Aug 16, 2013 - of Celtic football club (founded in 1887) and mostly Protestant supporters of Rangers football .... Philosophy and History of Skewed Reflection.
Religious Literacy in Teacher Education: An Initial Scottish Study School of Education University of the West of Scotland 8th Pan African Reading For All Conference University of Nairobi 12th-16th August 2013
Introduction • Literacy identified as one of the key areas in need of improvement in Scottish education (Scottish Government, 2009). • A key government report (Teaching Scotland’s Future (Donaldson, 2010) points out the lack of literacy among Scottish teachers. – Identifies primary teachers, in particular, as lacking in essential skills of literacy, numeracy, mathematics, science and foreign languages. – Report recommends, inter alia,: • Strengthening the teaching of literacy in teacher education. • Formal assessment of literacy skills as part of teacher eligibility.
• This paper is based on work in progress. • It discusses the following issues: – Religion as a form of multicultural literacy – Potential value of religious literacy for pre-service teachers in Religious Education (RE).
• It attempts to answer two questions: – Are pre-service Scottish teachers religiously literate? If not, what is the implication of this to the multicultural agenda in education? – How can pre-teachers in Scotland be better prepared for a multicultural Scotland through RE?
Scottish Context Scotland multicultural and diverse nation. Overall with a 2% ethnic minority. 2001 census (2011 census still being processed) Sikhs (0.13%) Muslims (o.84%) Jews (0.13%) Buddhists (0.13%) Hindus (0.11%) Christians (nominal)
Roman Catholic (15.88%) Church of Scotland (42.40%) Other Christian denominations (6.81%)
No religion (27.55%)
Religious Education • By law (since 1929) a compulsory school subject . – Officially made multi-faith in 1992. – Aim: recognition of religious ‘otherness’ in society
• 7+4+2 education system – By implication children have at least eleven years of compulsory RE.
• The hypothesis – Teacher trainees start their training with more than a basic level of religious literacy.
Multicultural Education • Since the 1990s Multicultural Education promoted in schools through a number of trajectories: – – – –
Citizenship Education Multi-faith RE Personal and Social Education Moral/Values Education
• Multicultural Education introduced to combat – Sectarianism – expressed historically as ‘rivalry’ between mostly Catholic supporters of Celtic football club (founded in 1887) and mostly Protestant supporters of Rangers football club (founded in 1873) – Prejudice, bigotry and racism
• Multicultural Education introduced to encourage: – Greater recognition of diversity. – Encourage integration of minorities in all spheres of life. – Help to breakdown the barriers of isolation, discrimination and disadvantage. – Inculcate the values of multiculturalism to wider society.
Conceptual Framework
• Religious literacy – from talk, text and writing • Knowing about, responding to and communicating religious beliefs and insights. • Involves understanding, analysing and interpreting: – Religious symbols. – Religious beliefs. – Religious practices. – Structures of different religious worldviews. – Responding critically and emphatically to the challenge of belief and commitment in contemporary world.
• Decline of literacy and growth of illiteracy in religion in the western world (Wright, 1993). • As in America, there is a lack of basic religious literacy in western ‘secularised’ societies (Prothero, 2008). • In his book (Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know and Doesn't), Professor Stephen Prothero bemoans the lack of basic religious literacy among Americans.
• Young people are on the whole religiously illiterate (see Baker 2009; Grant & Matemba 2013; Conroy et al. 2013; Conroy and Lundie 2013). • Young people do not have sufficient operational knowledge about religion (Gallagher 2009; Haynes 1987; Nord 1989). • The consequence being that many young people have poor Citizenship skills ( Carr 2007; Conroy and Davis 2008; Wright 1993). • Teacher education is failing to adequately prepare teachers to meet the instructional challenges of ethnically, racially, socially, and linguistically diverse students in the 21st century (Guy, et al, 2000).
The Study • This study came from a pragmatic problem to understand the level of religious literacy among my students undertaking a primary teaching qualification. • Rooted in my personal mission to help raise the level of religious literacy among these trainees. • Study conducted between October 2012 and February 2013 among primary school pre-service teachers at one Scotland’s seven universities offering teacher education. • Data was collected from: – Self-administered questionnaires (n67) based on a religious survey (17 item quiz on various religious issues). – Follow up focus group discussions (n10).
Findings Survey results - Christian - a compulsory religion in RE • Only 14.9% (n10) were able to state in the correct order the first five books of the Old Testament. • Only 38.8% (n26) could name the first four books of the New Testament. • 83.5% (n56) correctly knew that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. • 23.4% (n11) did not know whether the statement “God helps those who help themselves” was from the Bible or not. • Although 89.5% (n60) and 88% (n59) stated correctly that ‘do not lie’ and ‘do not steal’, respectively, are part of the Ten Commandments, no one was able to state all the Ten Commandments. • 10.4% (n7) did not know that Catholics are Christians. • Only 29.8% (n20) knew that Jesus was the founder of Christianity with other responses ranging from Mary, Moses, Samuel and as founders of Christianity.
Survey results - responses on other religions • 59.7% (n40) did not know the founder of Islam. – 19.4% (n13) stating erroneously that Allah is the religion’s founder.
• On holy books, although some students knew the holy books of Christianity (49.2% or n33), Judaism (26.8% or n18) or Islam (38.8% or n26), no one was able to name the Sikh, Buddhist and Hindu holy books. • One other issue worth noting in the survey was the appalling level of basic religious literacy. – Misspellings of common religious terms were endemic, for example: • ‘Sinigog’ for Synagogue (in Judaism) • ‘karrah’ for Koran (Islam) • honica’ for Hanukkah (in Judaism) and so on.
Focus group discussions • In many schools teachers only emphasise philosophical issues in RE addressing ontological issues such as ‘does God exist’ or ‘is there life after death’ and not on the study of religions per se. • Many schools do not have a robust programme of RE. – During Religious Education period teachers are happy to allow them do other things such as homework for other subjects or quiet reading of their favourite books rather than do RE.
• Many students have no personal interest whatsoever in religion and religious subjects. – Frankly they find RE ‘boring’ and ‘unnecessary’.
Discussion and Conclusion • The findings confirm what previous study have reported regarding young people’s lack of religious literacy. • For Scotland, the implication is that teacher education is producing practitioners who lack requisite knowledge in religion to: – Teach RE effectively - a compulsory school subject by law. – Thus, frustrating the government’s Multicultural Education programme across the curriculum.
• There is need to have a robust RE programme than is currently being given in Scottish teacher education. – At the moment only 24 hours is allotted to RE in the entire four year BED programme for primary teachers at the university under study.
• Besides calling for more curriculum time for RE in teacher education, I suggest the introduction of a workbook which teachers should be complete as part of continuous assessment in this curriculum area.
Selected Bibliography •
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Baker, C. (2009). "Blurred encounters? Religious literacy, spiritual capital and language", in A. Dinham, R. Furbey, and V. Lawndes, (eds.), Faith in the Public Realm: Controversies, Policies and Practices. Britstol: The University Press, pp. 105-122. Carr, D. (2007). "Religious Education, Religious Literacy and Common Schooling: a Philosophy and History of Skewed Reflection." Journal of Philosophy of Education, 41(4), 659-673. Conroy, J., Baumfield, V., Barnes, P., Bourque, N., Davis, R., Gallagher, T., Lowden, K., Lundie, D., and Wenell, K. (2013). Does Religious Education Work? A Multi-dimensional Investigation, London: Continuum Conroy, J., and Davis, R. (2008). "Citizenship, education and the claims of religious literacy", in M. Peters, A. Britton, and H. Blee, (eds.), Global Citizenship Education: Philosophy, Theory and Pedagogy. Rotterdam & Taipei: Sense Publishers, pp. 187-203. Conroy, J., and Lundie, D. (2013). "Does religious education work? On nested identities ", in L. Woodhead, (ed.), New Methods in the Study of Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Donaldson, G. (2010). Teaching Scotland’s future: Report of a review of teacher education in Scotland. Scottish Government, Edinburgh. Gallagher, E. V. (2009). "Teaching for Religious Literacy." Teaching Theology & Religion, 12(3), 208-221. Haynes, C. (1987). "Religious Literacy in the Social Studies." Social Education, 51(7), 488490. Lynne Grant & Yonah H. Matemba (2013): Problems of assessment in religious and moral education: the Scottish case, Journal of Beliefs & Values: Studies in Religion & Education, 34:1, 1-13
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Matemba, Y. (2011). Religious Education in Comparative Perspectives: Curriculum Developments in the Secondary School Sectors of Scotland and Malawi, 1970-2010, Saarbrucken: Lambert Academic Publishing GmbH & Co. KG. Nixon, G. (2009). "Postmodernity, secularism and democratic approaches to education; the impact on Religius Education in Scotland: An analysis of the 'philosophication' of Scottish Religious Education in light of social and educational change." Journal of Empirical Theology, 22, 162-194. Nord, W. (1989). "Religious Literacy, Textbooks, and Religious Neutrality." Religion & Public Education, 16(1), 111-112. Prothero, S. (2008). Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs To Know--And Doesn't San Francisco, California: HarperCollins. Robson, G. (1996). "Religious Education, Government Policy and Professional Practice, 1985‐1995." British Journal of Religious Education, 19(1), 13-23. Scottish Government. (2009). Curriculum for Excellence: Religious and Moral Education SED, Glasgow. Wright, A. (1993). Religious Education in the Secondary School: Prospects for Religious Literacy, London: David Fulton Publishers. Dooley, C. M. (2008). Multicultural Literacy Teacher Education: Seeking MicroTransformations. Literacy Research and Instruction, 47(2), 55-75. Jones, W. H. (2003). Over the Wall: Experiences with Multicultural Literacy. Journal of Marketing Education, 25(3), 231-240. Wai-Yip, H. (2008). Teaching Islam to educate multiethnic and multicultural literacy: seeking alternative discourse and global pedagogies in the Chinese context. Asian Ethnicity, 9(2), 77-95.
