Reconciling Catholic responses to Religious Education reform in England – empirical and analytical reflections

Abstract

Recent policy reforms regarding Religious Education in England and Wales have provoked a variety of reactions among faith communities, ecclesial stakeholders, academics, practitioners, senior leaders and students themselves. In this article we assess the situation in the Catholic context using empirical and analytical tools which shed light on the nature of the subject in a manner relevant to the non-faith sector and internationally. We demonstrate that vectors of reform have drawn attention to key pedagogical aporia in Religious Education such as 'academic accessibility v academic rigour', 'confessional truth v critical doubt', 'exclusivity v inclusivity' and 'information v formation.' Although these risk fomenting partisan binaries at an important time in the evolution of the subject, we contend that such tensions actually underpin the discipline, helping to articulate both its peculiarly holistic ambition and its transformative possibilities. Thus understood, Religious Education becomes a spacious place, deliberately mapped by co-ordinates of paradox.