John I’Anson & Alison Jasper 
Schooling Indifference [PDF ebook] 
Reimagining RE in multi-cultural and gendered spaces

This book is concerned with re-imagining Religious Education (RE) as this is practiced in schools, colleges and universities throughout the UK and in a wide variety of international educational contexts.

On the basis of a critical analysis of current theory and practice in RE the authors argue that this educational framing is no longer plausible in the light of new theoretical developments within the academy. A new educational approach to RE is outlined that challenges students to think and practice differently. This includes a ‘becoming ethnographer’ approach that can acknowledge socio-material relations and engage the broader literacies necessary for such study.

Part One examines how RE has been constructed as a discipline in historical and spatial terms that abstract its study from material concerns. Part Two offers some new starting points: Spinoza, Foucault and feminist theory that differently foreground context and relationality, and »Islam» read as a discursive, located tradition rather than as »world view». Finally, Part Three proposes a new trajectory for research and practice in RE, with the aim of re-engaging schools, colleges and universities in a dialogue that promotes thinking and practice that – as educational — is continually in touch with the need to be critical, open-ended and ethically justifiable.