Religious education teachers’ perspectives on character education

ABSTRACT

This article presents the findings of a qualitative interview study undertaken with RE teachers (n = 30), working in English schools with secondary status. Despite recent policy interest in character education, there is a lacuna of information about the extent RE contributes to character education. The present study focuses on teachers’ perspectives on virtue literacy, a theme identified across participants in response to open-ended prompts about RE, religion and character. The participants in the sample hold different worldviews and work across a range of schools, providing a variety of informative perspectives. There were clear differences between the responses of participants’ from faith and non-faith schools regarding the contribution of RE to pupils’ virtue literacy. These findings mark a distinctive contribution to our understanding of the differences between RE in faith and non-faith schools.

KEYWORDS:

• Religious education
• character education
• virtue
• teachers

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. All data in this article was collected by the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, School of Education, University of Birmingham.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the John Templeton Foundation [39933].

Notes on contributors

Jason Metcalfe

Jason Metcalfe, MA (QTS) is a Research Associate in the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, School of Education, University of Birmingham.

Daniel Moulin-Stożek

Daniel Moulin-Stożek (né Moulin), MSc DPhil FHEA is a University Lecturer in the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge.