ABSTRACT
Teachers may well feel that adopting a neutral stance – focusing on ‘the facts’, giving a ‘balanced’ picture – is most likely to be the ‘safest’ one to adopt. In practice, this is a very difficult strategy to achieve. The choice of facts you present (or withhold), the ‘expert’ opinions you share with your students and all the other educational judgments – in terms of the resources chosen and time devoted to the issue being explored – makes the effort of teaching religion and science issues in this way unrealistic. As with all controversial issues, however, your students need to be taught to examine critically the information they are given and the attitudes or values that have led to its production. So, rather than seeking to ‘not get involved’, you should be explicit about the aims and objectives of any exercise so that your students are aware of the circumstances in which they are being asked for their opinions and share the basis for their thinking. Such a proactive approach – framing the discussion, challenging uncontested assertions – is also beneficial if your students all hold very similar views, thus limiting the diversity of responses that can be obtained via elicitation or student discussion.
