Religious Education 4:
Children and Worldviews
The ‘Children and Worldviews’ Project
The Children and Worldviews Project - Theory
Erricker, C (2000a) The Children and Worldviews Project: A Narrative
Pedagogy of Religious Education, in Grimmitt, M (ed) Pedagogies of Religious
Education, Great Wakering: McCrimmons, pp.188-206
The Children and Worldviews Project - Practice
Erricker, C (2000b) Enactive Storytelling, in Erricker, C and Erricker, J (eds)
Reconstructing Religious, Spiritual and Moral Education, Routledge, pp.181–
189 [Chapters 7 – 11 of this text explore other ways of applying this pedagogy]
The Children and Worldviews Project - Critique
Wright, A (2001) Dancing in the Fire: A Deconstruction of Clive Erricker's
Postmodern Spiritual Pedagogy, Religious Education, 96:1, p. 120 - 135
The Project
1993 - 2000
Funding
University College, Chichester
King Alfred’s College, Winchester
La Sainte Union College,
Southampton
Personnel
Clive Erricker, Jane Erricker, Danny
Sullivan, John Logan, Cathy Ota
The impetus
Consider the two attainment targets
AT1 (Learning about) and AT2
(Learning from); conviction that
religious education was too ‘content
led’ and paid insufficient attention to
the experiences of young people.
Following the introduction of ‘nonconfessional RE’ in 1988, schoolbased RE had begun to mirror
university departments of religious
studies, an academic discipline with
broad ‘world religions’ content and a
‘phenomenological’ approach.
(cf Grimmitt, 2000, Introduction)
Influences
‘Attainment’
Dominance of 80s and 90s education
by a ‘competences’ model that
emphasises content and skills in
establishing what a child has ‘learnt’.
Neglect of the ‘whole child’ and the
idea of personal transformation.
Dialogue
Trust , respect and willingness to
learn are not adjuncts to or
prerequisites for earning but integral to
it. Dialogue as the site of learning.
Theodore Roszak:
“We all bring into school a wholly
unexplored, radically unpredictable
identity. To educate is to unfold that
identity – to unfold it with the utmost
delicacy, recognising that it is the most
precious resource of our species, the
true wealth of the human nation.’”
v. Traditional justifications of RE as
‘enculturation’ into shared Christian
values, even implicitly under the
banner of ‘moral education’
The Research
To explore what
mattered in children’s lives
and, using conversational
technique, explore the
issues that they raised.
 The reverse of what
normally happens during
curriculum construction
To discover what the
curriculum ‘leaves out’ of
education
Raises Questions:
1. What are schools for?
2. What needs to be ‘delivered’ to
children?
Postmodern Epistemology
The Critique:
The alternative:
Post-enlightenment, rationalist
account of education has forced
Religious Education to emphasise its
‘knowledge’ content
o Emphasis on a ‘subjective’ model of
knowledge that pays attention to
emotional and affective ways of
knowing
Predominantly descriptive character
of phenomenological enquiry,
emphasis on knowing the ‘facts’
o Knowing as relational and linked to
a narrative context
Focus on studying ‘belief systems’
that make objective ‘truth claims’
o No ‘absolute’ knowledgeknowledge is relative
The proposal:
To treat ‘grand narratives’ as constructions rather than descriptions of reality
To put children’s ‘small narratives’ at the centre of RE
Conversational Strategy
Aim: to encourage narrative
responses to stimulus material
 Attending to the means by which
meaning can be articulated
‘Self-revelatory’ nature of these
conversations requires a rethinking of traditional teacher-child
power relationships
Attending to the degree of security
provided
Empathy
Attending to the degree of negotiation
required
Genuineness
Attending to the degree of freedom
and independence required
(cognitively, spiritually and
emotionally)
Attending to the balance of authority
and authoritative statements
Unconditional Positive Regard
Immediacy
The Findings
Children find it important to talk
about particular themes:
Relationships
Secret Places
Ethnic Identity
Religious Affiliation
Death
Separation
The Environment
The Process:
Children strive to find the right words
or metaphors to express complex and
deeply felt issues
Verbalisation is part of the
development of self-understanding
and self-discovery
Sharing feelings facilitates empathy
and mutual understanding
Children construct their worldviews
through narration
This is a dynamic process with no
final or end product, and where there
is no sense of ‘development’ except
change
Guidelines
 When the children raise an issue, allow them to talk freely even if
they appear to be going off the point. The most valuable reflections
often come unexpectedly. Allow them to talk about their own
experiences and how they feel about them.
 Try not to jump in with judgements about their expressed
positions, but allow them to express themselves fully, to explain their
positions, and to be challenged by other children before being
challenged by you as a teacher.
 Discussion between the children is much better for their
development than a conversation between teacher and pupil.
Evaluating the pedagogy:
 Assumption of a postmodern epistemology. To what extent are
narratives ‘constructed’? Does the rejection of absolute knowledge
entail a rejection of the endeavour of discovering truth?
 Is there an over-emphasis on AT2, construed as ‘responding’?
Students dictate what they are responding to – does RE collapse
here into PSHE? Does religious material have an educational ‘gift’
to offer children?
 Erricker in more recent work has moved away from an emphasis
on postmodern epistemology and recommends a critical
engagement with religious concepts as an essential part of
‘worldviews education’
Activity
1. Carefully read Erricker’s description of narrating about death
and consider using the story of Freddie the Leaf as a
conversation stimulus
2. Go out and see what you can pick up – twigs, leaves, stones,
discarded objects etc.
3. Consult the agreed syllabus and decide what theme and age
range you are planning for
4. Consult the non-statutory national framework to determine the
skills and range of attainment you are attempting to address
5. Plan a lesson or sequence of lessons incorporating Erricker’s
narrative pedagogy
6. Make sure that you add to your poster your group’s reflections
on the planning process and the value of the pedagogy