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Background: during school lessons participants can face challenging pedagogical problems such as when science and religion topics interact. Potential types of pedagogical problem and what participants can do in response are unclear. Research designs exploring pedagogical problem solving should investigate teachers’ thinking processes and include pupil interpretations. Purpose: this theoretical paper builds on the Pedagogy Analysis Framework by integrating it with pedagogical problem-solving theory, illustrating the resultant extended Pedagogy Analysis Framework and Pedagogical Problem Typology using data from a video-based study of one science and one Religious Education (RE) lesson. The research design also builds on previous work by exploring primary school and RE pedagogy. Sample: one class of thirty 7-year-old pupils, and another class of 10-year-olds, each with their class teacher and teaching assistants. Design and method: four research methods were used (lesson video analysis, teacher verbal protocols, pupil group verbal protocols and individual teacher interviews). Data were video recorded (managed using NVivo). Six hours of video data were analysed using grounded theory methods by two educational researchers, the class teacher and two groups of pupils (three girls and three boys). The interpretivist theoretical perspective (symbolic interactionism) was underpinned by a social constructionist epistemology (hence the methodology is Straussian grounded theory). Appropriate criteria for evaluating the emergent grounded theory were used. Data were recorded in 2019. Results: This paper presents an extended Pedagogy Analysis Framework and a Pedagogical Problem Typology both illustrated with examples. Conclusion: the extended Pedagogy Analysis Framework and Pedagogical Problem Typology can help during pedagogy analysis to identify, understand and explain common and less common types of pedagogical problem. Novice-expert strategic dialogue can struggle for want of a shared vocabulary. This research design works with younger and older children.

School involvement in government initiatives to combat radicalisation is an international phenomena, in the UK government has focused on the role of the teacher in detecting radicalisation through the Teachers’ Standards of 2012, the Counter Terrorism Act 2015 and the activation of Prevent in 2011. The Prevent Duty has been described as a geographical pre-crime space characterised by surveillance, risk, fear and the notion of the pre-criminal. This article explores the way teachers understand their practice in this pre-crime space. The data discussed in this study is part of a larger study that interrogates the way teachers approach the teaching of Islam in schools. This article reports on a series of dialogical interviews and analyses the way 57 teachers with a particular responsibility for Religious Education have negotiated this new role. It argues that teachers commonly situate their practice in relation to Prevent in the context of a safeguarding agenda and that most legitimise their role through the employment of a discourse of vulnerability. The research suggests that the ways teachers approach issues of extremism in the classroom is in part informed by their existing views on racism, social class and political ideologies.

This paper examines the implementation of the Prevent Duty to actively promote fundamental British values in English Further Education (FE). After critically reviewing the history of Prevent and th...

This paper considers the way in which Christian Religious Education (RE) teachers articulate the difficulties and challenges they experience both in school and with their peers as they navigate their way through their Initial Teacher Education. The paper offers a unique exploration of the relationship between elements of the three discourses of faith identity, emerging professional identity and the requirements of a performative teacher training context. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with 184 student RE teachers across three universities. It became clear that all students interpreted the Standards and policy guidelines ambiguously, as being value-laden or value-free. The idea of the ‘good teacher’ as someone who was, by very definition, neutral and objective immediately made the faith position of students problematic. This is a key point in relation to the notion of performativity and education and the disproportionate impact it made on Christian students. It appeared as though many ...

This article explores the way pupils in English primary school perceive Islam through discussion of Islam in the media. The research suggests that pupils are aware of Islam as a world religion and of many of the images and popular discourses associated with Islam. The research also suggests that while a minority of pupils expressed explicit racist or prejudiced views about Islam many pupils appeared to perceive Islam and Muslims as ‘foreign’ and ‘alien’. The article questions the effectiveness of an approach to teaching Islam that does not include pupil’s negative preconceptions of religion and which focuses on presenting an idealised or monolithic version of Islam.

This article addresses teachers' understanding of spiritual development in public and religious schools in Boston and Chicago. It examines how teachers define spiritual development in different educational contexts and looks at the way they relate spirituality to a number of factors including community, identity, and character. The data from the research indicates that teachers understood spiritual development within the specific environment of their school but that they all located the need for spirituality within education as part of the reaction against the perceived negative side effects of modern society.

This article explores student teachers' attitudes to and experience of character and values education in schools and looks at their assessment of the opportunities provided by schools for the development of character. The data from over 1000 student teachers in two universities indicates that while they are overwhelmingly in favour of developing their skills in the area of moral development, their opportunities to do this are uneven and are dependent on their course and their teaching placement school. Whilst character education is seen as part of citizenship education in the school curriculum in England, the data indicates that it is not part of the formal curriculum of teacher education.

This article is based on research into the way student primary teachers experience religious education when they train in schools. The research findings suggest that the experience and quality of training in many schools is not adequate and that this experience undermines student confidence in relation to religious education. The author argues that despite the increased reliance on school as an arena for the training of teachers, in the case of religious education many student teachers do not have the opportunities to observe or teach religious education even where the school or student is keen to do so.

edited by Ednan Aslan, Oxford, Peter Lang, 2011, 309 pp., £420 (hardback), ISBN 978-3-631-63013-6Textbooks for religious education in the UK have been the focus of several recent investigations. ...

This is an investigation of Character Education in American public schools in the Chicago area. The research involved interviewing almost 700 children from a wide variety of schools and ages. The children were asked about their views on citizenship, Americanness and identity. They were also asked explicitly what they thought of Character Education. The results indicate that, despite a similar programme of education, teaching attitudes and teaching materials, the most marked difference between the children's responses correlated strongly with the type of school, magnet or non-magnet, they were attending. This indicates that the social and political background, which determines their school, does have an impact on the way that an educational programme is received and understood, at least in the terms of how children articulate their ideas, if not in terms of how these programmes affect their behaviour.

This article draws attention to the different approaches adopted in 21 Chicago schools towards the education of pupils in relation to beliefs and values. It presents the findings of the first stage of an ongoing research project, which explores models of religious, spiritual and moral education in American schools. The dangers of omitting an open and critical study of religion in the curriculum are considered.