Lynn Revell

Children's Responses to Character Education

This is an investigation of Character Education in American public schools in the Chicago area. The research involved interviewing almost 700 children from a wide variety of schools and ages. The children were asked about their views on citizenship, Americanness and identity. They were also asked explicitly what they thought of Character Education. The results indicate that, despite a similar programme of education, teaching attitudes and teaching materials, the most marked difference between the childrens responses correlated strongly with the type of school, magnet or non-magnet, they were attending. This indicates that the social and political background, which determines their school, does have an impact on the way that an educational programme is received and understood, at least in the terms of how children articulate their ideas, if not in terms of how these programmes affect their behaviour.

Performativity, Faith and Professional Identity: Student Religious Education Teachers and The Ambiguities of Objectivity

Abstract This paper considers the way in which Christian Religious Education (RE) teachers articulate the difficulties and challenges they experience both in school and with their peers as they navigate their way through their Initial Teacher Education. The paper offers a unique exploration of the relationship between elements of the three discourses of faith identity, emerging professional identity and the requirements of a performative teacher training context. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with 184 student RE teachers across three universities. It became clear that all students interpreted the Standards and policy guidelines ambiguously, as being value-laden or value-free. The idea of the ‘good teacher’ as someone who was, by very definition, neutral and objective immediately made the faith position of students problematic. This is a key point in relation to the notion of performativity and education and the disproportionate impact it made on Christian students. It appeared as though many Christian students were concerned to stress that although their faith was personally important for them it was not something that contributed to their understanding of a ‘good teacher’.

Religious education, conflict and diversity: an exploration of young children’s perceptions of Islam

This article explores the way pupils in English primary school perceive Islam through discussion of Islam in the media. The research suggests that pupils are aware of Islam as a world religion and of many of the images and popular discourses associated with Islam. The research also suggests that while a minority of pupils expressed explicit racist or prejudiced views about Islam many pupils appeared to perceive Islam and Muslims as ‘foreign’ and ‘alien’. The article questions the effectiveness of an approach to teaching Islam that does not include pupil’s negative preconceptions of religion and which focuses on presenting an idealised or monolithic version of Islam.

Student primary teachers and their experience of religious education in schools

This article is based on research into the way student primary teachers experience religious education when they train in schools. The research findings suggest that the experience and quality of training in many schools is not adequate and that this experience undermines student confidence in relation to religious education. The author argues that despite the increased reliance on school as an arena for the training of teachers, in the case of religious education many student teachers do not have the opportunities to observe or teach religious education even where the school or student is keen to do so.

Post-secular trends: issues in education and faith

In the process of preparing an interdisciplinary conference at Canterbury the conference team identified the phrase post-secular. Initial searches suggested the phrase was not new though it was used in quite different ways. Despite its presence in different areas of the arts and social sciences it was and is largely absent from educational research. What of the term itself? Its use produces interesting and sometimes vigorous responses; Surely it is heretical to suggest that the secular project had ended or failed, or be ‘posted’ in any sense. Perhaps this reveals an unfamiliarity with research on the continued presence of religion in the world, and the exceptionality of secularizing western Europe. Post-secular may seem to be a Christian apologetic, or another way of describing plurality and diversity in society. Whether it is more than that is not yet clear. There might be a post-secular turn in the literature, but are we living in a post-secular age? That might depend on where we live. The presence of religion in many parts of the world might point to a pre-, rather than post-, secularity. Despite these uncertainties, the strong response to the conference call supported the initial idea of making space to encourage educational responses to ‘post-secular’, to reframe existing debates and to provide new understandings of them. The 2011 UK conference was not the first to treat ‘post-secular’. In 2009 the Exploring the Post-Secular conference at Yale University drew scholars of religion to address its possible meanings. However the Education in a Post-Secular Society Conference held at Canterbury Christ Church University on 29 January 2011 was the first conference in the UK to focus on education. The conference was supported by the Educational Research Directorate of the University, the British Educational Research Association and the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain. It drew some 70 scholars from the UK and Northern Europe with wide-ranging papers looking at issues of curriculum, education philosophy, and faith education institutions, at school and university levels. The phrase ‘post-secular’ while not common, is found in quite diverse areas of research. It is commonly joined to -age, -turn and -society. Roberts (2008) writes of poets in the Post-Secular Age being challenged when exploring faith and experience in a secularized language and culture. He recalls the comment of Anglo-Welsh poet and artist David Jones 50 years ago that the poet could no longer use the word ‘wood’ in a poem and assume that readers would make an intended reference to the cross. For Roberts, post-secular is the struggle to make sense of ideas that were once called religious in a post-Christian environment. Here we see a challenge that the transition and decline of religiosity in Western Europe has on the possibility of authorial universalism in cultural forms of expression. Elsewhere, post-secular is used to refer to religious continuity and used in nonWestern and non-Christian religious contexts. Professor Nezer AlSayyad, Professor Journal of Beliefs & Values Vol. 33, No. 2, August 2012, 139–141

Religious Education in England

This article argues that RE in England is shaped by a number of factors that promote a rigid definition of religiosity and which discourage engagement with new, unconventional or non-mainstream forms of religion. The article identifies the close relationship between RE and the national church and other faith communities as well as a reliance on local agreed syllabi as key characteristics in the inability of RE in England to fully engage with contemporary forms of religion. It ends by calling for a revaluation of the basis for RE and a greater engagement with other disciplines involved in the study of religion.

citizenship and the assessment of trainees

This article is concerned with assessment of those in England training to become citizenship secondary teachers. We sketch the background to initial teacher education for secondary citizenship education, outline the methods of an empirical project on assessment of trainees and draw attention to emerging issues. We describe practice in selection, assessment of written assignments and assessment of teaching. We discuss issues relating to the provision of explicit experience of citizenship education for trainees in schools, the attempts that are being made to develop integrated and progressive approaches to assessment and the nature of the balance between specific and generic matters in the assessment of citizenship in ITT. Assessment of citizenship trainees is undertaken without serious controversy, is reliant on generic ITT practices and somewhat distinct from what one might expect given the expansive rhetoric about citizenship education.

The return of the Sacred

‘I remember telling a man beside me at supper that I used herbal remedies for my eczema,’ recalls film producer Catherine Meader. ‘He was aghast. He actually called it witchcraft. Now at the same dinner parties, half the guests are into T’ai Chi or meditation, the other half want the address of my herbalist’1

Counter Terrorism Law and Education: Student Teachers’ Induction into UK Prevent Duty Through the Lens of Bauman’s Liquid Modernity

This chapter explores the way student teachers understand their professional role in relation to the UK’s counter terrorism legislation as it relates to schools. Data were collected from one hundred and fifty students based on their experiences in schools and analysed using Bauman’s notion of liquid modernity as a theoretical frame. We argue that despite a normative attachment to notions of professional objectivity and political detachment in the classroom, most student teachers interpreted their new duties as legitimate and were uncritical of legislation and policy that expects them to play an overtly political role in schools.

Fundamental British values in education: radicalisation, national identity and Britishness

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.