Teachers and texts: Improving Religious Education through hermeneutics

Improving the teaching of texts using hermeneutics in secondary Religious Education (RE).

2019-20 | Funded by Culham St. Gabriels Trust

Overview

Teaching methods

The research focus is on how we can improve the teaching of texts using hermeneutics in secondary RE so that pupils may be enabled to grasp that texts:

• offer multiple levels of meaning including the story in which they fall and the time they were written
• are read in different ways by different readers today.

This is seen as the opposite of teaching texts in fragments or by a predetermined theme not related to the texts narrative and context.

Deepening interpretation of texts

Teaching hermeneutics might strengthen and deepen the teaching of all aspects of religion. Interpretation can be strongly developed as a key analytical component of RE for all aspects of religion and worldviews.

Findings

The project will support the development of a resource to be widely and freely disseminated.

Team

• Dr Farid Panjwani (PI), IOE
• Professor Bob Bowie, Canterbury Christ Church University
• Katie Clenney, Canterbury Christ Church University