Developing a new post‐liberal paradigm for British religious education¹

1. This is an extended version of my keynote address to the Association of University Lecturers in Religious Education at their annual conference in September 2006, at (on this occasion) Stranmillis University College, Belfast.

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to articulate a new ‘post‐liberal’ paradigm for religious education in Britain. As criticisms of British religious education have mounted over the last few decades, it is becoming increasingly obvious that familiar inherited ways of conceptualising the nature and practice of religious education in schools are inappropriate to contemporary educational needs. A new model is required to structure, justify and direct learning and teaching in religious education. This paper reviews the commitments, assumptions and beliefs that together constitute the current ruling ‘liberal’ paradigm, identifies and exposes its weakness and concludes by providing a tentative first draft of a new ‘post‐liberal’ paradigm for religious education, which holds more promise of realising socially positive educational aims than the current paradigm.

Notes

1. This is an extended version of my keynote address to the Association of University Lecturers in Religious Education at their annual conference in September 2006, at (on this occasion) Stranmillis University College, Belfast.

2. The XV International Seminar on Religious Education and Values, which met at Driebergen, Netherlands, from 30 July to 4 August 2006.