Religious education and the return of the teacher

Abstract

When considering the role of the teacher in religious education, it is tempting to start at the religious end of the spectrum in order to begin identifying what the particular aims and purposes of religious education might be or ought to be. It then would follow that the specific task of the RE teacher becomes that of orchestrating the educational ‘translation’ of these ambitions by developing and enacting the appropriate curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. One problem with such an approach is that it relies on a rather stark separation between the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of education, where teachers end up as specialists in the domain of the ‘how’ while the ‘what’ remains fairly external to their expertise and remit. Our concern here is not with the question whether or not teachers should be allowed to define the ‘what’ of education. With regard to this question we believe that although teachers should have a voice in such discussions, they should not be theonly voice, as there are other parties with a legitimate interest in this as well. But the real problem we see in the separation of the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ lies in the risk that the teacher’s unique responsibility that all education, including religious education, is and remains educational, may disappear from view.