Event
Religious Education Summer School 2024
Do you teach Religious Education (RE)? Would you like to develop your subject knowledge? Would you like the guidance and support of a specialist Personal Tutor from Edge Hill University? Our Religious Education Summer School may be for you.
Following on from the hugely successful Summer Schools in the last three years, we are delighted to be able to offer a free summer school for a limited number of teachers of RE (primary and secondary) to improve their subject knowledge. Thanks to the generous support of Culham St Gabriel’s Trust and Edge Hill University Faculty of Education, we are able to make this a residential summer school at the stunning Edge Hill Campus in Ormskirk, running from Monday 22 July to Friday 26 July 2024.
The theme of the summer school is ‘Spooky Religion’. We are keen to explore the relationship between religion and the supernatural.
We are delighted to be able to welcome Dr Jenny Butler of Cork University to be our keynote speaker on Monday 22 July 2024.
Through the week there will then be seminars from our expert team of religion specialist tutors, two meetings with your allocated personal supervisor and a field visit to experience lived religion and worldviews, as well as plenty of time and space to work on your own question/area of development. The Friday will be an opportunity to present the fruits of your week’s labour to your peers and the tutor team. This will very much be a ‘work in progress’ and we would expect your completed project to be sent to us by Monday 2 September 2024. We hope to publish some or all of them on the Edge Hill website, and there may be opportunities to further disseminate your work.
Who should apply to the Religious Education Summer School?
The week is open to all teachers of RE and will be fully residential. All teaching, food, accommodation on our campus and travel to the field visits during the week will be included, thanks to the generosity of Edge Hill’s Faculty of Education and the Culham St Gabriel’s Trust.
During the week all attendees will be working on a ‘project’. This research topic could be practical or theoretical, so for example you might look at putting a scheme of work together to teach about the supernatural in Christianity. Or you might want to do a more ‘academic’ in-depth analysis of the Islamic theology of jinn. The potential scope is very broad – we are really interested to hear your ideas of how you would like to develop your subject knowledge as teachers of RE.
Application process
To apply for one of these limited number of free places on our summer school we ask you to write a short paragraph in answer to each of two simple questions:
- How would the summer school help your subject knowledge as a teacher of RE?
- What question or area of development would you like to work on during the week – and why?
Application is by completing this application form before 12pm on Monday 13 May 2024 together with some personal contextual details.
Successful applicants will be informed within two weeks from closing date.
What happened in previous years?
The projects themselves were varied, from creating a sequence of lessons to teach about misconceptions, producing resources for non-specialist teachers to teach about Jewish Identity, or reviewing a Hindu curriculum sequence, to a more academic discussion of what intellectual humility might mean in RE.
“It has been an incredibly valuable experience which has renewed me academically and given me a new enthusiasm for the classroom. I cannot wait to start putting this in to practice!”
“After a hard year I have left the summer school feeling challenged and inspired. This is honestly one of the best CPD sessions I have ever attended and what I think was particularly powerful was that we are a collection of teachers with a huge range of experience and yet we all left with practical takeaway. Often CPD works for one level of experience but not another, this was not the case. The chance to work in an academic environment was so valuable.”
“The opportunity to collaborate across primary, secondary, university has been invaluable. Thank you so much to everyone.”
“”I feel incredibly grateful that I’ve had this chance to develop my subject knowledge, engage directly with experts and academics in the field and research areas of personal interest that can help me support my school and develop my practice going forward. Thank you.”
We are delighted that we will be able to run another Subject Knowledge School for Teachers of RE in Summer 2024.
Read the 2021 papers Read the 2022 papers Read the 2023 papers