Academics at Glasgow university (Bornean, McMahon and Coll) recently published a thematic analysis and review of the Education Research submission (REF 2021 UoA23 for those in the know) in the Research Excellence Framework, the United Kingdom’s means of judging the quality of research produced in its universities and provides an indication of the ‘state of the art’ across subject disciplines. 

You can read their research here: https://doi.org/10.1080/01416200.2024.2446359

Their focus was religion and religious education in the education to better understand the type of research relating to religion and education currently being undertaken in UK and  question  the future agenda for research on RE and religion in education contexts.

In summation, their conclusion notes that REF’s Panel C report’s section on Education does not mention religion. 2% of the REF Output submissions had a religious focus and they wonder if this is a diminishing field. 

They mention the research at Canterbury Christ Church University as something of an outlier, in terms of its submission to the last REF where 10% did have a religious focus, much of it from projects undertaken by NICER, nicer.org.uk, the university research centre at Canterbury that is focussed on religion in education. They noted considerable national debates impacted by this work, such as Trevor Cooling’s contribution to religious education debates.  Their observations underscore that CCCU is rare in having a specialised interest in this area, at least as measured in proportion to the submission as a whole. 

That religion is the focus of research beyond Theology and Religious Studies is, in my view, crucial. It is such a significant feature of life in public professional sphere and many other spheres of human activity that to not give it attention is, arguably, an expression of unconscious bias that seems not to recognise the presence of faith in life, in social, political, and philosophical matters of urgent importance. 

Religion is the biggest sponsor of education in Britain. 1.85 million children in England and Wales are educated in schools that have a religious character. NICER has made it’s research focus this sector of education for 20 years but it is apparent that the general education research community interest in this domain is waining even if stakeholders in education remain significantly committed to this dimension.  

Religion is a key feature of public political life, at the centre of key current debates around migration and integration. Political projects and debates around the rapidly growing young populations within Black or minority ethnic communities in Britain are a heightened focus at present for the civic and moral projects of schools and education policy.

Key existential questions about the nature of truth, facts, opinions, information and disinformation are stratified with a religious dimensions. Other world views are available from any supposed normative stance that we might think ‘everyone holds’ and in the swampy ground of the ever fragmenting confidence in truth found in the online world, the philosophical and theological tools that come through serious consideration of belief and truth claims are more in need than ever. 

Arguably a new range of beliefs have arisen to prominence in public life, with beliefs about the past, beliefs about what it means to be human featuring prominently in key debates of workplace justice, with an old debate about what is tolerated and what is not tolerate in terms of the manifesting of belief impacting employer/employee matters in education institutions, including universities. Next week colleagues from Canterbury and a few other universities and stakeholders and meeting to discuss research in Freedom of Religion and Belief in Education, a key point of inflection in many current debates. Of course these issues are not local to the UK. They have a global dimension, present in the increasingly migrant world  flows of population and ideas.

It will be interesting to see, if, in the next UK research excellence assessment, the UK research submission for education continues to show a declining trend of outputs concerned with religion or belief in education, or whether the rising prominence of so many issues of faith, belief and worldview in education in recent years has led to shift in research interest worthy of recognition in what universities submit to this process. 

We are getting on with research here at NICER with a short survey Calling all secondary school teachers in Wales! Please complete this short survey to help us understand your curriculum conversations and we’ll make a donation to charity. Galw ar bob athro ysgol uwchradd yng Nghymru! Cwblhewch yr arolwg byr hwn i’n helpu i ddeall eich sgyrsiau cwricwlwm a byddwn yn rhoi rhodd i elusen.

Happy New Year to you all.

Bob Bowie (PhD)
Professor of Religion and Worldviews Education
Director of NICER, a university research centre at Canterbury Christ Church University