Description
Religion and Worldviews: The Triumph of the Secular in Religious Education provides the first serious analysis and review of the Commission on Religious Education’s proposed worldviews framework for the subject. It argues that religious education has an important contribution to make to the aims of liberal education and examines whether the shift to a worldview framework is capable of overcoming current weaknesses and initiating a new positive direction for the future. Chapters explore the role of worldviews in Religious Education, covering key debates including:
- Whether there is need for new legislation on RE
- The nature of professionalism and the role of ‘experts’
- The extent to which there is educational value in study of the personal worldviews of students
- The role of the religious voice in RE
- The relation of religions to religious worldviews
- The aims of RE
- The relationship between the state and religion
- Consideration of the nature of a worldview
- The personal reflections of a member of the Commission on its proposals
The chapters provide all that is necessary to understand and to evaluate the current debate on the appropriateness of a worldviews approach to RE.
Bringing together leading names in the field, this is essential reading for trainee and practising teachers of Religious Education, RE advisers and schools’ leaders responsible for curriculum development.
Table of Contents
Introduction: From religions to worldviews, 1. The Religious Education Commission: A view from the inside, 2. A New Settlement? A defence of the 1944 Act, 3. Who are the professionals in religious education? The Commission on Religious Education’s side-lining of the religious voice, 4. Does the worldviews approach provide a new paradigm for religious education?, 5. The world is not enough: Religious education beyond worldview perspectivism, 6. The philosophy of ‘worldviews’, 7. ‘Religion’, ‘worldviews’ and the reappearing problems of pedagogy, 8. Worldviews – a threat to religious education but ignored in science education?, 9. Turning to worldviews education instead of religion: Helpful solution or even more problems? A perspective from Germany
