Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences by George E. Marcus; Michael M. J. Fischer

Review of Hearing the Whole Story: The Politics of Plot in Mark’s Gospel. By Richard A. Horsley. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2001). In the Journal for the Study of the New Testament 85 (2002): 126–127.

Hearing the Whole Story : The Politics of Plot in Mark’s Gospel

Worldview: A Multidisciplinary Report

The phrase ‘religious literacy’ whilst contested, is increasingly used both within Religious Education and more broadly in a range of professions and settings to describe a level of knowledge and u...

Towards a religiously literate curriculum – religion and worldview literacy as an educational model

....................................................................................................................................................5 List of Articles ...........................................................................................................................................6 1: Introduction .........................................................................................................................................7 1.1 Background to this Study: Religious Education Today from religious instruction to a subject in crisis 1.2 A Note on Terminology 1.3 The Structure of this Thesis 2: Review of Relevant Research & Debates ......................................................................................18 2.1 Debates around the Aims & Purposes of Religious Education 2.1.1 Religious Education as Personal Development 2.1.2 The Instrumentalisation of Religious Education 2.2 Debates around the Content of Religious Education Issues of Representation 2.2.1 The Changing Religion & Worldview Landscape 2.2.2 Religious Diversity and Religious Education 3: Theoretical Perspectives ..................................................................................................................30 3.1 Religious Literacy 3.2 Hermeneutical Approaches 4: Research Design & Methodology ...................................................................................................37 4.1 Data Collection 4.1.1 Sampling 4.1.2 Methods 4.1.3 Ethics 4.2 Analytical Approach 4.2.1 Thematic Analysis 4.2.2 The Interpretivist Framework and Abductive Analysis 4.2.3 Overall Thesis as Hermeneutic Spiral 5: Summary of Articles .......................................................................................................................52 Article 1: Religious Literacy through Religious Education: The Future of Teaching and Learning about Religion and Belief Article 2: Values Underpinning Teachers’ Practice in Religious Education – A values typology for RE. Article 3: New Representations of Religion and Belief in Schools

Teaching and learning about religion and worldviews in english schools: Religion and worldview literacy

The ‘Identifying Principles and Big Ideas for Religious Education’ project was supported by the St Luke’s College Foundation (016J-086). The ‘RE-searchers: A critical dialogic approach to Religious Education in primary schools’ project was supported by the Culham St. Gabriel’s Trust and Hockerill Education Foundation.

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Religious Education, Big Ideas and the Study of Religion(s) and Worldview(s).

This article offers insights into the narrative of the Gerasene Demoniac (Luke 8:26–39) from grassroots interpreters in Owamboland, Namibia. The participants’ perspectives on the ‘Living Landscape’—contextualised against a background of Owambo ethnographic data—disrupt understandings of landscapes and spirits found in Western-centric professional biblical scholarship. This illustrates the potential of Contextual Bible Study (or variants thereof) both to bring forth original interpretive insights and to capitalise on particular cultural contexts as sites of expertise.

Legion in a ‘Living Landscape’: Contextual Bible Study as a Disruptive Tool (Luke 8:26–39 Interpreted in Owamboland, Namibia)

This article explores the position of ‘worldviews’ in Religious Education, using England as a particular case study to illustrate contemporary international debates about the future of Religious Education (or equivalent subjects). The final report of the Commission on Religious Education (CoRE 2018) – which recommended that the subject name in England be changed from ‘Religious Education’ to ‘Religion and Worldviews’ – provides a stimulus for a discussion about the future of the study of religion(s) and worldview(s) in schools. The article offers a review of, and reflections on, the worldviews issue as treated in academic literature relating to Religious Education, before noting the challenges that the incorporation of worldviews presents. The article goes on to suggest ways in which a ‘Big Ideas’ approach to the study of religion(s) and worldview(s) (Wiggins and McTighe 1998; Wintersgill 2017; Freathy and John 2019) might provide criteria by which worldviews are selected for curriculum content. Finally, the article discusses what the implications of these recommendations might be for ‘Religion and Worldviews’ teachers and teaching.

Working with ‘big ideas about’ the study of religion(s) and worldview(s) - Multi-disciplinary and multi-methodological RE: a handbook for teacher educators, teachers and teacher trainees

By Rob Freathy, Esther D. Reed, Anna Davis, Helen C. John and Anneke Schmidt What historical sources can we use to find out about Jesus? What do the gospel writers tell us? How do Muslim and Christian views about Jesus compare? What can we know about Jesus’ attitudes towards women? How might a visually impaired Christian respond to biblical stories in which Jesus heals the blind? Is Jesus the same for people across different contexts and cultures? What is the significance of Jesus for the lives of Christians today? How and why do artists represent Jesus in different situations using a variety of signs and symbols? All of these questions and more are addressed in this textbook for upper secondary school Religious Education.

Who is Jesus? Supplementary materials for Religious Education in the upper secondary school

Introduction: The research context Two key points are foundational to an appreciation of the nature, purpose and potential of the human sciences, of which the study of religion(s) and worldview(s) is a part. The first of these is that our ‘knowledge’ (if we can call it that at all) is constructed, not mined or uncovered. But what does it mean to say that knowledge in the human sciences is ‘constructed’? A helpful contrast can be drawn with the natural sciences, which might be perceived to rely on certain indisputable constants (forces, elements, and so on). In the human sciences, however, there is no canon of universally accepted, objective and discoverable ‘facts’ upon which our inquiries can rest. In other words, we are making knowledge, not finding facts that already exist. Given that we cannot create the ‘controlled conditions’ that scientists might use in their research, we must acknowledge that the context in which a study takes place will have profound effects on the outcome or outcomes. Our knowledge, then, is at least partly made/constructed by the contexts from which it comes.

Helen C. John

Papers

Religious Education, Big Ideas and the Study of Religion(s) and Worldview(s).

Legion in a ‘Living Landscape’: Contextual Bible Study as a Disruptive Tool (Luke 8:26–39 Interpreted in Owamboland, Namibia)

Working with ‘big ideas about’ the study of religion(s) and worldview(s) - Multi-disciplinary and multi-methodological RE: a handbook for teacher educators, teachers and teacher trainees

Who is Jesus? Supplementary materials for Religious Education in the upper secondary school

A case study in Biblical interpretation: knowledge, knower and knowing (part 2)