Developing student teachers’ skill and understandings of dialogue in primary Religious Education
Linda Whitworth, Senior Lecturer in Primary Teacher Education Citizenship & Religious Education, Middlesex University London
Abstract:
This paper
presents a module taught with Year 2 Primary Initial Teacher Education
students. The students’ cultural and religious diversity, identified
through ethnic identity in the student cohort for this programme, is
considerably higher than the national average (recorded at 44% in 2016,
compared with a national average of 10% of BAME students in Primary ITE
in 2015). As students are placed in North London for teaching practice,
the diversity of London as a ‘super-city’ (Vertovec, 2007) also enables
students to engage with pupils from a wide variety of backgrounds in
their preparation as student teachers.
Session summary:
This paper presents a module taught with Year 2 Primary Initial Teacher Education students. The students’ cultural and religious diversity, identified through ethnic identity in the student cohort for this programme, is considerably higher than the national average (recorded at 44% in 2016, compared with a national average of 10% of BAME students in Primary ITE in 2015). As students are placed in N. London for teaching practice, the diversity of London as a ‘super-city’ (Vertovec, 2007) also enables students to engage with pupils from a wide variety of backgrounds in their preparation as student teachers.
The module teaches Religious Education, and acknowledges, through using both the diversity of the student group and the diversity of pupils in partnership schools, the importance of teachers’ own positionality and professional skills in teaching RE. In this context diversity includes a range of different religions and non-religious worldviews and practices.
Students’ concerns about teaching RE revolve around lack of subject knowledge and fear of causing offence to both pupils and parents (APPG, 2013). To encourage the students’ experience of dialogue in RE, students engage in a series of activities to develop their understanding of sensitivities in religious dialogue, drawing on the work of Ipgrave (2005). For example, in pairs they create, inquire and reflect on the process of questioning someone from a different religion or world-view than their own, thereby building up their knowledge and skills in asking and responding to questions which acknowledge complex diversities of understanding.
Engagement with the Interpretive Approach to Religious Education (Jackson, 1997) enables students to better acknowledge diversity within religious practice, as well as between different religious traditions. Confidence is built through sharing their own knowledge of a wide range of different beliefs, cultures and practices and engaging each other in meaningful dialogue. This leads to a development of their professional phronesis, (Kinsella, 2012) as it both enables them to extend their own understanding and encourages them to recognise their moment-to-moment decisions of how to best support pupils in their individual identities.
