Canterbury Christ Church University is a co-proposer of the successful 4 year project,  Religious Identity, Bullying and Wellbeing at School: A Transnational Collaboration (ORBIT) led by Prof James O’Higgins Norman, of Dublin City University’s distinguished Anti Bullying centre.

Professor Bob Bowie, Director of NICER, has been nominated by the United Kingdom and elected as one of the UK representatives for the Management Committee and will lead Working Group 3 WG3: focussed on Religious Education, Spirituality, Wellbeing, and Inclusion. 

This COST Action investigates the correlation between religious identity, bullying, and wellbeing, and the implications for students, school communities, and European societies. lt will bring together  researchers, policy makers, and educators to consider the relationship between religious identity, wellbeing and inclusion.

The main coordination objective of this action is to share, evaluate and foster research in the association between religion and wellbeing and in the reduction of religious harassment and bullying in the school environment, to develop updated measures of school climate, and practitioner-based resources, techniques and tools.

Working Group 3 has specific objectives: focussed on Religious Education, Spirituality, Wellbeing, and Inclusion. 

(1) To investigate the relationships between Religious Education (RE), spirituality , wellbeing and inclusion; 

(2) To evaluate the impact of spirituality flourishing on pupils’ wellbeing and on their prosocial behaviour; 

(3) To evaluate how the schools’ curriculum is inclusive of the whole pupil population and welcomes students of different faiths and worldviews.

For more information see

https://www.cost.eu/actions/CA23120/