Premium
Secondary school teachers’ perspectives on teaching about topics that bridge science and religion
Author(s) -
Billingsley Berry,
Riga Fran,
Taber Keith S.,
Newdick Helen
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
the curriculum journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.843
H-Index - 36
eISSN - 1469-3704
pISSN - 0958-5176
DOI - 10.1080/09585176.2014.920264
Subject(s) - curriculum , school teachers , science education , mathematics education , subject (documents) , bridge (graph theory) , pedagogy , perception , religious education , statutory law , sociology , psychology , political science , library science , medicine , computer science , neuroscience , law
The question of where to locate teaching about the relationships between science and religion has produced a long‐running debate. Currently, science and religious education (RE) are statutory subjects in England and are taught in secondary schools by different teachers. This paper reports on an interview study in which 16 teachers gave their perceptions of their roles and responsibilities when teaching topics that bridge science and religion and the extent to which they collaborated with teachers in the other subject areas. We found that in this sample, teachers reported very little collaboration between the curriculum areas. Although the science curriculum makes no mention of religion, all the science teachers said that their approaches to such topics were affected by their recognition that some pupils held religious beliefs. All the RE teachers reported struggling to ensure students know of a range of views about how science and religion relate. The paper concludes with a discussion about implications for curriculum design and teacher training.