Introduction

This chapter attempts to explore two central concerns in and for Religious Education (RE) in a liberal democratic society. The first is a marked decline in functional religious literacy, and the second, that such functional illiteracy both feeds off and nurtures a kind of pathology in the practices of RE that militate against the seriousness of claims to the theological. The discussion here is informed by, but not confined to, the findings of a major three-year ethnographic study of RE practices in 24 schools across the UK (Conroy et al, 2013). The study comprised a series of interlocking steps, beginning with a two-day expert Delphi seminar (Baumfield et al, 2012), out of which emerged a professional focus on the particular shape and challenges of RE. The next step in this multidimensional exploration was to send five ethnographers into the schools over a two-year period for a minimum of 10 days in each location. The observation schedule included the description and analysis of the geographical location, physical and pedagogical/ material resources, curriculum documents, informal settings and class lessons (largely focused on Key Stage 4/Year 11 – the final year of compulsory RE). Additionally we conducted interviews, focus groups and coffee conversations, and a student attitude survey. In a preliminary analysis of the data, we deployed a heuristic based on Kerry's (1982) work on a tripartite hierarchical structure of teacher–student linguistic interactions: data, concept, abstract. In a penultimate iteration, a number of drama specialist teacher education students were invited to analyse the data for four emerging themes and to create five-minute dramatic vignettes (adapting insights from Boal's Forum Theatre workshops; see Boal, 1979; Lundie and Conroy, 2012). During a launch of findings conference in 2011, the students performed the vignettes in front of high school students who, in turn, acted as a further focus group. Finally, we conducted a series of workshop conversations with an audience of teachers, advisers and academics. This extensive and complex data set has enabled us to burrow into the nested (Conroy and Lundie, 2015: forthcoming) interior of RE practices. In doing so we are acutely aware that the ensuing descriptions of RE and its impact on religious literacy and illiteracy are not, in any straightforward sense, representative.