Preparing Primary School Teachers to Teach Religious Education

Overview & Synopsis

Under the guidelines for Initial Teacher Training, all potential primary teachers are required to learn about teaching religious education. However, religious education is not a high priority on ITT programmes and trainees may often have little introduction to it. Given the sensitive nature of religious education, what is the best way to prepare trainees for teaching religious education, and how far do we need to take into account their views about the subject? This article reports on a study involving trainees on a one-year PGCE course. All the students were preparing to teach in primary schools and were not specialist religious education trainees. The aim of the study was to discover how trainees felt about teaching religious education in the primary school and how far their feelings linked to their views about religion. The conclusions suggest that any effective preparation of the trainees needs to recognise the diversity of their starting points and allow them opportunity to reflect on their views of religion and religious education.