I have recently read Pedagogies of Religious Education (McCrimmons, 2000) by Dr. Michael Grimmitt. I would recommend it for anyone wanting to be up to date with current theoretical statements of what religious education is and how to teach it.
I was struck by how few of the 9 theorists featured attempt to state a theory of religious education. Most simply do not try. They admit to offering only a partial contribution to the project of religious education. Grimmitt admits as much himself:
‘there has been very little discussion between religious educators and researchers about the theoretical basis upon which pedagogies can and should be devised, developed and evaluated in RE. As evident from the contributions to this book, experienced researchers have difficulty in distinguishing between the pedagogical principles underlying their project and the pedagogical strategies implementing them, even when they have been asked to do so. Indeed, the case of some contributions, it is far from easy to identify either principles or strategies from their descriptions of what the project sought to do and how it did it!….without a common basis for thinking about pedagogies of RE how can the all important task of comparing and contrasting their procedures and proposals be understood, let alone evaluated?’ p. 21.
Is this commendable honesty on the part of our experts or does it indicate a problem? The following do not offer a theory of religious education into which their scheme fits: Professor Robert Jackson, Dr. Trevor Cooling, Professor John Hull, Dr Clive Erricker, Dr. David Hay. Dr. Andrew Wright has the beginnings of a theory but has not worked out the details yet. Jackson’s work starts from accepting that RE is about studying religions but offers no reason why or way of determining which religions to teach. Dr. Cooling writes that it is vital to be able to state what the central concepts of religious education are but fails to say what they are. I asked him about this and his answer was that each religion provides its own central concepts; this does not give us any help in understanding the concepts of religious education. Professor Hull’s chapter is on the Gift Approach and it is stated to be partial. Dr. Erricker’s work does have a theory but it does not give much help to syllabus constructors since it is all down to the wishes of the children. Dr. David Hay’s work (in New Methods in RE Teaching at least) is said to be only part of what children will learn in RE.
Alan Brown’s contribution (the Chichester Project for teaching Christianity) does have a theory of RE; RE is said to be about awakening the religious sensibility in pupils. But exactly what this sensibility is and what it might mean to possess one is not stated. It also requires to be supplemented by work in other religions. Dr. Michael Grimmitt and the Westhill Project are the only ones to offer a fully developed theory of RE. That of Westhill is highly complex and has not really taken off in any big way. It looks like three theories rolled into one.
What is the reason for the difficulty experienced by these experts? One must have some sympathy with them because not even the great Ninian Smart was able to devise a satisfactory theory of religious education based on a clear definition of religion. The best he and others of professorial standing could do was to produce a ‘Groundplan’ for the study of religion, which was a set of suggestions of areas to be covered and lacked a statement of concepts, attitudes and skills.
Does it matter? It certainly matters if you want to have a coherent syllabus that can give an account of itself that will stand up as a whole. The fact is that the only one on offer is that of Westhill which to my mind is impossibly convoluted. I spent some time this afternoon looking through secondary syllabuses available on the web. Carefully detailed aims are thin on the ground but what I did find were unconnected lists of a huge variety of topics that give little sense of continuity. Is this what RE has become? Learning unconnected facts about religions? I believe the problem stems from the fact that there is no such thing as religion; the only satisfactory theory of religious education that will cohere is one that is based on learning a particular religion or worldview.
