Reframing Religious Studies: Producing ‘subject matter’ for (Religious) Education
David Lewin (University of Strathclyde)

5.30-7.15 pm 

In this talk I highlight how educational reality (as encountered in school) is not natural or incidental but is intentionally produced. As a productive process, pedagogical reduction (Lewin 2019) describes certain aspects of the production of educational reality (selection; simplification), though there are other terms: transformation; didactic transposition; recontextualization (Deng 2020). I ask how RE teachers might produce subject matter that is both inclusive and selective. On what basis do RE teachers engage in pedagogical reduction? What is transformed, transposed, or reduced in the production of school RE? Drawing on certain German educational theorists, I offer a reinterpretation of RE for a post/multi-secular age.

David Lewin is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy of Education at the University of Strathclyde. He co-leads the ‘Experiments in Educational Theory’ research group based at Strathclyde (www.exet.org), and leads the ‘After Religious Education’ project funded by Culham St Gabriel’s (https://butterfly-butterfly-bnhl.squarespace.com). David is secretary of the PESGB, co-secretary of the Strathclyde-Glasgow branch of the PESGB, and network convenor of the Theory and Philosophy network in the Scottish Educational Research Association (https://www.sera.ac.uk/networks/theory-and-philosophy-of-education/).