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British Journal of Religious Education
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Learning about and learning from
religious education
Vivienne Baumfield
a
a
University of Glasgow , Scotland, UK
Published online: 05 Dec 2008.
To cite this article: Vivienne Baumfield (2009) Learning about and learning from religious
education, British Journal of Religious Education, 31:1, 1-2, DOI: 10.1080/01416200802560294
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01416200802560294
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British Journal of Religious Education
Vol. 31, No. 1, January 2009, 1–2
EDITORIAL
Learning about and learning from religious education
The depth and breadth of scholarship within the international religious education
community is evident in the contributions from Iceland, the Netherlands, Denmark,
Malawi, Finland and England in this issue of the British Journal of Religious Education. There is much to learn from the way religious education is developing within
national contexts and emerging ways of understanding practice through
Lebensphilosophie (Böwadt), narthical approaches (Roebben) and phenomenography
(Hella). The contributors, whilst each offering a scholarly and distinctive analysis of
aspects of contemporary religious education, touch upon some common themes.
They address tensions between the historical origins of religious education as a form
of Christian confessionalism and an increasing respectfulness to the democratic
values of pluralism in modern society. In so doing, consideration is given to the
relationship between the child and religious education in the curriculum, and the role
of the school subject in enabling learners to find meaning in their own lives is
discussed. Another recurring theme is the discussion of the importance of difference
both in terms of heightening awareness and of learning to live with and negotiate
differences as the outcome of education. The concepts of learning about and learning
from religion are explored explicitly in the article by Hella and Wright but can also
be found, to a greater or lesser degree, in the arguments presented by the other
authors. Consequently, reading through this edition proved to be the stimulus for me
to revisit some key sources in the development of our understanding of religious
education and of theories of learning.
Grimmitt and Read first used the concept of learning about and learning from
religion in the late 1970s within a human development model of religious education
which stressed the instrumental value that the study of content should have to the
wider personal development of the learner (Grimmitt 2000). Re-reading Grimmitt
shows that the dual aspect of learning from, so that it is an evaluation of the learner’s
understanding of religion in personal terms as well as understanding of self in
religious terms, is clearly stated in his writings but often lost in subsequent references
to the concept. He has himself commented on the way in which the complexity of the
model has been lost and its strength diminished through incorporation into curriculum
structures alien to its intentions (Grimmitt 2000, 37) in a process of ‘recontextualisation’ similar to that referred to by Böwadt. If you haven’t consulted the work of
Grimmitt in the original sources recently, I recommend that you do so after reading
the contributions to this issue.
The article by Hella and Wright led me back to the work of Ferens Marton, and I
was amused to read this statement in the prologue to Learning and Awareness (Marton
and Booth 1997, viii): ‘…in order to learn about something you have to have some
idea of what it is you are learning about’.
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v.baumfield@educ.gla.ac.uk
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© 2009 Christian Education
DOI: 10.1080/01416200802560294
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2
Editorial
We need to determine what is the object of study before we can devise appropriate
means of learning and this is in part a question of intent but also a consequence of the
extent to which the concepts with which we are engaging have been defined within a
recognised disciplinary framework. It seems to me that this points to the difficulties
that many of the writers grapple with as they seek to delineate ‘religious education’ as
a school curriculum subject. Whilst the contributions to this issue show how far our
understanding has developed, they also remind us of how far there is still to go and
how debating theories of what religious education should be may still leave much to
be done in terms of how concepts are recontextualised in policy and pedagogical
practice. I hope that reading this issue will provide the impetus for further debate
about the pedagogy of religious education and encourage you to submit a proposal for
the forthcoming special issue. You will find the final call for contributions to ‘The
Pedagogy of RE in the Classroom’ issue below.
References
Grimmitt, M., ed. 2000. Pedagogies of religious education. Great Wakering: McCrimmon.
Marton, F., and S. Booth. 1997. Learning and awareness. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Vivienne Baumfield
University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK
BJRE Pedagogy Special Issue – Final Call
In January, 2008 we announced that there is to be a Special Issue of BJRE on:
The Pedagogy of RE in the classroom
We now invite offers of articles focusing on issues in the pedagogy of Religious
Education in primary and secondary school classrooms. Articles could take a historical
or contemporary perspective and we are interested in submissions from different
national contexts for the teaching of Religious Education. It is also our intention that
the Special Issue should demonstrate a wide range of methodological approaches.
Please submit an outline (500 words) of your proposed article by 2 March 2009 to:
v.baumfield@educ.gla.ac.uk
You will be notified regarding your proposal by 1 May 2009 and those authors invited
to submit a completed version of their article will be asked to do so by 3 August 2009.
Please note that final acceptance of articles for publication will be subject to satisfactory reports from referees.
The Pedagogy Special Issue will be published in 2010 (Vol. 32, Issue 3).