Understanding ‘religious understanding’ in religious education

This paper takes as its starting point, one of the explicit aims of religious education in England, namely, the development of students’ religious understanding. It shows how curriculum documentation, whilst stating that religious understanding is an aim of religious education fails to clearly outline what is meant by it. This paper draws upon long-standing and ongoing debates in the field and suggests that religious understanding may be best conceived as a spectrum of understanding. Approached in this way, religious understanding becomes not an all or nothing affair, but a lens through which the student of religion may regard the beliefs and practices before them. Finally, the paper proposes an interpretation of religious understanding, which focuses on the soteriological dimension of religion, thus providing the student with a particularly religious lens to understand religious traditions in religious education and concludes by outlining what such an approach might look like in practice.     

Giving voice to ‘the silent minority’: the experience of religious students in secondary school religious education lessons

This paper explores the experiences of secondary school students from religious backgrounds in Religious Education (RE). A total of 16 loosely structured, group, pair and individual interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of 34 school-age members of four religious communities: one Jewish and three Christian. The findings make a useful contribution to ongoing debates concerning pedagogy and practice in secondary RE. Members of the religious communities consulted often found their tradition stereotyped and simplified in RE lessons. Respondents also found that at times they were expected to be, or felt the need to be, spokespeople or representatives of their religion. However, experiences of religious intolerance and prejudice, or the fear of it, were common. This led to some students being reluctant to reveal or discuss their religious identity in lessons.     

‘Selective cosmopolitans’: tutors’ and students’ experience of offshore higher education in Dubai

As the offshore mobility of higher education has increased in recent times, the question of how it interacts with the recipient cultures has become ever more significant. Using ethnographic methods, this empirical study examined the adaptation of the UK teacher education model – the Postgraduate Certificate in Education – to the context of Dubai. The study asks ‘how do students and tutors experience the adaptation of British education in the context of Dubai?’ This paper will argue that tutors and students in offshore Dubai teacher education are ‘selective cosmopolitans’ who negotiate cross-cultural influences pragmatically and ambivalently. The study addresses a significant gap in the literature, as there is little written on the internationalisation of higher education in the context of Gulf Cooperation Council countries. There is also an inadequate appreciation of the role of local culture and religion in offshore education and tutors and students’ role as active agents in negotiating cross-cultural dynamics in the offshore educational setting.     

‘Empty signifiers’ and ‘dreamy ideals’: perceptions of the ‘international university’ among higher education students and staff at a British university

This paper reports on a mixed-methods case study investigating how higher education staff and students understand, experience and envision the ‘international university’. As it is becoming clear that international student mobility is not in itself a panacea for universities seeking to internationalise, ‘internationalisation at home’ and ‘global citizenship’ are increasingly permeating university policy documents and mission statements. However, little is known about how students and staff on the ground perceive and experience these concepts. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected at one British university through focus groups (N = 19) and through an online survey (n = 148). Findings revealed a conventional mobility-focused understanding of the international university among students and staff, and a great deal of cynicism as regards ‘internationalisation at home’ and ‘global citizenship’. We discuss implications for practice and a research agenda.     

‘Timescapes’ in doctoral education: the politics of temporal equity in higher education

ABSTRACT

In the twenty-first century, the politics of higher education in Australia and around the globe have become dominated by neoliberal agendas of efficiency, profitability and managerialism. This has fundamentally altered the ‘timescapes’ of higher education. In the case of doctoral education, doctoral candidates and supervisors are subjected to increasing time pressures and required to produce a wide variety of outcomes in very short timeframes. These managerial agendas of efficiency and speed impact upon all doctoral candidates and supervisors but present particular practical and epistemic difficulties for Indigenous, migrant, refugee and international students. In this article, I illustrate how fast doctoral timescapes encourage assimilationist pedagogies that have been shown to be especially detrimental for Indigenous, migrant, refugee and international doctoral candidates. Drawing upon a complex array of theoretical resources that investigate Lefebvre’s rhythm analysis and other authors’ notions of epistemic time and the ethics of time, this article argues for a reconceptualization of doctoral timescapes in order to promote a politics of temporal equity in doctoral education. This especially involves making space for epistemic, lived and eternal temporal rhythms in doctoral education policy and practice.     

Developing a ‘leading identity’: the relationship between students’ mathematical identities and their career and higher education aspirations

The construct of identity has been used widely in mathematics education in order to understand how students (and teachers) relate to and engage with the subject (Kaasila, 2007; Sfard & Prusak, 2005; Boaler, 2002). Drawing on cultural historical activity theory (CHAT), this paper adopts Leont’ev’s notion of leading activity in order to explore the key ‘significant’ activities that are implicated in the development of students’ reflexive understanding of self and how this may offer differing relations with mathematics. According to Leont’ev (1981), leading activities are those which are significant to the development of the individual’s psyche through the emergence of new motives for engagement. We suggest that alongside new motives for engagement comes a new understanding of self—a leading identity—which reflects a hierarchy of our motives. Narrative analysis of interviews with two students (aged 16–17 years old) in post-compulsory education, Mary and Lee, are presented. Mary holds a stable ‘vocational’ leading identity throughout her narrative and, thus, her motive for studying mathematics is defined by its ‘use value’ in terms of pursuing this vocation. In contrast, Lee develops a leading identity which is focused on the activity of studying and becoming a university student. As such, his motive for study is framed in terms of the exchange value of the qualifications he hopes to obtain. We argue that this empirical grounding of leading activity and leading identity offers new insights into students’ identity development.     

Inside the ‘body box’: exploring feedback in higher education

In recent years, educational research has paid special attention to teachers’ practical-operative experience. The growing interest in the concept of practice within workplace settings has become a turning point in sociological, anthropological and educational studies. The present study aims to explore lecturers’ perceptions and conceptions of feedback and their daily professional practice, with a focus on the use of body movement while providing feedback during the class. Even though educational research has paid a lot of attention to the concepts of practice and performance, there are very few studies that consider the main actor included in the definition of those concepts: the body. Methodologically this exploratory case study uses a mixed methods approach. Results identified two types of issues: the first one concerns the relation between lecturer and students during the feedback practice; the second one concerns the internal coherence of lecturers between the kind of verbal feedback they provide during the lesson and how at the same time they act bodily.     

The allure of ‘easy’: reflections on the learning experience in private higher education institutes in Egypt

Private institutions are increasingly visible in the higher education landscape of Egypt. Many of these institutions, however, are within the ‘demand-absorbing’ category, offered at relatively lower fees and requiring lower test scores for admission. Building on interview data, this paper looks at how the graduates of some of these institutes reflect on their learning experience. In the discourse of these graduates, the learning experience is described as ‘easy’ and less demanding. This ‘easy’ education is accepted, justified and even celebrated. Credential fetish and the social status associated with a higher education degree are central to the perpetuation of the allure of ‘easy’. However, ‘easy’ education is also condemned for its compromised quality and low status. The paper seeks to situate these competing and overlapping discourses on private institutes within the analysis of the structure of the education system in Egypt and the global neoliberal tide for education reform.     

From ‘priceless’ to ‘priced’: the value of knowledge in higher education

This paper examines a shift in the value awarded to the disciplinary knowledge developed in universities. The instrumentalised function of this type of knowledge as it is ‘priced’ and sold in the global higher education marketplace is given a value greater than that given to its symbolic or ‘priceless’ function in contributing to society’s social meanings. This shift in value is the result of the intensive commodification of knowledge in the higher education sector itself as a consequence of fundamental changes to the global economy. Knowledge now plays a central role as a valuable productive force in the global economy and higher education is the main site for its production and sale. The weakened insularity between disciplinary knowledge’s symbolic and economic functions gives greater value to its ‘price’ rather than to its ‘priceless’ function as a creative force in creating the social meaning of the symbolic sphere of human life. We describe the way this shift in the value of disciplinary knowledge has affected its functions in the ‘knowledge economy’ era with reference to an empirical study of the internationalisation of Indonesian higher education.     

‘Widening Access’ to higher education: the reproduction of university hierarchies through policy enactment

Patterns of participation in higher education (HE) in the UK, as elsewhere, have been marked by social inequalities for decades. UK Governments have responded with a plethora of policies and agendas aimed at addressing this broad social issue. However, little is known about how higher education institutions (HEIs) interpret and ‘enact’ these policies in relation to institution-specific contexts. Drawing on concepts from policy sociology this paper examines how HEIs in one nation state, Wales, enact its Government’s policy on ‘widening access’ to higher education. Interviews with a range of ‘policy actors’ along with analyses of institutional ‘widening access’ policy documents, reveal divergences between HEIs in how this policy agenda is interpreted and delivered. These differences reflect institution-specific contexts – not least their internal politics and assumptions about the type of students they admit, but also their interests and priorities in relation to their positions within a global, marketised, HE system. The implications of this for the reproduction of university hierarchies in the UK, as well as social inequalities more generally are brought to the fore.     

Learning ‘about’ and ‘from’ religion: phenomenography,the Variation Theory of Learning and religious education in Finland and the UK

The paper addresses the relationship between the twin tasks of enabling pupils both to learn about and learn from religion in the state education systems of Finland and the UK. Recognising that the relationship between these two tasks is the subject of considerable confusion, it is argued that the most appropriate way to view the connection is fundamentally ontological. In a plural society in which there is no basic agreement about the ultimate meaning and purpose of life, there nevertheless remains a common concern to enable pupils to live flourishing lives in harmony with the ultimate order‐of‐things. The paper draws on phenomenography and the Variation Theory of Learning to unpack the pedagogic implications of this argument.     

Employability and higher education: the follies of the ‘Productivity Challenge’ in the Teaching Excellence Framework

This article considers questions of ‘employability’, a notion foregrounded in the Green and White Papers on the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF). The paper first questions government imperatives concerning employability and suggests a series of mismatches that are evident in the rhetorics in this area. This summary opens up elements of what I am calling the first ‘folly’ in the field. The second section of the paper considers recent research with individual academics engaged in employability activity. This research suggests another series of mismatches in the aims and outcomes of ‘employability initiatives’ and opens up a further series of ‘follies’ in the day-to-day practices of academics and students’ responses to them. The third section of the paper turns to academics’ reports of student behaviour in relation to the outcomes of their degree. This section develops an argument that relates to the final ‘folly’ associated with the current focus on employability. I argue that students’ focus on outcomes (which at face value suggests they have internalized the importance of employment) is contributing to the production of graduates who do not have the dispositions that employers – when interviewed – say that they want. The highly performative culture of higher education, encouraged by the same metrics that will be extended through the TEF, is implicated then in not preparing students for the workplace.     

Student ambassador experience in higher education: Skills and competencies for the future?

Lifelong learning, where individuals keep modifying, renewing and updating their existing skills and competencies, is an essential requirement in the knowledge economy. Yet research has shown that employers often find it hard to hire individuals who are equipped with sufficiently rounded competencies in areas such as commitment, enthusiasm and timekeeping. The Student Ambassador (SA) scheme offers university students the opportunity to undertake relatively well‐paid and flexible part‐time jobs around widening participation initiatives, which, in general, focus on raising aspiration and attainment of young people from more disadvantaged backgrounds. This article examines research evidence into the SA scheme in South‐East London and, in particular, focuses on analysing whether the scheme offers students an ideal part‐time job opportunity while in higher education. It will be seen that SAs not only gain complex transferable skills while earning money, but also engage in something that they perceive to be a highly rewarding and valuable experience.     

In search of the feeling of ‘belonging’ in higher education: undergraduate students transition into higher education

ABSTRACT

Previous research that evaluated first year students’ transition into university found that the values of ‘being, belonging and becoming’ were important in particular within the first few months and within the first year of university. From our previous work, we reported that three things matter to students: the academic staff they work with, the nature of their academic study and the feeling of belonging. This paper provides a further illumination to our work by reporting on the qualitative data collected in the same study. The study included 530 students from five cohorts over a five-year period. As part of the Student Experience Evaluation instrument, open-ended questions probed students about their early experiences of belonging and transition into university. This original research uses rich data to illuminate the scales and items from previous quantitative data analysis to explore ‘belonging’, triangulated with research from the field. This paper is timely due to increased emphasis placed on learning and teaching with the introduction of the Teaching Excellence Framework. Student satisfaction is not a simplistic measure and this study articulates the complexity of student belonging in Higher Education.     

‘... for more and better religious education’

Mahner and Bunge argue that (1) science and religion are incompatible, in order to develop their thesis, that (2) a religious education ... is an obstacle to the development of a scientific mentality, and that therefore we should only teach our children (3) how science explains the existence of religion in historical, biological, psychological and sociological terms, and that (4) religious education should be kept away from public schools ... I offer brief comments on each of these strands of their argument. Religionists, to use Mahner and Bunge's term, generally come from a specific stance so I shall make it clear, from the outset, that these remarks come from a Christian standpoint, even though many of them are much more widely applicable. Although I agree with some of the observations which Mahner and Bunge make, my conclusions are generally opposite to theirs on each of the four points.     

Some implications of ‘public/private’ space for professional identities in higher education

The interplay of public and private sector dynamics in higher education has impacted not only on the roles and identities of academic staff, but also on those of professional staff, who often have the task of bringing together, and achieving congruence between, activities that are geared towards the public good and also towards more commercially oriented enterprise. In this context, a new cadre of “blended professionals” has emerged, whose roles include initiatives associated with the social responsibilities of institutions to their communities, as well as more market-oriented, income generating projects (Whitchurch 2008, 2009). This paper reports on case material relating to a sub-set of these staff, working specifically in the area of Community and Business Partnership, and on the impact of their work for traditional management structures and relationships. It will be argued that, although unlikely to be acknowledged in formal accounts of the university such as organisation charts or institutional plans, these staff are responsible for providing and maintaining a framework that holds together more publicly oriented strands of activity, such as widening participation, with more privately oriented strands, such as enterprise. In so doing, they make extensive use of multi-professional team- and networking with a range of colleagues, both inside and outside the university, not only helping to re-balance their institutions, but also to protect them against undue organisational fragmentation and bureaucracy. They therefore contribute to an increasingly ‘mixed economy’ of broadly based portfolios of activity. The implications of these ‘public/private’ spaces and activities for professional identities are explored in the context of institutional management.     

Interactive fiction: An experience of the ‘Writers in education’ scheme

The idea of bringing children, students, and teachers into contact with living writers was initially implemented by the Literature Panel of the Arts Council of Great Britain in 1969, but since 1980 the scheme had devolved upon the Regional Arts Associations, embracing single visits, workshop sessions, talks, readings, and short-term and long-term residences and attachments of various kinds, with the Regional Arts Association generally bearing half the cost of fees, plus travel. The scheme now operates in a wide range of venues in addition to schools and colleges, incorporates in-service and residential courses, and includes illustrators, storytellers, dramatists, and performance poets alongside novelists, poets, and short-story writers.Fay Sampson is the author of 16 books for young people. For many years she has combined teaching and writing in England, winning awards from the South West Arts regional council for her work. She is currently a full-time writer and an adult education tutor in writing.     

From university to comprehensive higher education: on the widening gap between ‘Lehre und Leben’

The idea of a university is, ever since Humboldt, synonymous with the examplary life form. Here, the search for truth should be combined with an ambition to live a correct life. It is doubtful if Humboldt's idea of a university ever materialized, but it is nevertheless a regulative ideal of a rational society which within itself also contains the value of science and of education.The four imperatives of Humboldt's idea of a university are discussed: They are (1) the unity of research and teaching, (2) the unity of the various empirical sciences achieved through philosophy, once the queen of the sciences, (3) the unity of science and general upbringing (Bildung), and (4) the unity of science and universal enlightenment. There are tensions with regard to each one of these unities in the modern world, and the modern university has lost the extravagant position that it once occupied. It is argued in the end, however, that the greatest challenge for the modern university is to retain the spirit of the four imperatives, and seek to embody them in new, and modern forms.An earlier version of this article appeared in Studies of Higher Education and Research 1991(1), a newsletter distributed by the Swedish Council for Studies of Higher Education. We are grateful to the Council for permission to publish this revised version.