Special Issue: Religion in Education
Journal of Beliefs and Values
Volume 33, Number 3, December 2012
Journal Available Now
&
Book Available in Late 2013
Guest Editors:
Elisabeth Arweck & Robert Jackson
The special issue of Journal of Beliefs and Values, on “Religion in Education:
Findings from the Religion and Society Programme”, is a collection of essays
which present findings from research focusing on young people and the way
they relate to religion in their education and upbringing. Some of the research
was conducted within projects funded under the aegis of the AHRC/ESRC
Religion and Society Programme, but responses to some of the articles and a
contribution on young Muslims in Sweden open the research and findings to
an international perspective.
The essays cover a wide span—in terms of
 the religions they discuss (including Christianity, Islam, Sikhism),
 the settings where young people reflect on religion (including the
classroom, youth club, peer group, families, respective religious
communities, wider society),
 the different perspectives which relate to religious education and
socialisation (including the teaching of RE, the role of teachers in
pupils’ lives, the way teachers’ personal lives shape their approach to
teaching, the schools’ ethos, the schools’ social contexts, the place and
rationale of RE),
 the contexts within which the authors work (different national settings,
various academic disciplines),
 the methodology used (including qualitative, quantitative and mixedmethod approaches).
The authors address issues regarding religious education in schools and
religious nurture and socialisation within families, communities or peer
groups as well the role of teachers of religious education, both in the
classroom and in the lives of young people. They make important
contributions to the debate about the role of Religious Education in the
curriculum and demonstrate the crucially important formative influence of
religious education in young people’s lives, which reaches well into their
adulthood,
shaping
individuals’
religious
and
other
identities
and
individuals’ attitudes towards the ‘other’—whatever that ‘other’ may be.
This collection also represents the proceedings of the conference which
was held at the University of Warwick in July 2011 as part of the
AHRC/ESRC Religion and Society Programme.
This special issue will be published (by Routledge) in book form in late
2013.
Further details about this special issue and the Journal of Beliefs and
Values.
Contents
Preface
Linda Woodhead (Lancaster University, UK)
Editorial: Religion, Education and Society
Elisabeth Arweck (University of Warwick, UK) & Robert Jackson
(University of Warwick, UK)
Articles
Relationships between local patterns of religious practice and young
people’s attitudes to the religiosity of their peers
Julia Ipgrave (University of Warwick, UK)
Contextuality of young people’s attitudes and its implications for research on
religion: A response to Julia Ipgrave
Olga Schihalejev (University of Tartu, Estonia)
Young people’s attitudes to religious diversity: Quantitative approaches from
social and empirical theology
Leslie J. Francis (University of Warwick, UK), Jennifer Croft (University
of Warwick, UK), Alice Pyke (University of Warwick, UK), and Mandy Robbins
(Glyndwr University, Wrexham, UK)
Religious diversity, empathy, and God images: Perspectives from the
psychology of religion shaping a study among adolescents in the UK
Leslie J. Francis (University of Warwick, UK), Jennifer S. Croft
(University of Warwick, UK) & Alice Pyke (University of Warwick, UK)
Failures of meaning in religious education
James C. Conroy (University of Glasgow, UK), David Lundie (University
of Glasgow, UK) & Vivienne Baumfield (University of Glasgow, UK)
More purpose than meaning in RE: A response to James Conroy, David
Lundie, and Vivienne Baumfield
Christina Osbeck (University of Karlsbad, Sweden)
Seeing and seeing through: Forum theatre approaches to ethnographic
evidence
David Lundie (University of Glasgow, UK) & James C. Conroy
(University of Glasgow, UK)
‘We’re all in this together, the kids and me’: Beginning teachers’ use of their
personal life knowledge in the Religious Education classroom
Judith Everington (University of Warwick, UK)
Teachers only stand behind parents and God in the eyes of Muslim pupils
Jenny Berglund (Södertorn University, Stockholm, Sweden)
Keeping the faith: Reflections on religious nurture among young British Sikhs
Jasjit Singh (University of Leeds, UK)
Christian youthwork: Teaching faith, filling churches or response to social
need?
Naomi Stanton (Open University, UK)
Religious young adults recounting the past: Narrating sexual and religious
cultures in school
Sarah-Jane Page & Andrew Kam-Tuck Yip (Nottingham University, UK)