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This short Blog has some general information about NICER, the university research centre at Canterbury Christ Church University. The centre is just over 20 years older previously led by Professor James Arthur who focussed on issues related to citizenship education and character and who went on to found the Jubilee Centre at Birmingham University, then Emeritus Professor Trevor Cooling who led the centre to focus on globally influential What If Learning Christian pedagogy. Now led by me, Professor Bob Bowie the centre has expanded its remit to look at

• Spiritual Flourishing in three areas:
  • the highly influential £700k Faith in the Nexus project, the largest study of Children’s spirituality conducted in the Uk, which has shaped School inspections of schools of a religious character, directly informed the Church of England Growing Faith work for engaging with young people and focussing on listening to their experience and spiritual life, shaping the Church school ethos in hundreds of Church schools, and internationally informed the €600k 30 country COST Orbit European research project on anti religious bullying, correlating religious identity, bullying, and wellbeing.
  • an innovative research study of Church Toddler groups, conducting a unique study of spiritual flourishing among very young children.
  • a project on secondary school chaplaincy and the experience of children during COVID.
• The religious education focussed Texts and Teachers project focussed on Christian and Islamic sacred texts collaboratively with Professor Farid Panjwani from UCL, bringing about a new focus on Biblical and philosophical hermeneutics in UK RE classrooms and directly informing the Catholic Religious Education curriculum for the million children in Catholic schools in England and Wales with a renewed focus on how meaning is constructed through the life of the reader in the encounter with tradition texts.
• dialogue between science and religion classrooms with the influential £400k Science Religion Encounters Project which has informed teacher development and school development, including a program of development work across several Multi Academy Trusts of Church of England Schools and also informed a new £400k project in Wales cultivating inter disciplinary dialogue with Cardiff Met University.

The most recent project to begin is the new Faith, Worldview and Spiritual Oracy project working with a multi academy trust of 16 Church primary schools in the South East of England, seeking to support the development of positive speech in primary RE lessons and developing inclusive approaches for children to develop confidence of teachers in talk about value, the spiritual life and what is held to be sacred, in positive ways at a time of polarization.

Originally founded by a collaboration of universities belonging to the Cathedrals Group of Universities, if became a CCCUs funded research centre. With a focus on education in recent years it has attracted grants of over £1.5, shaping national Church school policy and practice in the Church of England and Catholic school sectors, developing practice and curriculum in religious education across the school sector, and playing a leading role influencing international curriculum and research policy.

Research with professional development resources

We publish research in peer reviewed journals and also professional resources to support teacher development, school development and the work of community education. For instance we published a range of resources about spiritual flourishing to support parents and teachers and church workers on supporting young people’s spirituality, and range of resources for schools around science and religion and dialogue in schools. You find out more about our publications in our university repository here.

Animating Meaning

We often develop animations to capture the insights and applications of our research. Here are some examples.

Who we work with:

We work with education professionals, teachers and school leaders and chaplains in Church school education in England, with diocesan education authorities, national church education bodies, local education authorities, academics across a range of disciplines (our research methods are usually mixed methods,) and universities and academic and professional networks around the world. Our funders are mainly charities with interests in improving work in these areas.

Find our more:

Visit NicerNews substack for the latest information about our research and projects. If you subscribe (with a free substack account) every new posting will arrive in your inbox.

Our legacy website nicer.org.uk has a lot more information about older projects .

This blog is also a great place to find out information and postings about our work.