The 11th. St. Gabriel's Teachers Weekend: will be held at Wokefield Park conference centre on the weekend of 29th-30th September 2012.

Funded by the St Gabriel's Trust, the conference is free to those teachers chosen to attend. The conference theme will be "From Here to Outstanding – Pushing the Boundaries for RE" and will provide professional development and discussion on the key issues in religious education today.

This weekend will create space for colleagues to engage and emerge confident in pushing the boundaries for outstanding RE. There are as many opportunities to reshape the subject as there are challenges. To register an interest in being invited to the conference, teachers are advised to contact Jessie Sim at the Culham Institute - jessie@culham.ac.uk

Living Religions Website

This is one of the outcomes of a project at Bath Spa funded by the HEA Philosophical and Religious Studies Subject Centre, focused on improving and extending the use of experiential elements and especially fieldwork placements for students on TRS degrees - a sort of LOtC for universities. There are useful resources such as profiles of communities who will host students, sample policies and paperwork, and the results of our research with TRS departments, communities and students. Other AULRE members have contributed - thanks Mark Plater - and we welcome active involvement. The website will only be really useful if it continues to grow and develop. So, find the 'get involved' button and get in touch - we'd welcome links with similar projects, examples of documentation, relevant research, further community profiles or ideas for communities we can contact, and (appropriately cleared) examples of student work.

Website

Savage cuts in ITE places

The places for ITE in England 2010-11 have just been announced and all English providers have suffered sever cuts in numbers. In 2009-10 there were 708 places for PGCE (RE) in the UK this coming year there will be 379 a cut of 46%. Worst effected is St.Mary's college Twickenham with cuts of 57% least effected Chichester and Bristol with cuts of 36%. It is likely that some providers will not deem these numbers viable and will close the courses. Is this the beginning of the end for teacher education in HE. As well as cuts in RE most other subejcts have also been cut.

For a spreadsheet of all providers - download

News / Feeds about the EBacc

• An Early Day Motion: About RE and the Ebac by Stephen Lloyd (Lib) - link
• Press TV: UK warned against neglecting religion [23/1/11] - link
• Guardian article: Secular society cannot afford to marginalise RE [23/1/11] - link
• Religion must be in EB: An article in the Observer [23/1/11] - link
• Any Answers [21/1/11] listen to 17:58 to 18:44
• TES article [21/1/11] - link and YouGov survey
• Hodder: Support from the publisher - link
• SSAT supports RE: John Townsley's letter to the DfE - read
• Divided Opinions: A range of views - link
• Any Questions: The Ebacc from 10:45 to 22:20 - link [14/1/11] available until 20/1/11 - link
• Question Time: Question on the Ebacc from 36:30 to 52:34 [14/1/11] available until 20/1/11 - link
• From the BBC website: RE teachers hope for English Baccalaureate changes - link [14/1/11]
• From the Press Association: Gove 'may revisit' Baccalaureate - link [14/1/11]
• Kevin Brennan on the EBacc - link [14/1/11]
• League Tables including EBacc - link [ 10/1/11]

Religious Education and Social and Community Cohesion

A new book by Michael Grimmitt (Oct. 2010, McCrimmonds - link). Like its predecessor, Pedagogies of Religious Education, it will prove invaluable as a text for student teachers following a PGCE course in RE, a source of reference for teachers undertaking research and research degrees in the subject, and, more widely, for all those who support the development of RE in their faith communities and through their membership of local SACREs. Hopefully it will provide an agenda for RE into the new decade.

• Does knowing about religion encourage pupils to have positive attitudes to diversity?
• Do faith schools help or hinder social and community cohesion?
• Should RE be more closely related to citizenship?
• What contribution can schooling make to the creation of a just and equitable society?
• Does RE relativise and domesticate religious traditions by imposing an alien and secularist structure upon them in order to study them?
• Should RE be seen to be an ally in combating extremism?

Teaching about Religions in European School Systems – Policy issues and trends

Luce Pépin, 2009, Network of European Foundations (NEF), 92 p.

This study was prepared within the framework of the “Religion and Democracy in Europe” Initiative of the Network of European Foundations (NEF). It provides an overview of the diversity of approaches in place in the European Union as far as teaching about religions in schools is concerned. While confessional education remains the most widespread approach, non-confessional and pluri-religious teaching, as well as teaching about “religious facts” seems to be gaining ground, in line with recommendations adopted at European level. The study identifies key issues and challenges facing EU education systems if teaching about religions is to contribute effectively to intercultural and citizenship education. It proposes a European reference framework on the conditions for high-quality intercultural teaching about religions and other convictions in state education.

The study is accessible in English and French on the NEF website: www.nefic.org

Westhill Seminars

Teachers and researchers in RE are invited to apply for a place at these high quality and inspirational weekend seminars

• 27th – 29th November, 2009, Glasgow; Teachers’ lives, pupils’ lives in RE with Prof Vivienne Baumfield and Professor Julian Stern
• 9-11th April 2010, Oxford; Creativity and religious education with Professor Michael Grimmitt and Professor Andrew Wright

Two 48 hour residential seminars linking RE classrooms with research, supported by the Westhill Trust, are open for bookings.

• The British Journal of RE and NATRE are co-operating with the Christian Education Research Committee to run these opportunities for professional development.
• The first, from 27-29th November at the University of Glasgow, will explore issues around teachers’ lives and experience.
• The second, in Oxford, from 9-11th April 2010, will be about creativity and RE.
• Details for teachers who want to join the seminars are on the NATRE website.
• Thanks to the generosity of the Westhill Trust, teachers will only need to pay £95 full board for a place on the seminars.
• Places are limited to 25 per seminar, so early application is essential

Full details and booking form can be found on the NATRE website (www.natre.org.uk)

Special Offer for students

Shap is making a special offer to students for its calendar of religious festivals. The 2009/10 calendar can be theirs for only £5.00 and they can get the calendar and the pictorial calendar for only £10.00. Download for more details.

New on-line resource

If you’d like to know how to cater for a mixed faith gathering or why so many people today are vegetarians, help is at hand. For the first time ever, the Shap Working Party on Education in Religions has published its annual journal directly on-line at www.shap.org – and the 2009 topic is Food, Faith and Community. This new e-journal includes a wide variety of free articles for teachers and others interested in learning more about religions and beliefs, with contributions from perspectives rarely found in conventional text books, for example Zoroastrian, Pagan, Bahá’i, Humanist, Orthodox Christian, as well as from the more familiar religions.

Also at www.shap.org: an audio-glossary of words from different traditions to help with pronunciation as well as definition; practical classroom ideas for primary teachers; the Shap advisory service; articles on topics from The Environment to Conflict and Reconciliation, from Diversity and Distinctiveness to Human Rights and Responsibilities…

Notes for editors

For more information about the 2009 e-journal Food, Faith and Community, please see http://www.shapworkingparty.org.uk/journals/articles_0910/editorial.pdf or contact marilyn.mason@virgin.net.

To contact any of the authors of articles in the e-journal, please email marilyn.mason@virgin.net.

For more about the Shap Working Party on Education in Religions, contact Chair Clive Lawton at clive@clivelawton.co.uk.

British Journal of Religious Education on Social Sciences Citation Index and Arts and Humanities Citation Index

Professor Robert Jackson, Editor of the British Journal of Religious Education, published by Routledge, is delighted to announce that the journal has been selected for inclusion in both the Social Sciences Citation Index® (SSCI) and the Arts & Humanities Citation Index® (A&HCI) backdates to issues from 2008.

The Social Sciences Citation Index® and the Arts and Humanities Citation Index®, accessed via Web of Science®, use “100% objective journal selection standards: Content is carefully evaluated and selected, meeting high standards in areas such as impact, influence, timeliness, peer review, and geographic representation. These standards assure users of superior results that cannot be matched by a free search engine or less selective database.“ – Thomson Reuters

The recent inclusion of British Journal of Religious Education reflects the high quality of articles published in the Journal and marks an important milestone in its continued development.

The journal publishes articles on religious education from around the world, many of them relating to themes such as citizenship education, intercultural education, human rights education and peace education.

For more information about the Journal, including information on how to submit an article, visit the British Journal of Religious Education homepage.

MA in Religious Education by Distance Learning

The course aims to develop the skills and understanding of those who already work or intend to work in fields connected with religious education in schools or in other branches of the education profession. The approach is pluralistic and multi-religious and our students may be of any faith or none.

Our MA is unique, drawing on the vast expertise of the Warwick Religions and Education Research Unit and delivered through distance learning methods. To discuss this further please contact Dr Julia Ipgrave julia.ipgrave@warwick.ac.uk

Click on the logo to visit our website.

Alternative spiritualities, the New Age and New Religious Movements in Ireland: an interdisciplinary conference, October 30th-31st, 2009.

For more details see the conference website

Inter-Faith dialogue by e-mail? A new book by Jackson, Ipgrave and McKenna as part of the REDCo project - more