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In today’s diverse classrooms, we think spiritual oracy is a crucial part of the activity in RE lessons. A lot is said about the place of dialogue and empathy and understanding in relation to RE, but is the RE classroom as open as we imagine? Could we focuss more on good talk in that space? We know from previous research that the classroom might not be a welcoming space for children to express their beliefs and spirituality (for example see Adams and Moulin). Primary RE teachers face challenges in training and building confidence in leading reflective dialogue around Faith, Worldview, and Spiritual (FWS) oracy in a world of significant polarisation, espceially as they are too often not well supported in their pre-service education for teaching religious education. Children need skills to listen attentively, express curiosity, and engage in convivial conversations on sensitive subjects. What do we know about their experience of this in the RE context?
This pilot project aimed to support teachers and find out more about the experience of children in RE lessons. This project is close-to-practice research into FWS speaking and listening in RE. There’s a lot of discussion about oracy and good talk in education today, and we’re excited about the opportunities in the RE classroom for developing attentive listening and thoughtful self-expression. We wondered, can teachers find ways to encourage that kind of talk in RE?
In this project, we’ve used three key words linked to religious education: faith, worldviews, and spirituality. Faith is associated with religious traditions, and we think development here is about building an awareness of the grammar of a religious tradition that pupils should learn about. Worldviews help us understand the diverse perspectives and experiences in the world, how people bring their different grammars of meaning into connection with others. This covers the place of encounter between such ways of meaning in public life, in our open society. The place where we might experience disagreement or seek common ground. Spirituality explores an inner personal dimension of life, and the connections we form with others, nature, and even something beyond ourselves. This relational understanding of spirituality is inclusive, and is found in different disciplines and ways of knowing: psychology, children’s spirituality scholarship as well as faith tradition work (see our theoretical and empirical work around this here).
A key idea is spiritual oracy, which means supporting the development of good talk that reaches the special parts of life that can be deeply meaningful to people. We understand that this is something that matters to everyone, and it’s about feeling conversation as well as thoughts, sensing as well as philosophical talk. Spiritual oracy is a new term, to try to capture things that surely have been a feature of RE classrooms before, but perhaps is more important today when we know that for many children, organised reigion is not part of personal life, but perhaps spirituality is (See Theos). Spirituality possibly offers an inclusive concept that can undestand something of the personal knowledge that RE can support more children in developing, beyond a functional religious literacy. It is co-owned by those in traditions and those not in traditions.
A central idea in this work is to focus on attentive listening in the service of the other. In other words, to focus on the kind of listening we would like children to develop, with a serious consideration of the dignity of the other person, a person who experiences the world in their own way, and who could bring an important insight. This is a service virtue conceptualisation of listening, listening for the other. It is important in RE as the traditions of religion in different ways treat very seriously the development of attentiveness towards that which is beyond us, both in terms of the other people who neet our attention, and the other which is beyond.
From the pilot project we can already see how important it is for pupils to feel truly listened to, and they can also see important links between listening and the dignity of the person.
RE can be really important for helping students acquire the language of debate and discussion, which is something that other subjects like History and English also hold dear. Listening can be devoted to fundung weaknesses in the other person’s argument.
However, there’s a special dimension for religion and worldviews that is linked to seeking to empathetically understand th other, and so touches the inner world of meaning and a certain kind of aesthetic to our connections with others, the world around us, nature, and maybe even something that transcends. Beyond the logic and reason of argumentation, there is the feeling side of connection.
There is also the sense that in many classrooms confronting differences directly can be really challenging for teachers to navigate, especially when tensions between communities are hot. Perhaps there is another way of building capacity for young people to face this world, through attentive listening, an idea which is more than active listening, but a practice of service for finding out about the other.
Our new pilot project aimed to achieve the following objectives:
- Enhance teacher confidence and competence by improving primary teachers’ understanding and teaching practices related to Faith, Worldview, and Spirituality (FWS) oracy.
- Empower pupils to express themselves confidently and effectively through classroom activities that promote attentive listening and self-reflection, fostering a sense of self-awareness and personal worldview exploration.
- Promote inclusive expression of spirituality, enabling pupils to express their unique perspectives and spiritual literacy in a supportive and respectful environment.
Developing FWS oracy in primary RE classrooms is not just about improving communication skills; it’s about creating inclusive spaces where every child feels their voice matters. In our recent CPD sessions with primary teachers, we explored strategies for fostering meaningful dialogue that respects diversity and nurtures spiritual literacy. We chose to begin with the S part of FWS; spiritual oracy.
We’ve worked with teachers from across a Primary School MAT in the southeast of England, who have been experimenting with various oracy-focused activities in their classrooms. We visited schools to gather feedback and now we have our attached report.
Imagine if unlocking good listening, reflective speaking, and an understanding of the diverse range of spiritual expressions within and beyond religious traditions could lead to something personally important and collectively powerful in RE lessons? We believe it might.
This work connects two areas of our previous research. It builds on the attentive listening and pupil talk we used in our method for the Faith in the Nexus research, and draws on the insights we gained from the animations produced for that research, in which children heard other children discussing faith and spirituality. It also focusses on a hermeneutic approach, taking the ‘reader’ seriously when it comes to meaning, as we explored in our Texts and Teachers project.
Impact Areas
Teacher development: Improved confidence and strategies for facilitating spiritual oracy.
Pupil experiences: experience of deeper listening, increased curiosity, and more meaningful dialogue.
School culture: Positive ripple effects beyond RE into the wider school curriculum and culture.
Whats Next?
We have an article under review with the scientific findings from the project and we are delighted to announce a further year of funding for more work.
Many thanks to the All Saints Educational Trust for making this work possible