Society for Educational Studies Annual Book Prize winner: 2nd PrizeThis ground-breaking volume draws upon a rich and variegated range of methodologies to understand more fully the practices, policies and resources available in and to religious education in British schools. The descriptions, explanations and analyses undertaken here draw on an innovative combination of policy work, ethnography, Delphi methods, Actor Network Theory, questionnaires, textual analysis as well as theological and philosophical insight. It traces the evolution of religious education in a post-religious age from the creation of policy to the everyday experiences of teachers and students in the classroom. It begins by analysing the way in which policy has evolved since the 1970s with an examination of the social forces that have shaped curriculum development. It goes on to explore the impact and intentions of a diverse group of stakeholders with sometimes competing accounts of the purposes of religious educations. It then examines the manner in which policy is, or is not, enacted in the classroom. Finally, it explores contradictions and confusions, successes and failures, and the ways in which wider public debates enter the classroom. The book also exposes the challenge religious education teachers have in using the language of religion.

AcknowledgementsIntroductionPart I: Methodological and Structural Questions1. Methodological Considerations: Learning from the Inside2. The Strange Position of Education in Religion in Contemporary Political Culture3. The Complexities of UK Policy and Practice4. Conceptual Questions, Confusions and ChallengesPart II: The Substance of Religious Education5. Citizenship and Committed Pluralism: The Place of the 'other' in RE's Social and Civic Aims6. Religious Education and the Nature of Texts7. Stories We Tell Ourselves: Making Sense of Religious Education in Communities of Practice8. Religious Education and Student PerspectivesConclusions: Imagining and re-Imagining Religious EducationAppendicesIndex