of teachers in the public sphere. Teacher’s work and relationship with the state is recast so that personal political and individual acts are now situated within the remit of state control and legislation. The concept of Liquid Professionalism is promoted as a form of teacher professionalism for these securitised times.

Church schools are booming, becoming increasingly popular with parents across the world. However, research shows that teachers face considerable challenges as they try to offer a distinctively Christian education within a church school context. This book is the account of a qualitative research project investigating the joys and difficulties experienced in English church school classrooms. The research team spent a year working alongside fourteen teachers from Catholic and Church of England secondary schools, introducing them to What If Learning, a pedagogical initiative designed by an international team of educationalists to support teachers in developing Christian approaches to teaching and learning. The highs and lows of the teachers’ experience are documented in this book and the lessons that emerge are explored in detail. The findings of the project are highly significant for all those involved with church school education and point towards valuable new ways of thinking about Christian faith and learning.