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Action Research and the InterpretiveApproach to Religious EducationKevin O'GradyPublished online: 25 Jan 2013.
To cite this article: Kevin O'Grady (2013) Action Research and the Interpretive Approach to ReligiousEducation, Religion & Education, 40:1, 62-77, DOI: 10.1080/15507394.2013.745365
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Action Research and the InterpretiveApproach to Religious Education
KEVIN O’GRADY
Over the last decade action research has been used to interrogatethe interpretive approach to religious education as 1 strand ofreligious education research undertaken at the University ofWarwick. The 4 phases of this activity (an initial master’s study,a doctoral follow-up, a community of practice and subsequentintegrations into debates over religious education pedagogy) aretraced. Several arguments are advanced, intended to highlightprinciples for the study of religion in schools in any nationalcontext, though as we will see, the article also signposts furtherdesirable research and debate. The first principle advocated is thatfor the study of religion in schools to have integrity, pupils must beenabled to have a free, responsible dialogue with difference. Thesecond is that some form of action research is needed to facilitatethis dialogue. The third is that any legitimate educational theoryhas application in classroom practice and is capable ofmodification in the light of it. The interpretive approach toreligious education has shown itself to be legitimate in these ways.
KEYWORDS action research, interpretive approach, pedagogy,religious education
In this article I explain one aspect of religious education (RE) research asdeveloped at the University of Warwick, namely, the use of action research
Kevin O’Grady has 25 years of experience of teaching and leading religious education inEnglish secondary schools. He has studied at the universities of Lancaster and Warwick, gaininghis doctorate in 2007. Kevin was research co-ordinator of the Warwick REDCo community ofpractice, 2006–2009, part of the English contribution to the European Commission-fundedREDCo project. He is a member of the ongoing REDCo network and of the International Seminaron Religious Education and Values. He is widely published on religious education pedagogyand action research, his main interests. Kevin is Faculty Leader for Religious Education, Personal,Health and Social Education, Citizenship and Careers at Aston Academy and an Associate Fellowin the Warwick Religions and Education Research Unit. E-mail: [email protected]
Religion & Education, 40:62–77, 2013Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 1550-7394 print=1949-8381 onlineDOI: 10.1080/15507394.2013.745365
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to interrogate the interpretive approach. I account for four broad phases ofaction research on the interpretive approach. The first was a small-scale studyof one English secondary school class, the second was a similar but largerstudy of a different English secondary school class, the third was a multisiteproject undertaken by a team of researchers working as a community ofpractice, and the fourth is an ongoing attempt to place the findings fromthe first three in a critique of contemporary RE. The arguments advancedhere are that RE has integrity when pupils are able to have a genuine dia-logue with those whose beliefs are different from their own (dialogue withdifference) and that some form of action research is essential to the integrityof RE. The term religious education reflects the English provenance of thereported research and the fact that RE is the name of the English school sub-ject in which religious beliefs and values are, mainly, studied but it is notmeant exclusively. As will be argued in the conclusion, the ultimate aim isto identify some general principles for the study of religion in schools inany country, whether or not it is done through a subject called RE. Naturally,it is recognized that these principles are subject to further research anddebate. The four phases reported cover my master’s research, doctoralresearch, and the postdoctoral research that followed. Thus, the story contex-tualizes my doctoral work in a longer period of cooperation with ProfessorJackson and other Warwick-based colleagues.
MOTIVATION IN RE
In 2000 I joined the Warwick Religions and Education Research Unit on apart-time basis, as a master’s student. I simultaneously moved schools, con-tinuing to work full-time as a schoolteacher. At this time, I was 14 years intomy school teaching career. The English teaching profession collectively holdsa vast store of craft knowledge and, like many before me, I had been thor-oughly and gratefully inducted into its ways; though now, I wanted to seewhether academic research might give more edge to my understandingand practice. Since 1991 I had built up a highly regarded RE department ina large and prestigious school in Sheffield, but I left it for a nearby schoolreputed to be disorderly and dysfunctional. This shocked my colleagues,but I had acted deliberately; I was running out of new learning experiences.
A change of school necessitates a rethink of a teacher’s assumptions.The potential for professional learning is great but the new situation alsocreates vulnerability. One is dependent on various resources: personal, pastcareer, collegial, and intellectual. In my new school, it quickly became clearthat to thrive would require strong action. I took a stand of my own againstthe racism and violence that I found there, and enlisted the aid of some of theyounger pupils in doing so (the overall age range was 11–16). The parallelmaster’s course in RE was interesting but rather refined in contrast to my daily
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experience of leading the subject in ‘‘real life.’’ Still, I sensed that the concretemanifestation of a theory-practice gap was opportune. The case could beexamined, solved, and published to other teachers.
The main problem in the school was pupil disaffection, so my need wasto get the pupils fully engaged in learning. In response to this, Robert Jacksondirected me to previous literature on motivation in RE. The literature rangedfrom Harold Loukes’ criticisms of 1960s English religious instruction asChristocentric, remote, irrelevant, and failing to reach teenagers1 to LindaRudge’s complaint that 1990s English RE would not be meaningful to thesecular majority because it concentrated on religious traditions to theexclusion of their own views.2
Jackson’s own theoretical framework for the subject, the interpretiveapproach, has, as one of its three key principles that pupils’ own ideas andperspectives should be integral to the learning process (the key principleconcerned is that of interpretation),3 but there was a shortage of documentedexamples of how this might be done. In relation to the action research strandof Warwick RE research, it will be shown in this article that it is Jackson’s con-cept of reflexivity that is foregrounded. He may be right to say that pupilsshould make a running critical commentary on their learning in RE but theaction research strand takes up the question: What should teachers do nextas a response to this?4 An influence on my early action research was curricu-lum development undertaken in Sweden by Keijo Erikkson, in whichstudents’ own questions and beliefs were modeled as the basis for the REprogram but the Swedish system contained less prescribed content than inEngland and Erikkson’s students were older than mine.5
However, having established the pedagogical principle of needing toconnect RE content to the pupils’ own questions and experiences, I nowattempted to work out practical pedagogical strategies. I thought that I mightproceed through a practical investigation and was intrigued by the fact thatmy university institute of education could not really point me toward an aca-demic who could teach me how to do this. Interest in action research thatinvolved teachers in improving their own practice had apparently peakedin the 1970s and had since become dated. However, my literature searchesled me to the work of John Elliot,6 which convinced me that an actionresearch approach was what was needed to advance my ideas. His work alsoshowed me how to draw up an action research protocol, which is a plan fordefining a problem, implementing and appraising possible solutions to thatproblem, organizing and analyzing the data from the investigation, reflectingon those data, and identifying actions that might be useful for strengtheningpractice in future. The relation between these acts is cyclic (when the actionsare identified at the end, the researcher goes back to the implementationstage). Ideally, what is done is reported to other teachers via publication(s).
The foregoing reveal both the academic warrant of this article and itslimitations. An individual action research study does not supply us with
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universally applicable teacher improvement strategies, because it is a pro-duct of its own context. However, contexts are comparable, and teacherselsewhere may find in an action research report some useful points ofdeparture for investigations of their own. This is particularly true when,as has been the case in all of the action research here reported, the dataare triangulated with broader theoretical concepts. Later in the article,moreover, I will describe how my early action research was followed upwithin a community of practice, which allowed the joint investigation ofideas across several contexts. Though this also increases the generalizabilityof findings to some extent, it would still be mistaken to view actionresearch findings as facts; rather, they are action hypotheses, always subjectto reworking in new situations. In accounting for them, it is necessary totake up different perspectives at different points, including those of theindividual researcher, the group, the respondents, the reflectivepractitioner, and the research manager.
Returning to my own action research project, instead of making a studyof disaffected pupils, I carried out collaborative action research with oneclass, whose pupils were 12–13 years old. Their lessons with me had beenjudged by various observers to be successful. The idea of the project wasto look carefully at what worked, and then spread it out to the other pupilsin the school who had similar backgrounds. I began by giving the class thewritten plan for a topic on Islam and asking them to write on it, adding theirown questions and preferred ways of learning. I then incorporated theiradditions into a redrafted plan. In this way, the statutory content from thelocal agreed RE syllabus was covered and the pupils’ interests and prefer-ences could also be addressed.7 The topic was taught over the next 10weeks, with the pupils keeping diaries logging their levels of enjoymentand interest. In addition to reading these, I kept my own participant obser-vation notes on my impressions of their levels of enjoyment and interest.Every few weeks the students were interviewed in small groups about theteaching and learning. As the data set developed, adjustments were progress-ively made to the topic plan so that there could be more and more of whatcaptured the pupils’ attention. Because it was a relatively brief project, therewas only time to carry out one action research cycle.
Amongst the investigation’s findings was that the pupils found textbookwork boring.8 They were much more greatly stimulated by arts-based anddiscursive learning styles. When asked to role-play different situations, forexample, that of French Muslims when traditional Muslim clothes such asthe hijab were banned in public, they especially appreciated the way inwhich such tasks could place them in others’ shoes. There were examplesof intercultural learning: having at first raised questions about the strangenessof traditional Muslim dress and patterns of family life, the pupils reflected ontheir own experiences of fashion pressure and extended family networks,realizing that Muslim ‘‘culture’’ was not so strange to them after all. The
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school was entirely White, containing no Muslim students, although a coupleof miles away there existed sizeable Muslim communities.
As well as gathering some interesting empirical data, I was graduallydeveloping a view according to which research and teaching ought to beintimately connected. Teachers could use research as a way to get beyondcraft knowledge without devaluing it. They could be self-reflective abouttheir practices and make good use of pupil feedback. The embodied, situatednature of this kind of research makes it distinctive or perhaps ‘‘unique.’’9 Inhis introduction to Marilyn Cochran-Smith’s and Susan Lytle’s book aboutteacher research, Frederick Erickson coined a memorable phrase. He opinedthat in their approach, which stresses the agency of the teacher and theimportance of context, ‘‘the concrete has an irreducible centrality anddignity.’’10 I take this to mean that what actually happens in the classroommust be the central concern of educators and that it needs to be understoodon its own terms. At the same time, I do not underestimate the complexity ofthis demand. We are asked to represent fairly, and then reshape for better,the lived experiences of pupils in the classroom. This task will never be neator predictable but for educators, there is no more urgent or just cause.
MOTIVATION IN RE: DEVELOPMENTS
My initial action research study raised as many questions as answers andtherefore, as a doctoral project, I planned a longer sequel. What might beachieved by applying the action research methodology over several cyclesand not just one? How might my form of dialogical RE, in which pupilsreflected on their own assumptions, beliefs, and experiences in the light oftheir studies of others, develop in a multicultural rather than White school?The first study had suggested that foci on the arts and on teenage personalexperience were useful. Could better pedagogical ideas be constructed fromthese first brief leads, as a result of scrutiny of the relevant academicliteratures on creativity and adolescence? In addition, Jackson, as my PhDsupervisor, tasked me with gaining fuller knowledge of the sources of theinterpretive approach, including ethnography and hermeneuticalphilosophy, such as the writings of Clifford Geertz11 and of Hans-GeorgGadamer.12
Thus, it was hoped that a richer theoretical vocabulary and a longerproject would combine to bring forth more differentiated action researchfindings, within a more diverse school context. I therefore moved again, thistime to Sheffield’s most ethnically and religiously plural secondary school,and took a class that was representative of these diversities as the respondentgroup. This class included White Christians of different denominations, secu-larized White teenagers, Muslims of Pakistani heritage, Muslims of Somaliheritage, and some individual students with dual heritage permutations such
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as Chinese–Jewish and Pakistani Muslim–African Caribbean Christian. I beganpreparing the study with themwhilst they were 11–12 years old, and the field-work then took place over 18 months of their early teenage period.
There were four action research cycles, corresponding to the fourplanned RE topics (on Islam, Interfaith Relations, Inspiration, and Hinduism).The research methods were slightly adapted for the doctoral study. I contin-ued to make a participant observation record and to audiotape interviewswith small pupil groups, but shorter, sharper questionnaires replaced thepupils’ own diary writing. My aim was still to discover what motivated thepupils to engage and to learn. The process was still to plan lessons progress-ively so that there could be more and more of what had been found to besuccessful. What was new was that, from both researcher’s and respondents’perspectives, the repetition of this process over an extended period of timebuilt even higher levels of pupil trust and confidence. The pupils stoppedseparating the interview discussions from lesson processes, and the interviewdiscussions turned into valid educational experiences in their own right. JuliaIpgrave records exactly the same trend when reflecting on the empiricalresearch she carried out for her own Warwick doctoral thesis, also supervisedby Jackson.13
Throughout the taught topics, pupils’ dialogues—whether directly withone another, with religions more abstractly, or through text-book, video, orother resources relating to the traditions under study—proved to be livelysources of personal and ethical interest for them. They were not afraid toenter into verbal conflict and it appeared that their mutual disagreementswere valuable resources for the study of religious and nonreligious plurality.Some illustrative excerpts from their dialogue follow. In presenting these, dif-ferent speakers are distinguished and made anonymous through the use ofinitials. The teacher is O.14
O: What about JN’s idea of togetherness on the Hajj, that it can beinspiring?
N: And wearing the same clothes.ESM: I don’t think I’m that cynical but maybe I am about religion. People
going together and trying to touch this big lump of rock, and I justthink brainwashing, so, you know. And if it inspires them thengreat, they should carry on with it, but it doesn’t inspire me.
O: Brainwashing?AB: I don’t see it as brainwashing. It’s not brainwashing, it’s just lots
and lots of people showing their beliefs. Because you can be dif-ferent and have the same beliefs.
ESM: I’m not saying you can’t, I’m saying I think it’s brainwashing whenthey’re saying ‘‘once in your lifetime you have to go to such aplace and you have to walk seven times around this black stoneor whatever’’ and I think it’s controlling.
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JN: They’re not going to kill you if you don’t.ESM: But you’ll go to hell if you don’t do it.
N: I don’t think it’s brainwashing because you know—if they thinkthat it makes sense then it is true. It’s their belief isn’t it? Peopleare not forcing them to believe it.
ESM: I’m not saying they’re forcing them to believe it, maybebrainwashing was the wrong word.
O: It’s got a good discussion going.
The group quoted above included Christian, Muslim, and secularteenagers; the fact that intercultural and interreligious dialogue could nowbe experienced face-to-face by pupils was an important difference betweenmy master’s and doctoral studies. Yet if the above excerpt focuses on thenature of religious commitment, other dialogues focused more on personalreflection in the light of such commitment:
I: It makes you like, look at yourself, and think do I do this? Whetheryou’re good, or you just don’t care about anyone else.
O: Couldn’t you do that by yourself, without religious ideas tocompare yourself to, though?
I: It depends what kind of person you are. If you’re a really strongChristian or a really strong Muslim it’s just natural to you. Or ifyou’re a really nice person still. But if you’re like, bad, you justdon’t care.
PB: It’s good to see what other people are inspired by because if youdon’t have a good understanding of it . . . it can help you to under-stand what you’re inspired by. It’s like not something that youthink about every day so it helps you. It’s just something thatyou don’t think about, so it reminds you and helps you to thinkabout it.
At other times, religious or existential concerns such as peace provoked dia-logues on the state of the world:
M: Peace is an important thing to think about, because if we don’thave peace everybody is just fighting and nobody’s getting along.There’s loads of wars and everything and it makes you some-times feel . . . and you wouldn’t have friends without peace, oranything.
AS: I think peace is good ‘cause everyone should get along and every-thing. I did a poster on my own, and it was about peace between alldifferent religions, like Jews and Pakistanis.
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In their dialogue with the Hindu tradition, the pupils found that the belief inkarma was a useful source for ethical reflections. This way explored inrole-play activity:
O: Why is karma interesting?TA: Actions and consequences.O: What happened in your play?TA: There was a mugger, and then he got mugged . . .CD: And he expected help.JB: Not everything you do gets done back to you. Some things do.NG: Like JB, not everything comes back. But if you’re quite nasty to
someone, then you can expect something back. And that’s theexplanation. If you’re thinking of something nasty you shouldn’tdo it.
Reflecting on the study as a whole, however, the composite category ofdialogue with difference encapsulates every factor that motivated my pupilsto engage with RE. This category includes the opportunity to learn aboutothers whose ways and beliefs may be or appear to be different from one’sown, but it also includes the elements of existential interest, personal signifi-cance, and ethical interest. This is due to the nature of any true dialogue.Firstly, teenagers will have no reason to involve themselves in a dialoguewith those who are different unless they anticipate that the conversation willhelp them to clarify their own ideas or beliefs. They are not motivated byneutral, descriptive, or personally distant religious studies. Secondly, a truedialogue will involve comparison and contrast of personal values becausea conversation enabling teenagers to reflect on their own life stances willhave to have deep rather than trivial content. Thirdly, teenagers often havea keen concern for fairness and can be motivated by chances to debate issuesof right and wrong.
As a creative process, a dialogue with difference is resonant with MikhailCsiksentmihalyi’s view that creative growth properly takes place notindividually, but in a social system, such as a school class.15 Pupils are ableto build their own values and stances in relation to those of other pupils, andthe religious traditions under study. For John Cotterell, the reason that ado-lescents specifically are motivated to take part in such a dialogue is that theirprimary educational need is to envision their own possible adult selves.16 Itcould indeed be argued that my insights on dialogue can be found in theworks of other writers or argued from first principles, and that a four-cycleaction research study was not necessary to establish them. I accept that view.My claim to originality rests in the empirical account I have made, its situatedcharacter in early 21st century Sheffield, UK, and the pedagogical follow-upsthat are documented.
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Therefore, as was anticipated above, another criticism that might followis that this same situated character of the data prevents their generalization toa broader pedagogy. In the doctoral phase, I settled this issue by arguing thatthe results of action research projects constitute not final findings but possi-bilities for change. Action research data lie between positivist certainty andpostmodernist skepticism. It is recognized that the outcomes are productsof a specific location but also recognized that this location is comparableto others. Thus, a category such as dialogue with difference provides ahypothesis for a RE action researcher operating not in Sheffield but in Bir-mingham, UK (where one of our subsequent community of practice studieswas sited), or Stavanger, Norway (where a partner community of practicewas instituted), or elsewhere. It is a cue to follow, a lead to pursue. Oncepursued, the conclusions may change, but they can be compared andcontrasted with the originals and with those emerging from other studies;over time, a more differentiated data set appears and the impact of contextscan be appreciated even more. At the close of my PhD thesis, I called for anetwork of RE action research studies to develop the pedagogical descriptionexactly along these lines. Jackson and I inaugurated the Warwick REDCoCommunity of Practice as the answer to that call.17
RESEARCHING RE THROUGH A COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE
The Warwick REDCo Community of Practice was conducted under theauspices of the 2006–2009 EC-funded REDCo project (Religion in Education.A Contributor to Dialogue or a Factor of Conflict in transforming societies ofEuropean Countries?). This major project brought together researchers fromeight different European countries to carry out multi-modal, national andcross-national studies of the potential of RE (formulated variously in thedifferent countries) to increase understanding and reduce tension in the con-tinent.18 The theoretical underpinning of the REDCo project as a whole wasthe interpretive approach.19
The community of practice was a key element of the English contri-bution. In the community of practice, the potential of the interpretiveapproach to create the kind of RE necessary to promote intercultural under-standing was tested through a series of action research studies organized by ateam of nine English researchers, but this was a test from an existing basis.Jackson, Ipgrave, and I acted as research managers and leaders; a secondtheoretical departure point for the community of practice was that the dialo-gical RE documented in Ipgrave’s and my doctoral studies should now beextended and investigated, through action research, in further contexts.20
Four of the studies were based in secondary schools, two in university initialteacher education courses, and one in a local authority.
The notion of a community of practice was adapted from that of EtienneWenger, whose concept of situated learning was essential to our study. The
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idea of a community of practice is that a group of researchers forms in orderto undertake related studies over a period of time sufficient to allow substan-tial joint support and constructive criticism. Ideally, a community of practicewill include both experienced and novice researchers, in this way includingpotential for novices to learn by doing so alongside experts, and for expertsto take a fresh look at established ideas; each can also try taking on theother’s role.21
I have already shown why it is necessary to consider the impact of thecontext in which action research data arise. In the Warwick REDCocommunity of practice, each study progressed in conversation with the othersand so each research process was context-directed but not context-limited.We alternated phases of action (when individual researchers worked at theirsites) and reflection (when the team met for weekend conferences or whenresearch was written up). Every study also referred hermeneutically to theconcepts of the interpretive approach, making room for the propositionalknowledge perhaps devalued in Wenger’s approach, which can be criticizedfor focusing too exclusively on the data that arise through the activities of thecommunity of practice itself.22 Our Warwick community of practice addition-ally had productive debates with the researchers in the other REDCo nationalteams. The reflexive research process and wide set of reference points for ourwork meant that we overcame the problems rightly identified by Martyn Ham-mersley regarding both action research and communities of practice: that theaction can stand in a contradictory relation to the research, and that a com-munity of practice can be too insular.23
Similarly, my action research methods were adapted to purpose in eachof the individual community of practice studies undertaken. Some of the stu-dies incorporated several cycles, others a single cycle. Some focused more onclassroom intervention, others on understanding of classroom processes. Theuniversity-based ones made use of student teachers’ written assignments asdata sources.
Some of the studies will receive commentary in the remainder of thissection, in order to illustrate aspects of the community of practice’s workand findings. Other community of practice studies will be referred to inthe next section, whose purpose is to show that our findings are relevantto broader debates about RE and pupils’ freedom of belief.
The two university-based community of practice studies remodeled theinterpretive approach as a framework for the preparation of teachers to teachRE, rather than a framework for pupils’ learning. Judith Everington focusedon the relationship between practitioner and academic theorizing.24 Her stu-dents problematized the interpretive approach in relation to their classroomexperiences and even their own personal religious faith, for example, byobjecting to the notion of the internal diversity of religious traditions anddebating the meaning of the word truth. It was her action researchorientation that allowed her to create the exploratory conditions needed
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for these discussions. Similarly, for Linda Whitworth, the principles of theinterpretive approach were best illustrated to her students by asking themto reflect on a particular teaching or learning activity that they had tried inthe classroom, rather than by more abstract contrast to concepts from adifferent pedagogical framework.25
Joyce Miller’s local authority-based study had similar objectives, but therespondents were experienced rather than beginning teachers. A part of theinterest of this study was that it began to imply a potential tension in therelationship between two concepts of the interpretive approach, represen-tation, and interpretation. Once teachers’ awareness of diversity within Islamwas expanded, they found it harder to make consistent links between theirvalues and those of Muslims. Obviously, the study was of relatively short dur-ation and, given a longer period, perhaps this tension could be reduced.26
One of the secondary school studies certainly added a new perspectiveto the principle of interpretation. We might habitually understand takingaccount of youngsters’ existing ideas and experiences to mean takingaccount of their religious or nonreligious perspectives, but Gemma O’Dellconcentrated on the power of gender socialization to form their attitudesto religion.27
RE AND FREEDOM OF BELIEF
Why do I now turn to a discussion of RE and freedom of belief? I do so toillustrate the following points. Over the last 10 years our action research stu-dies have generated a considerable data set on RE, in terms of pupil experi-ence, pedagogy, and teacher preparation. The data are grounded and retainfreshness and immediacy for the present. As such, it is valuable for them tobe integrated into contemporary debate about the subject. A further hypoth-esis about action research data is that they may be readable through alterna-tive conceptual lenses—for example, because they are initiated through aresearcher’s desire to find out about pupil motivation does not mean thatthey are limited to this use. As was earlier pointed out, the interview discus-sions recorded during Ipgrave’s and my own PhD studies took on a life andmeaning of their own.
As well as within the REDCo project, our findings have found a placewithin wider international debate on religion and education. As a contri-bution to the 2010 International Seminar on Religious Education and Values,I reinterpreted data from the community of practice secondary school studiesin relation to the seminar’s theme of freedom of belief.28 Drawing on theWarwick REDCo community of practice work of O’Dell, Nigel Fancourt,29
and Amy Whittall,30 I offered a definition of freedom of belief within RE asbased on the capacity for dialogue with difference: the capacity to reflecton others’ beliefs and values, and so, in a responsible and intelligent manner,
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to develop deeper awareness of one’s own beliefs and values. It is evidentthat teenagers build such capacity through intrinsic interest rather than exter-nal pressure; for example, Fancourt even showed how tests and examina-tions can restrict its growth. O’Dell showed how learning about religionmay improve if boys are encouraged to see their own ‘masculine’ identitiesas diverse and open to reconstruction. Furthermore, Whittall reportedresearch where more able students gain in motivation because they areenabled to set and investigate their own questions about religion. Suchpupil-centered, discursive emphases, however, are hard to sustain in aschool culture dominated by crude, pre-determined outcome measures, asin England generally.
The issue of freedom of belief in RE cannot be explored in the necessarydepth here, but I would argue that our research has begun to identify someproblems that ought to be followed up more fully later. Whilst schoolsshould, obviously, challenge and support pupils to get the best possible qua-lifications, our research does suggest that distortions of RE subject contentand process will result from an overemphasis on examination training. In thisrespect, our findings join with those of other large-scale funded projects. TheDoes RE Work? researchers report that in much of the RE teaching that theyobserve, complex religious issues are reduced to formulaic, prepackagedanswers, and religion is stripped of its strangeness. They note an undue influ-ence of examination boards, textbook authors, and grade pressures on RE inthe UK, where it appears necessary that a balance be restored between thedemands for good qualifications and the demands for sound educationalprocesses.31 Although those elsewhere might analyze their own nationalsituations in light of these remarks, in the United Kingdom the need is forthe relationship between learning and assessment to be appropriatelyreordered. Assessment should serve learning, never vice versa.
CONCLUSION: ACTION RESEARCH AND THEINTERPRETIVE APPROACH TO RE
Returning to action research, some people still respond with polite curiosityto my commitment to a mode of research whose day has supposedly passed.To me, such remarks say little about the adequacy of action research andmuch about two chronic ailments of contemporary RE: the domination ofthe U.K. school subject by crude target-based attainment training and thehabit, perhaps more widespread in international educational academia, ofpassing learned disputations over the heads of school teachers from onescholar to the next. These ailments are related given that both strip teachersof reflective capacity. Again, readers will wish to evaluate these claims inrelation to their own national situations, but those that follow are intendedto have general applicability in principle.
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The interpretive approach is widely regarded as a useful framework forthe planning and assessment of RE teaching. As well as indicating how itsreflexivity element can be handled, that is, what a teacher might do next hav-ing reflected on pupils’ views of the learning process, the action researchershave provided some models of how the interpretive approach may beextended in practice. These models include my own attempts to harnessthe approach to issues over pupil motivation, Fancourt’s extension of theinterpretive approach to consider issues of assessment, and O’Dell’sinclusion of gender issues not anticipated in the original formulations ofthe approach. All of these stand or fall on their own merits, but all reflectthe potentials of the interpretive approach to inspire and underpin actionresearch investigations and of action research to interrogate educationaltheory.
As pedagogy, action research enables teachers to act on the reflectionsthat pupils make on the learning process. It offers teachers a frameworkwithin which to collaborate with pupils in a more equal relationship thanis the norm. As action researchers, teachers take pupil feedback on lessonsand view this feedback as useful data. They analyze these data and use themto try to work out what kind of teaching will be more useful and interestingto the students in the future, and then they try to change their teaching inways that will provide students with better learning experiences. Acting onthe data to change lessons is vital because pupils become cynical if nothingchanges in response to their voices. In the absence of an action researchorientation, where teachers ask pupils for feedback on educational experi-ences to try to change and improve these experiences in the future, the actof asking pupils for their views will be a patronizing one, perhaps designedto satisfy managerial or policy demands that pupils should be ‘‘consulted.’’
As research, action research enables retheorizing of concepts in the lightof the empirical interrogations. This too is vital, because concepts undergotransformation in classroom practice; for example, the fair representationof a religious tradition may mean one thing to one scholar and another thingto a group of teenagers or student teachers in a particular time and place.Through some of the community of practice studies, we have seen that theprinciples of the interpretive approach and the methods of action researchhave uses in teacher as well as pupil education.
Without the theory–practice=practice–theory hermeneutic, actionresearch is self-contradictory and RE inadequate. The fields of religion andadolescent development are complex indeed, meaning that related edu-cational attempts need full and grounded theorizing. Because RE has toinclude attention to pupils’ own values development, their own voices arecrucial.32 The strength of the interpretive approach is its recognition of thesefactors, even though the action research was needed for a modus operandi tobe achieved. At the same time, the action research studies—especially thecommunity of practice ones—stretched out the concepts of the interpretive
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approach and added a self-critical layer. This is as it should be, because noeducational theory untested in school has legitimacy. Educational theoristsshould be in close and continual contact with teachers or, as has been shownin this article, individuals can sometimes combine the roles; teachers shouldat least to some extent operate as theorists so that they are not reduced tomere functionary status and so that they retain some professionalism.
The worth of the interpretive approach depends on the same criteria asshould be applied to any educational theory: its potentials to develop teach-ing and learning and to be developed through teaching and learning. Theinterpretive approach meets these criteria, uniquely amongst theories ofRE, because others have yet to be subjected to the rigors of action research.Action research investigations are never complete, however, and the inter-pretive approach will no doubt give rise to further interesting developmentsin the future.
Our action research has also shown that the interpretive approach hasthe potential to develop teaching and learning in RE in ways that defendthe subject’s integrity. The issue of how the practice of RE can have integrity,as well as being effective in enabling pupils to achieve good examinationpasses in the subject, merits a separate discussion of its own. In some ways,the present article is a signpost to that discussion. For now, it is possible toidentify some aspects of what integrity in RE might mean. On a conceptuallevel, religious traditions would be represented in an unstereotypical way.On an ethical level, pupils would enjoy freedom of belief. To put the issueat its most categorical, they would be able to experience a free and genuinedialogue with difference instead of being used as currency for teachers’ orschools’ performance statements. Narrow, performative agendas currentlythreaten RE pupils’ freedom of belief in England and will do so whereverthey become dominant. By emphasizing broad, humane educational values,the interpretive approach offers a helpful corrective to this trend.
NOTES
1. Harold Loukes, Teenage Religion (London: SCM Press, 1961).
2. Linda Rudge, ‘‘‘I am Nothing. Does it Matter?’ A Critique of Current Religious Education Policy and
Practice on behalf of the Silent Majority,’’ British Journal of Religious Education 20, no. 3 (1998): 155–165.
3. Robert Jackson, Religious Education: An Interpretive Approach (London: Hodder and Stoughton,
1997), 88.
4. The ways in which the early action research enhanced the interpretive approach are discussed in
Robert Jackson, Rethinking Religious Education and Plurality: Issues in Diversity and Pedagogy (London:
RoutledgeFalmer, 2004), 103–105.
5. Keijo Eriksson, ‘‘In Search of the Meaning of Life: A Study of the Ideas of Senior Compulsory
School Pupils on Life and its Meaning in an Experiential Learning Context,’’ British Journal of Religious
Education 22, no. 2 (2000): 115–127.
6. John Elliott, Action Research for Educational Change (Milton Keynes, UK: Open University Press,
1991).
7. In maintained schools in England religious education content is set down in a syllabus agreed by
local authority members, teachers and representatives of faith groups.
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8. Kevin O’Grady, ‘‘Motivation in Religious Education: A Collaborative Investigation with Year Eight
Students,’’ British Journal of Religious Education 25, no. 3 (2003): 214–225.
9. Marilyn Cochran-Smith and Susan Lytle, eds., Inside Outside: Teacher Research and Knowledge
(New York: Teachers’ College Press, 1993).
10. Frederick Erickson, ‘‘Introduction,’’ in Inside Outside: Teacher Research and Knowledge, eds.
M. Cochran-Smith and S. Lytle (New York: Teachers’ College Press, 1993, i-xiv), iii.
11. Clifford Geertz, ‘‘Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture,’’ in The Interpret-
ation of Cultures, ed. Clifford Geertz (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 3–32.
12. Hans Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (London: Sheed and Ward, 1975).
13. Julia Ipgrave, ‘‘Inter faith Encounter and Religious Understanding in an Inner City Primary School’’
(Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Warwick, 2002), 1.
14. Kevin O’Grady,Motivation in Secondary Religious Education (unpublished PhD thesis, University
of Warwick, 2007).
15. Mikhail Csiksentmihalyi, ‘‘Implications of a Systems Perspective for the Study of Creativity,’’
in Handbook of Creativity, ed. R. Sternberg (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999),
313-333.
16. John Cotterell, Social Networks and Social Influences in Adolescence (London: Routledge, 1996).
17. Julia Ipgrave, Robert Jackson, and Kevin O’Grady, eds., Action Research and the Interpretive
Approach: Researching Religious Education through a Community of Practice (Munster, Germany:
Waxmann, 2009).
18. Wolfram Weisse, ‘‘Reflections on the REDCo Project,’’ British Journal of Religious Education 33,
no. 2 (2011): 111-126.
19. Robert Jackson, ‘‘The Interpretive Approach as a Research Tool. Inside the REDCo Project,’’ British
Journal of Religious Education 33, no. 2 (2011): 189–218.
20. The relationship between interpretive and dialogical religious education is discussed in Robert
Jackson, Rethinking Religious Education and Plurality: Issues in Diversity and Pedagogy (London: Routle-
dgeFalmer, 2004), 124–125. The two types of pedagogy are seen as closely linked because both emphasise
reflexivity, education about others and self-awareness.
21. Etienne Wenger, Communities of Practice (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
22. Martyn Hammersley, ‘‘What Can the Literature on Communities of Practice Tell us about Edu-
cational Research? Reflections on Some Recent Proposals,’’ International Journal of Research & Method
in Education 28, no. 1 (2005): 13.
23. These issues are debated in Martyn Hammersley, ‘‘Action Research: A Contradiction in Terms?’’
Oxford Review of Education 30, no. 2 (2004): 165–181; Hammersley,‘‘What Can the Literature on Com-
munities of Practice Tell Us About Educational Research?’’, 13; Kevin O’Grady, ‘‘Is Action Research a Con-
tradiction in Terms? Do Communities of Practice Mean the End of Educational Research as We Know It?
Some Remarks Based on One Recent Example of Religious Education Research,’’ Educational Action
Research 19, no. 2 (2011): 189–199.
24. Judith Everington, ‘‘The Use of the Interpretive Approach in the Professional Development of
Student Teachers of Religious Education,’’ in Religious Education Research through a Community of
Practice: Action Research and the Interpretive Approach, eds. Julia Ipgrave, R. Jackson, and Kevin O’Grady
(Munster: Waxmann, 2009), 100–113, 106ff.
25. Linda Whitworth, ‘‘Developing Primary Teachers’ Understanding and Confidence in Teaching
Religious Education,’’ in Religious Education Research through a Community of Practice: Action Research
and the Interpretive Approach, eds. Julia Ipgrave, Robert Jackson, and Kevin O’Grady (Munster, Germany:
Waxmann, 2009), 114–129, 121–127.
26. Joyce Miller, ‘‘Raising Humanities Teachers’ Understanding of Their Pupils’ Religious and Cultural
Backgrounds,’’ in Religious Education Research Through a Community of Practice: Action Research and
the Interpretive Approach, eds. Julia Ipgrave, Robert Jackson, and Kevin O’Grady (Munster, Germany:
Waxmann, 2009), 130–149, 142 ff.
27. Gemma O’Dell, ‘‘Action Research into Teaching about Religious Diversity: Pedagogical and Gen-
der Issues in the Application of the Interpretive Approach,’’ in Religious Education Research through a
Community of Practice: Action Research and the Interpretive Approach, eds. J. Ipgrave, R. Jackson, and
K. O’Grady (Munster, Germany: Waxmann, 2009), 56–71.
28. Kevin O’Grady, ‘‘Freedom of Belief for English Religious Education Pupils: Some Findings from
the Warwick REDCo Community of Practice’’ (conference paper, presented at Session XVII of the Inter-
national Seminar for Religious Education and Values, Saint Paul University, Ottawa, July 29, 2010).
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29. Nigel Fancourt, ‘‘Reflexive Assessment: The Interpretive Approach and Classroom Assessment,’’ in
Religious Education Research through a Community of Practice: Action Research and the Interpretive
Approach, eds. Julia Ipgrave, Robert Jackson, and Kevin O’Grady (Munster: Waxmann, 2009), 84–99.
30. Amy Whittall, ‘‘Developing Appropriate Principles and Strategies for the Teaching of Gifted Stu-
dents of Religious Education,’’ in Religious Education Research through a Community of Practice: Action
Research and the Interpretive Approach eds. Julia Ipgrave, Robert Jackson, and Kevin O’Grady (Munster,
Germany: Waxmann, 2009), 114–129.
31. James Conroy, ‘‘Does RE work?’’ (conference paper, presented at Session XVII of the International
Seminar for Religious Education and Values, Saint Paul University, Ottawa, July 26, 2010.).
32. For U.S. readers this is a key but hard point to consider. On the one hand, our English research has
repeatedly shown that a religious education remote from pupils’ own views and concerns will fail to inter-
est them. On the other hand, incorporating pupil expression of religious experience or attitude into cur-
riculum teaching and learning about religion would be problematic in U.S. public educational institutions.
This was often a sticking point in our REDCo discussions with our French colleagues, whose situation is
comparable to that of the United States.
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