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Faith in the Nexus Seminar: Spiritual Leadership of Church Primary School Headteachers, led by Ursula Eisl (NICER intern) in conversation with Dr Ann Casson

Faith in the Nexus Seminar: Spiritual Leadership of Church Primary School Headteachers, led by Ursula Eisl (NICER intern) in conversation with Dr Ann Casson. 

Date presented: July 7th 2021

This Faith in the Nexus seminar explores the role that headteachers play in shaping a church school culture that allows for spiritual growth in children and facilitates children’s exploration of faith in the home. Ursula Eisl shares her findings from an analysis of the head teachers use of language to portray their school’s role in facilitating the children’s exploration of faith. How such language is framed and communicated is vital for church school leaders. The data reveals considerable variation in the language that church school headteachers employ to express their vision for a school culture that fosters growth and helps promote a community of inclusivity.

Ann Pittaway

Research and Development Lead at the National Institute for Christian Education Research (NICER), Canterbury Christ Church University.

“It’s not something I would have considered”: Primary Trainee Teachers’ Perspectives on Science Religion Encounters in the Primary Classroom

“It’s not something I would have considered”:

Primary Trainee Teachers’ Perspectives on Science Religion Encounters in the Primary Classroom

Caroline Thomas Senior Lecturer in Education, Canterbury Christ Church University caroline.thomas@canterbury.ac.uk

The Beginner Teacher in the Science Religion Encounter RESEARCH TEAM: Professor Robert A. Bowie, Dr Sabina Hulbert, Professor Lynn Revell, Dr John-Paul Riordan, Caroline Thomas, Dr Mary Woolley.

Faith in the Nexus Animation for Parents.

Our animation is ready and has a guide, Exploring Faith in the Nexus to accompany it. 

The animation recognises that all children have a spiritual life that drives them to seek meaning and purpose in life. Often in this search, children turn to their parents with big questions about things such as the origin of life, the existence of God, and life after death.  

We acknowledge that being confronted with such questions can be daunting for parents and can leave them feeling inadequate to offer a response. Thus, our main message through the animation is one of reassurance and encouragement. 

Parents are in a unique position to stand alongside their child and explore with them. To just “be” with your child, to share the journey of discovery and curiosity with them is powerful and offers an experience that will encourage your child to be spiritually curious, setting the foundations for them to grow stronger in their spiritual life.  

You can find the animation on our website  https://nicer.org.uk/faith-in-the-nexus/the-nexus-toolkit 

Let’s Talk About Death: A Faith in the Nexus Seminar

Death is inevitable, but is often hidden away, talked about in whispers. Finding the language to talk with children about death is challenging, whether in the home or in school environment.  It’s often easier to assume that children are not ready nor interested in learning about death, than to proactively prepare oneself to explore the issue together. In this seminar discussion Dr Sabina Hulbert presents empirical evidence supporting the claim that primary school children are indeed expecting parents and carers to engage in these conversations when they return home from school. It was a first-class event bringing together diocesan directors of education, church leaders of children’s ministry and academics interested in the research area of children’s spirituality. 

Ann Pittaway

Research and Development Lead at National Institute for Christian Education Research (NICER), Canterbury Christ Church University

What is your view of the world? What makes you who you are?

Text from the Theos website:

This new animated film by Emily Downe, created in partnership with Culham St Gabriel’s Trust and Canterbury Christ Church University, unpacks the idea of worldviews and invites the viewer to consider how their own unique view of the world might co–exist with other, sometimes quite different, vantage points held by those around them. 

The film was inspired by our recent report Worldviews in Religious Education, which interprets and develops the idea of “worldview” and explores its implications for the future of RE in the UK.  

More widely, the film brings a much–needed reflection on religious literacy in the UK and reminds us that in an increasingly pluralistic society, there is no neutral perspective and everyone sees the world through a certain lens. 

It is our hope that the film will be a powerful tool for classroom learning, transforming a complicated concept into an accessible and personal format, stimulating conversation and encouraging pupils to think through their own worldview and how this impacts their lives. 

Who are the Occasional Belongers?

This recent seminar led by Dr Ann Casson draws upon some key findings from the Faith in the Nexus report that considers the diversity of expression and understanding associated with a sense of belonging and connection. The main Nexus report found that where a strong, active relationship between church and school was perceived, then there was more evidence of faith-related activities at home. In this seminar, Dr Ann Casson considers:

  • The different ways in which people belong to church.
  • The value individuals place on this connection with church.
  • Different in kind, not strength of belonging.
  • The importance of recognising where people are and acknowledging that perhaps for many that is where they want to stay.

After world religions: a conversation with Dr David Lewin

I am really pleased to be able to publish this special Advent conversation with Dr David Lewin of Strathclyde university. I had been wanting to talk to David for a while, ever since hearing a paper he gave at a symposium on reduction and the curriculum. More recently he got in touch about a project he is working on looking at religious education in schools might learn from the movement away from the world religions paradigm of teaching in higher education. That might come as a bit of a shock for RE teachers where World Religions has tended to be seen as a more progressive approach than other approaches but perhaps Lewin is revealing that the school subject has more to learn from academic developments and Lewin’s own insights are interesting. In this video we touch on this issue and also a number of other related topics.

David’s related publications:

Lewin, D. (2020) “Religion, Reductionism and Pedagogical Reduction”. In Biesta and Hannam (eds.) Religion and Education. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill | Sense. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004446397…

Lewin, D. (2020) Reimagining the RE/RS Curriculum, in The BASR Bulletin, the British Association for the Study of Religions. Available at: https://basr.ac.uk/2020/11/18/basr-bu…

Lewin, D. (2020) Between horror and boredom: fairy tales and moral education, Ethics and Education, 15:2, 213-231, DOI: 10.1080/17449642.2020.1731107

Lewin, D. (2018) Toward a Theory of Pedagogical Reduction: Selection, Simplification, and Generalization in an Age of Critical Education. Educational Theory, 68: 495-512. https://doi.org/10.1111/edth.12326

Cox questions Bowie

Dawn Cox, Subject leader for RS in a secondary school in Essex and familiar contributor online with her highly regarded blog, has interviewed me on a Teams chat. She asks me great questions about hermeneutics, disciplinarity and texts in the classroom and I share some of my thinking and we exchange ideas. It was a great chance to explore some issues which seem to be at the forefront of our subject conversation.

Dr Bob Bowie, Professor of Religion and Worldviews

Texts and Teachers and the Worldview project in RE

This is a prerecorded version of the first part of the paper given at the Online AULRE / REOnline event, Thursday 14th May and Friday 15th May 2020. It explores the connection between sacred text scholarship, hermeneutics and worldview education, in the context of the English RE debate.