This article explores the mixed fortunes of historical inquiry as a method in educational studies and exposes evidence for the neglect of this method in religious education research in particular. It argues that historical inquiry, as a counterpart to other research methods, can add depth and range to our understanding of education, including religious education, and can illuminate important longer‐term, broader and philosophical issues. The article also argues that many historical voices have remained silent in the existing historiography of religious education because such historiography is too generalised and too biased towards the development of national policy and curriculum and pedagogical theory. To address this limitation in educational research, this article promotes rigorous historical studies that are more substantially grounded in the appropriate historiographical literature and utilise a wide range of original primary sources. Finally, the article explores a specific example of the way in which a historical approach may be fruitfully applied to a particular contemporary debate concerning the nature and purpose of religious education.

The necessity of historical inquiry in educational research: the case of religious education

Alongside community-based education, a principal agency which has contributed to defining multi-faith identities in England and Wales over the past five decades has been the subject of religious ed...

The religious–secular interface and representations of Islam in phenomenological religious education

The importance of key legislation in framing religious education in England is widely assumed, and indeed some argue that these Acts – of 1870, 1944 and 1988 – demarcate pedagogical phases, or para...

The meaning of religious education in English legislation from 1800 to 2020

In this editorial, we discuss the past, present and future of research and scholarship on the relationship between religious education, law and the judiciary, through national, international and supranational perspectives. The past is explored through highlighting previously published articles in this journal over eight decades, illustrating some perennial issues and challenges, both in the UK and internationally; it thereby acts as a catalyst for the new scholarship and research in this special issue. The present is explored through a discussion of the papers of this special issue, which range from Colombia to Scotland and from national to international/supranational perspectives, exploring various issues related to religious education, law and the judiciary. We then present broad comments on the future of research and scholarship on the relationship between religious education, law and the judiciary.

National, international and supranational perspectives on religious education, law and the judiciary: past, present and future

This article reviews the development of religious education under the latent flexibility of the 1944 Act and considers briefly the relationship of this development to the aims of the Act and the ex...

W. J. H. Earl

Papers

The 1944 Education Act – Forty Years On