Whole‐class interactive teaching and learning in religious education: transcripts from four primary classrooms

Abstract

The UK Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) documents for religious education indicate two distinct areas for study that may be characterised as teaching about the main faith traditions and tackling puzzling problems. This paper presents a detailed analysis of whole-class interactive teaching and learning in one session in each of four classrooms. The analysis will present two sessions with younger pupils and two with older pupils. The sessions analysed will reflect the QCA distinctions. The mode of analysis employed focuses at the level of utterance on categories of utterance derived from studies of classroom talk in relation to learning intentions. In discussion we will describe the topography of the lessons and address two key issues, the distinctive features to these religious education sessions and the distinctions between types of lesson.

Teaching about Christianity: a configurative review of research in English schools

“…Studies of classroom talk also showed how teachers' overall aims affected pedagogical strategies. Eke et al (2005) studied whole-class interactive teaching in primary schools (see also Stern 2010), conducting discourse analysis according to two criteria: whether questions were specific to religious education or not, and whether they were teacher-centred or pupil-centred. Their analysis showed two broad patterns of questioning: 'puzzling questions' and 'understanding of the main religious traditions'.…”