ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 describes the presence of some Religion and Worldviews motifs within established RE practice: recognising the internal diversity of religious traditions, enabling pupils to consider their own values development, and (if to a lesser extent) including the study of non-religious worldviews. A key focus is the interpretive approach to RE and developments associated with the Warwick Religions and Education Research Unit (WRERU). The chapter looks first at the empirical research on religious communities carried out by Robert Jackson and Eleanor Nesbitt, and their findings that those communities cannot be easily bounded and that the identities of individuals are affected by multiple interactions. Secondly, Jackson’s interpretive approach is re-presented as a pedagogical application of these findings. Thirdly, an extension of its pedagogy through action research is revisited. Jackson’s and Nesbitt’s findings regarding religious communities are reminiscent of the concept of worldview reported in Chapter 4, and the principles of the interpretive approach also anticipate the hermeneutical approach to Religion and Worldviews noted in Chapter 1. Even if the approach might be updated to cover 21st century superdiversity and reflect recent research on the non-religious, it has supported educators in different countries to address diversity. For some, Andrew Wright’s critical realism provides improved engagement with questions of truth, but his position overlaps with that of Jackson.
