The Warwick REDCo Community of Practice

Robert Jackson & Kevin O’Grady

Introduction

Currently, at the University of Warwick, a group of researchers is working as a community of practice on new pedagogies for religious education using the key concepts of the interpretive approach (Jackson 1997, 2004, 2006). The concept of a community of practice refers to the process of social learning that occurs when people who have a common interest in a subject or problem collaborate over an extended period to share ideas, find solutions, and build innovations (Wenger, 1998). A community of practice is a group of researchers committed to collaborative investigation through mutual support and critical friendship (e.g. Altrichter 2005). The Warwick REDCo community of practice includes members based in universities, schools and a local authority. All have experience as practitioners and all have or are gaining experience as researchers. The community of practice is attached to the European project on religion, education, dialogue and conflict (REDCo: see funded by the European Commission for three years (March 2006-March 2009). The community of practice is the discrete Warwick contribution to the project, which involves a consortium of ten universities from eight different countries.

The composition of the community of practice

The community of practice consists of six teachers, one local authority adviser (retired) and four academics based in education departments in universities, all involved with teacher education at either initial or in-service levels. For organisational purposes, Professor Robert Jackson acts as overall co-ordinator, with one of the teachers (Dr Kevin O’Grady) and one of the teacher educators (Dr Julia Ipgrave) as research co-ordinators. Dr O’Grady teaches religious education at HighStorrsSchool, Sheffield, and is associate fellow in the Warwick Religions and Education Research Unit. Dr Ipgrave is senior lecturer at OxfordBrookesUniversity and associate fellow in the Warwick Religions and Education Research Unit. All the researchers are using action research or practitioner research methodologies with the aim of improving practice in religious education at a national level. Their studies are guided by the concepts of the interpretive approach to religious education (Jackson 1997, 2004, 2006) and the action research methodology developed in Dr O’Grady’s Warwick PhD thesis on motivation in lower secondary religious education. The contributors to the project are all former or current PhD and distance learning MA students in religious education at the University of Warwick. Most researchers are focusing on primary and secondary religious education, with two working on teacher training at primary and secondary levels and one on school-based continuing professional development. They are also working at the interface between religious education and other fields such as citizenship education and intercultural education.

The Warwick community of practice’s action research and practitioner research (mainly school-based) has the objectives of developing pedagogies that foster dialogue and counter religious conflict. The first meeting of the community of practice took place at Warwick in June 2006. The second meeting as a group was to present research and development completed so far to an invited group of teachers and other educators attending the Westhill seminar in Birmingham inJanuary 2007. The seminar provided an excellent opportunity for the group to engage with one another and with other teachers and educators.

The group decided that it needed to meet on its own, in order to be able to develop its research and the most effective ways to communicate with teachers for continuing professional development purposes at the end of the project. Although members of the community of practice are in close contact by e-mail, it became clear that the group needed to meet on a regular basis. The individual projects are all of interest and potential value to teachers. The group enjoys an excellent focus and spirit. The vital process of presentation, constructive criticism and support is well established. However, the group felt that emerging theoretical and practical issues needed to be dealt with at the collective level rather than at the individual study level during focused meetings of the community of practice.

The following issues are under discussion in community of practice meetings:

  • The community of practice is articulating and developing the shared concepts of the project (representation, interpretation, reflexivity), bringing insights from practices of teaching and learning in different settings, and working out how to apply them consistently, clearly and critically.
  • The community of practice is giving increased attention to the concepts of dialogue and conflict and what these mean in religious education practice. For example, is dialogue always positive and conflict always negative? In promoting dialogue, is there a danger of failing to recognise difference and therefore setting up misunderstandings?
  • The community of practice aims to present findings in language that is unambiguous to practitioners who have not had the benefit of working in a research context.

Outputs

The fieldwork for all studies is scheduled to finish by summer 2008. There will then be a period of data analysis and writing, culminating in the publication of an edited book to be submitted to Waxmann for publication in 2009, subject to acceptance by the editorial team. This book will include introductory chapters outlining the principles and strategies for the action research studies and linking this work to the wider European REDCo project. Each of the subsequent chapters will be written by one of the participants on his or her particular study, though making links to the other studies reported so as to represent a second analytical level (analysis level one is that of individual studies). The final chapter will pick up themes from across the previous chapters and relate them to the practice of religious education in schools and to European REDCo findings, thus representing a third analytical level. This final chapter will be written by a Norwegian member of the REDCo project, who is especially interested in the development of action research to improve practice in schools.

The nature of the Warwick community of practice

Our community of practice is a team of researchers committed to mutual collaboration and support. We have a shared vision grounded in several principles:

  • The vital importance of an epistemologically open religious education.
  • The need to relate such religious education to issues of social values as found, for example, in intercultural education and citizenship education.
  • The need for collaboration between practitioners and researchers in different national and international locales.
  • The power of an interpretive approach to religious education as a stimulus to the development of research and practice.
  • The utility of an action research approach in the task of improving religious education pedagogy.
  • An approach to religious education (and related fields) that seeks positive dialogue between young people of different religious faiths, and of none – but recognises that conflict is often a feature of relations between those of different backgrounds and persuasions and does not try to bracket this reality out of pedagogical focus.

In order to assess these principles in practice, a series of individual research projects is being developed, designed to test the principles in different settings (again, see below, ‘individual enquiries’). However, it is important not to see our projects in a thematically or methodologically isolated way. There is a rich variety of focal points, but these are different focal points for common themes. Each individual will have responsibility for a different branch of our practice – in most cases, this will mean that a researcher undertakes one individual enquiry – but the collective responsibility for the success of our practice as a whole means that relationships and communication are of high importance. Further remarks about these will be made below but the concept of the critical friend can be introduced now as a guiding concept. Processes of constructive mutual criticism will support our research.

Key texts

The key texts for our practice are Robert Jackson’s Religious Education: An Interpretive Approach (Jackson 1997), together with various publications by Jackson that have developed the approach, especially in relation to the concept of reflexivity (Jackson 2004, 2006) and the representation of religions (Jackson 2008), and Kevin O’Grady’s PhD thesis Motivation in Secondary Religious Education, together with various associated articles and book chapters by O’Grady (O’Grady 2003, 2005, 2006).

Religious Education: An Interpretive Approach provides the theoretical underpinning of our work. Its central concerns over representation, interpretation and reflexivity (including edification) in religious education pedagogy suggest both starting points and fundamental principles for the individual projects. Motivation in Secondary Religious Education develops the interpretive approach through the use of classroom-based action research (e.g. Elliott 1991, 1997, 1998). Here the emphasis switches to adolescents’ experiences of religious education: attempts are made to record factors in their motivation to learn and to offer related pedagogical principles and strategies. Individual researchers within the Warwick REDCO community of practice will aim to take insights from Religious Education: An Interpretive Approach and Motivation in Secondary Religious Education and channel the ideas in new directions, but will begin from a strong knowledge base in both texts and will regularly return to both texts, and papers based on them.

Roles and responsibilities

Professor Robert Jackson has overall responsibility for the Warwick REDCO community of practice. Dr Kevin O’Grady and Dr Julia Ipgrave act as research co-ordinators. Dr O’Grady provides specialist action research advice and support; Dr Ipgrave provides specialist advice and support as required, in the areas of dialogical approaches to religious education and to research (Ipgrave 2002, 2003). All three leaders have roles in monitoring and supporting the various studies, and with facilitating thedissemination of findings.

Professor Eleanor Nesbitt assists with research methods training (via the WarwickMA in RE research methods module, and through feedback to those who are making their contribution as part of the WarwickMA). Ursula McKenna provides research and administrative support to Professor Jackson and contributes to the survey work being conducted as part of the wider European REDCo Project.

All other community members are individual researchers, bearing in mind the point made above that we are collectively responsible for the success of our practice as a whole. It is also important to recognise the cross-institutional nature of our collaboration. Whilst Warwick is the key institution (including Robert Jackson, Kevin O’Grady, Eleanor Nesbitt, Judith Everington and Ursula McKenna), our team includes academic staff members of Oxford Brookes University (Julia Ipgrave) and Middlesex University (Linda Whitworth) and a former Bradford local education authority consultant (Joyce Miller). Julia Ipgrave’s own study is also related to the Christian Muslim Forum; established by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 2006, a group providing a national platform for leaders and experts from the two faiths in promoting practical co-operation between Christians and Muslims for the common good.

Individual studies

Brief details (researcher name, project title, and key research questions) of each individual research study are given below. A work-in-progress update paragraph has been added to each, as a result of the community of practice’s July 2007 meeting.

Judith Everington (WarwickUniversity):The interpretive approach, beginning teachers and the development of initial teacher training strategies – an action research study. How can teachers in their initial training apply the principles of the interpretive approach in relation to the backgrounds and needs of their pupils? What can they learn, progressively, about how to use the principles of the interpretive approach as foci for the improvement of their teaching?

At July 2007 fieldwork is complete. Very interesting findings have emerged. The value of the interpretive approach has been of value in stimulating trainee teachers’ ability to theorise their practice, in the context of a deliberative community (the cohort). In a sense, trainee teachers created their own versions of the approach. There is resonance with the ideas of the teacher educator John Loughran (Loughran 2006).

Nigel Fancourt (Lord Williams’ School, Thame, Oxfordshire): Reflexivity and Self-assessment– a practitioner research study. What kind of self-assessment is appropriate for an interpretive pedagogy?

At July 2007 fieldwork is complete, having been undertaken as part of a doctoral study on current assessment paradigms in RE (thesis to be submitted early in 2008). Given the depth and breadth of this study, findings are complex. Generally, ’high stakes’ testing, together with a summative attainment model of progress, are presently quite dominant in English education (Black and William 1998), but do not offer an appropriate paradigm to interpretive religious educators. However, one emergent idea is that of a synergy between interpretive approaches to religious education and ‘dialogic’ assessment (Ecclestone and Pryor 2003, Fancourt 2005). This focuses less on external criteria, and more on formative teacher-pupil discussion on what has been learned and where learning should go next.

Kate Gater (BiltonGrangePreparatory School, Rugby): Introducing 12 and 13 year olds to the Sikh tradition. What is the value of direct dialogue with members of an unfamiliar tradition? Which pedagogical strategies promote the most effective comparison and contrast of one’s own ideas about life with those of others?

At July 2007, fieldwork is under preparation, to commence in November 2007. A very clear integration has been made of the key concepts of the interpretive approach with the research plan. The study will be a MA dissertation, later written to book chapter style and length for REDCo publication.

Julia Ipgrave (OxfordBrookesUniversity): Media and Identity. What is the nature of 10 and 11 year olds’ media interaction? How does it shape their self-identification and their identification of others? (Young Muslims have already expressed disquiet about the representation of Islam.)

At July 2007, much interesting pedagogical activity has taken place and is ongoing. The issue is how to make this into a research presentation. There are valuable messages waiting to be communicated: children are ready for sophisticated analyses of media and identity and activities can be sketched that can move them on in their understanding, as part of religious education though in new forms of the subject.

Joyce Miller (research site: Nab WoodSchool, Bradford): The application of the interpretive approach to teachers’ continuing professional development. Can the use of the interpretive approach help to increase teacher confidence, sensitivity and understanding in dealing with pupils from a range of backgrounds and in promoting community cohesion? Will the teachers become more skilled as ‘cultural navigators’?

At July 2007 the studied school is still building community links. Several agendas (school practice, community cohesion and research) are still to be connected. A model may come via qualitative teacher reflection on how closer community links improve pedagogy. There will be two action research cycles, one on a Humanities faculty and one on an English faculty, but the REDCo chapter will be mainly concerned with the first.

Gemma O’Dell (BartonCourtGrammar School, Longport, Canterbury, Kent): Intercultural Religious Education in a relatively mono-cultural local environment. How can teenagers in a predominantly white, economically advantaged local area be encouraged to consider issues of religious and cultural diversity? The issue of religious education as a ‘gendered’ subject will be given particular attention.

At July 2007 fieldwork has been completed. Data analysis and triangulation are in progress and findings and conclusions will be ready for discussion by the beginning of academic year 2007-8.

Kevin O’Grady (HighStorrsSchool, Sheffield): Material from Kevin’s PhD (recently completed but not yet worked into articles or book chapters) will contribute to the project’s store of material. Our future discussions of book format and content will determine how this is done, in due course.

Karen Van Coevorden (SouthParkPrimary School, Redbridge): Holocaust Education. What can the concepts of the interpretive approach and the methods of action research contribute to young children’s education regarding the Holocaust? What pedagogical principles and strategies should be developed, to maximise children’s learning in such a sensitive and vital area? At July 2007, this project is in the early stages. An initial research design has been made and access agreed with a school. Fieldwork will begin during the next school year.

Amy Whittall (King Edward V1 School, Birmingham): Developing Appropriate Principles and Strategies for the teaching of Gifted and Talented students of religious education. How can the concepts of the interpretive approach be used in the development of forms of religious education that meet the particular needs of gifted and talented students? What roles can action research play in the development of these forms of religious education?

At July 2007, this research project is complete, having taken place in the contexts of Amy’s MA studies and Farmington fellowship. Amy’s findings are that the interpretive approach does indeed enable the development of higher level skill in religious education, for example through the use of interpretation, and that action research can help the gifted and talented to develop ‘voice’. Her study will need to be written to the appropriate book format, style and length.

Linda Whitworth (MiddlesexUniversity): Developing Confidence amongst non-specialist teachers of Primary religious education: An Action Research Study using the concepts of the Interpretive Approach. Can knowledge and understanding of the interpretive approach develop the confidence of teachers in initial training? How can action research strategies be useful to teacher educators in improving opportunities for student engagement and reflection?

At July 2007, a first action research cycle is complete and a second is being planned on its findings. Methodological and conceptual fine-tuning is also taking place. An emergent pattern is ‘destabilisation’. Trainee teachers find that acquaintance with the interpretive approach challenges their existing assumptions. The consequent professional discussion requires, but also helps to create, confidence and trust.

Critical Friends

Helen Harrison is Lancashire education authority consultant for religious education, Dr Bill Gent is Redbridge education authority consultant for religious education and Paul Hopkins is a freelance consultant on religious education and information and communication technology.