Being Christian in Education

By Hazel Bryan

Experienced practitioners, theologians and academics reflect on the Christian voice as it engages in education today. At a time of national uncertainty for RE, questions about faith-based schools and the place of religious belief in the public arena, this volume offers a creative exploration of the future for Christian engagement in education.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Canterbury Press
• Release date: Oct 27, 2015
• ISBN: 9781848257542

Book preview

Being Christian in Education

Being Christian in Education

Reflecting on Christian professional practice in a secular world

Edited by

Hazel Bryan and Howard Worsley

© The Contributors 2015

First published in 2015 by the Canterbury Press Norwich Editorial office

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, Canterbury Press.

The Authors have asserted their right under the Copyright,Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the Authors of this Work

British Library Cataloguing in Publication data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

978 1-84825-752-8

Typeset by Manila Typesetting Company

Printed and bound in Great Britain

by CPI Group (UK) Ltd

Contents

Contributors

Foreword

Preface

Introduction

Part One: ‘Travelling with Faith: reflections upon Christian professional practice in a secular world’

1 Engaging love: A Teacher of Nurses’ Tale –Martin Bedford

2 Welcoming the stranger: Christian hospitality as aparadigm for interprofessional learning –Clare Andrews

3 Am I flying? – Marion Khan

4 ‘How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?’ (Psalm 137.4) A Quaker understanding of education – Aidan Gillespie

5 The sustaining of a Christian teacher’s career in asecularising context – Phillip J. O’Connor

6 Are British values Christian values? A reflection on the tensions between British values and Christianity – Andrea Haith

Part Two: ‘Living with Faith making senseof faith in professional contexts’

7 Looking backstage: insights on professional dilemmasin a faith-based development – Martin B. Jamieson

8 Re-visioning the teaching methodology in African Pentecostal Church Education (APCE) –Nana Kyei-Baffour

9 The academic tail wagging the curacy dog:A theology of learning and formation –Trevor Gerhardt

10 The Diocesan Education Officer’s Tale: Voices ofchurch, culture and state in Church Schooleducation – Tatiana Wilson

11 The church school as a pilgrim community –Janet Northing

12 A reflection on decision making in an inclusive Church of England primary school – Joan Gibson

13 What does the metaphor of the Good Shepherdhave to say about school leadership? –Susan Thompson

14 Spam Ed storytelling for Year 13 students –Robert Jackson

15 A reflection on using the work of Michel Foucault in Christian educational research –Thomas German

Contributors

Clare Andrews is a senior lecturer in diagnostic radiography at Canterbury Christ Church University. Prior to that she was a teacher of Religious Education at secondary level and has a degree in theology. Her teaching responsibilities are focused primarily on collaborative practice and radiography in complex environments. Clare’s academic interests include the nature and development of professionalism in student radiographers, and the relationshipbetween theology and education in the higher education sector.

Martin Bedford: born on the last day of 1959 into a loving family, Martin was proficient in the arts but studied politics at University. Finding his vocation (and future wife) in nursing, Martin worked with people with cancer and later became a clinical nurse specialist in haemophilia and HIV disease, then a senior lecturer in nursing at Canterbury Christ Church University. Happily married with two sons and living in a rural Kent community, he became a Christian 12 years ago and is active in his local church.

Trevor Gerhardt was born in South Africa. He trained and worked as a Baptist Church minister and served as a staff member of Youth With A Mission. He has lived and worked in the UK since 2002. He is married and has two children. He is the Assistant Director of Formation and Ministry for the Diocese of Rochester (Church of England) with specific responsibility as the Programme Director for Curacy and advisor for Continuing Ministerial Development. In his spare time he enjoys surfing.

Tom German is a qualified teacher who taught for two years in a Further Education College before changing careers. He began in Higher Education by taking an undergraduate degree in Religious Studies and a Masters degree in Applied Theology that focused on the purpose of Religious Education. Tom’s academic areas of interest include modern Theology, Continental Philosophy and their possible applications to education.

Joan Gibson qualified as a teacher in 1980 and has worked in a range of primary schools in the Midlands, latterly as headteacher. From an early stage of her career she became interested in children who did not conform to expectations within school. The C of E school that Joan led over the last 12 years developed a strong reputation for inclusivity and had specialist provision for children with moderate and severe learning difficulties and autistic spectrum disorders.

Aidan Gillespie: originally from County Mayo in Ireland, Aidan came to the UK in 1999. After studying with the Open University for a degree in Religious Studies and Linguistics, Aidan completed his teacher training and embarked on a career in education which has seen him teach in faith and non-faith primary schools. Aidan is now lecturing in Initial Teacher Training at Canterbury Christ Church University and is currently researching teachers’ understanding and expressions of spirituality in their professional practice.

Andrea Haith is a teacher of Religious Education and English. She is currently working in a secondary school in Derbyshire. Her interests include the teaching of values, controversial issues and philosophy for children. She has a particular interest in the teaching of religiously inspired violence.

Robert Jackson: I’ve always rebelled . . . or is it simply a case of wanting to be myself? As a vicar’s son, I became an atheist during confirmation classes, only to be brought back into the fold, mid-Atlantic, after a disastrous seven year exploration of life as I wanted it to be. Ordination after another seven years clearly meant following the family tradition and running a parish but no . . . I found myself working in boarding schools for 19 years. I needed to justify myself so had to work out a Christian rationale for what I was doing. One of my key concerns was how might I serve, as a Christian, within the confines of a classroom, not ashamed of my faith, and prepared to give it epistemological status in a secular education system that is resistant to alternative world-views.

Martin Jamieson: Martin’s involvement in educational development work began in 2003 while teaching trainee teachers in South Africa and Zambia. Contact with Malawians in Zambia led to small-scale projects in both countries. In 2007 he worked with Voluntary Service Overseas at the Ministry of Education in Ethiopia, guiding the country’s teacher-trainers training programme. This provided invaluable insights to ‘development’ work. He is currently working with a Malawian NGO, building a teacher centre where inclusive practice and spiritual values are encouraged.

Marion Khan is a Christian, a nurse and a clinical educator working in the NHS at York Teaching Hospital’s NHS Foundation Trust. She currently leads the Clinical Development Team within the organization and facilitates the clinical skills, education, and professional development of non-medical staff. She has a particular interest in spirituality issues in healthcare, especially in the education and training of nurses.

Nana Kyei-Baffour is a Pentecostal Minister with Assemblies of God, UK. He has been in Church Ministry since 1992; an educator in Pentecostal theological institutions and a Pentecostal/Generic Health Care Chaplain at Guy’s and St. Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, London since 2004. His current roles include: Senior Pastor at Victory-City Assemblies of God Church, London; Spirituality and Disability Advisor/Chaplain at Guy’s and St. Thomas NHS Foundation Trust; an Adjunct Faculty with Global University (USA); and a Distance Learning Tutor with Assemblies of God Bible College in Mattersey, Doncaster.

Janet Northing has been a Church Army evangelist and non-stipendiary licensed lay worker in the Church of England since 1987. Qualifying as a primary-school teacher in 1998, she gained a First Class B.Ed (Honours) degree from Cheltenham and Gloucester College of HE, and subsequently taught in a range of community and church primary schools. In 2002, following two years’ part time study at King’s College London, she gained an MA in RE (distinction). Janet’s career in primary education culminated in her becoming head of a Church of England primary school in 2007, a post she held until her retirement from primary headship in 2013. Janet now works part time as a Diocesan Schools Support Consultant for Peterborough Diocese and carries out SIAMS Inspections for several dioceses. She is currently leading a project with eight primary schools linked to ‘What if Learning’ for Peterborough Diocese.

Phillip O’Connor was born in Birmingham, England but brought up in Jamaica by Evangelical Christian parents. In 1982, at the age of 18, he embarked on Teacher Training at the University of the West Indies, through Mico Teachers’ College. Phillip taught for eight years in Jamaica before emigrating to the Cayman Islands where he taught in a private church school for six years, concurrently serving three years as Youth Minister at his affiliated local Evangelical church. Phillip returned to the United Kingdom in 2001 and has continued in the teaching profession to date. Although he has taught many subjects over the last 30 years at both primary and secondary levels, he is now teaching advanced level Sociology and Personal Social Health and Citizenship Education (PSHCE) in a grammar school while also pursuing a Doctorate in Education degree part-time. Phillip has been facilitating and continues to facilitate faith-based youth and men’s seminars and serve as lay-speaker in Jamaica, Cayman Islands, USA and five churches in the UK.

Susan Thompson’s current role focuses on supporting or leading schools to secure rapid school improvement as an interim school leader. In this capacity she has worked as a deputy head in voluntary controlled Church of England primary schools and as the acting head of a community infant school. Previously she was a Diocesan Schools Officer working to support church schools, a Local Authority Religious Education adviser, and held leadership roles in a comprehensive secondary school. Susan attends a local Anglican Church.

Tatiana Wilson works as a Diocesan Education Officer for the Church of England supporting schools to be the best they can be. Previously she worked as a Lecturer in Primary Education at Exeter and Plymouth Universities as well as teaching and leading in primary and middle schools and working as an advisory teacher in London and Devon. Current projects include improving church school leadership at all levels, developing pathways for Initial Teacher Education and supporting the improvement of Religious Education in schools through the Learn Teach Lead RE project www.ltlre.org. Her doctoral thesis intends to explore the Renovaré Movement’s approach to spiritual development and how this might be helpful to church school leaders.

Foreword

As a Christian entering teaching at Banbury Comprehensive School in the mid-1970s, I was truly energized at the prospect of being able to live out my faith in the context of my new professional role. At university I had experienced the excitement of thinking Christianly about education and I had even managed to publish an article about that called From the Changing Room, which I co-authored with my lifelong friend and colleague, John Shortt (now Professorial Fellow in Christian Education at Liverpool Hope University). But I had a bit of a shock. Apart from the writings of Philip May, a lecturer at Durham University, there was little to read that emanated from the UK; most of what I could find came from North America and Australia where the education systems were very different. The prevailing assumption seemed to be that the only way to be Christian in education was to work in an independent, explicitly Christian school. Those of us working in the state system were considered ‘compromisers’. But on the other hand to seek a conversation about Christian approaches in the state-funded system was considered suspiciously fanatical. After all education is, we were told, a neutral activity governed by the tenets of reason alone. Faith had nothing to do with it. The one alternative voice that I could find came from the other side of the world in the writings of Brian Hill, a professor of education in Perth (Australia, not Scotland!). Thankfully things are different now. Across the UK, church schools are asking what it means to offer a distinctively Christian education that is an inclusive experience for all their pupils.

Now at the end of my career, I am deeply privileged to be employed as a Professor of Christian Education but, even so, probably only the second person to ever hold that title in an English university. I work in an institution that is proud of its foundation as a Church of England teacher training college in 1962 and is committed enough to the concept of thinking Christianly about education to have created a unique centre called the National Institute for Christian Education Research. In 2012, we celebrated our Jubilee at Canterbury Christ Church and an invitation was issued by our Vice-Chancellor for ideas as to how that could be marked. In one of those casual conversations that later turn out to be highly significant, my colleagues Lynn Revell, Hazel Bryan and Nigel Genders (then a governor of the University but now the Chief Education Officer for the Church of England) came up with the idea of setting up a Jubilee cohort on our newly launched professional doctorate programme. We were joined later by Howard Worsley, and our idea was to create a learning fellowship (what some now call a community of practice) of education professionals who would commit to working each on their own thesis, but supporting each other in the shared endeavour of thinking Christianly about our different professional roles. It was a great delight to recruit 15 students; and even more of a delight for all 15 to complete the seven modules and for each to contribute a chapter to this book.

The exciting thing about this class of 15 is their diversity in the midst of shared purpose. Although all education professionals, they range across classroom teachers, headteachers, health professional educators, teacher educators, clergy educators, librarians, school chaplains, advisers, mission entrepreneurs and pastors. They also reflect a range of theological positions more diverse than anything I have experienced in any other Christian setting. There was no cosy consensus that some associate with the concept of fellowship. No-one in their right mind would have brought together such a theologically diverse group. But the shared experience of struggling together with challenging ideas about education, of being side-by-side when work was failed and of trying to write at level 8, the highest level of writing required of any university student, created a spiritual bond of fellowship that transcended our theological differences. A symbol of this unity was that at each of the taught module weekends, we celebrated a Eucharist together usually led by one of the University’s Anglican chaplains, but occasionally by one of our ordained course members. This celebration in the tradition of the Church of England was a powerful reminder of unity in Christ and of the saving power of the Cross offered to all. For me celebrating the Eucharist in this way was a powerful realization of that desire I had as a newly qualified teacher, namely that I might find a way for my Christian faith to be enacted in the context of the public classroom and not marginalized as a private matter, being deemed to be religious clutter in the rational task of education.¹ But it was also a symbol of how even deeply-held differences of belief and experience need not be barriers to fellowship. As a group I think we learnt to love each other and discovered how to be friends and encouragers to each other. Without that experience I doubt very much that there would be 15 chapters in this book. It has certainly convinced me that universities ought to think more about how to make the student experience one of love and fellowship; and indeed worship.

This book is made up of 15 tales from Canterbury. Each tale is the story from one of our students, the story of how their Christian faith and their professional role have interacted. The newly qualified teacher that I was in 1974 would have been thrilled to have had such a book to read, although no doubt nonplussed that the Christian world is not the uniform phenomenon that he, at that time, assumed it to be.

Trevor Cooling

Canterbury, April 2015

1 Trevor Cooling, 2010, Doing God in Education, London: Theos.

Preface

The world seems more religious than ever and the religious has never been more controversial. News is dominated by reports of religious-inspired violence, and conflict and interventions by reli­gious leaders are often treated with suspicion or as anachronistic. As a teacher of Religious Education and then as a lecturer in Initial Teacher Education I understood that my subject was not like other subjects, it was more sensitive, more likely to cause offence, and it was harder to justify its place in the curriculum than other subjects. The backdrop to my job as a specialist in RE and then as Programme Director of the Ed. D has been characterized by ongoing debates about the nature of the education provided by church schools, or the legitimacy of faith perspectives on educa­tion. I have always wondered why these discussions are often so acrimonious and defined by caricatures and stereotypes of what reli­gious people think or how Christian teachers behave. The frenzied and often comical polemics of the new atheists seem to have set the tone for much of the current debates and I have been entertained but never challenged: they seem to protest too much.

Teaching in a Christian University and often teaching Christian students it was impossible not to realize that the hostility and fear of the religious and the hysterical tone of much of the debates about religion and education often had the effect of closing down discussions. In an educational system that is supposedly liberal and one that reflects a plural and diverse society, Christian voices, indeed all religious voices, seemed to be marginalized and even censored. There are many areas of education that are informed and underpinned by Christianity that are rarely the subject of research. The experiences and insights of many Christian teachers and headteachers are often ghettoized and therefore lost to mainstream discussions about education.

Shortly after launching the Ed. D at Canterbury Christ Church University, I asked my Head of Department, Hazel Bryan, whether it would be possible to develop a cohort that was designed to welcome Christian teachers and educators so that we could create a community of learners that shared a desire to discuss and research in Christianity and education. With her support we developed the idea. Trevor Cooling helped us translate the ideas into a plan and the authors of the chapters in this book became the Jubilee cohort.

The idea for a book written by students came out of a desire to capture the spirit and camaraderie generated by the Jubilee cohort but also to share the insights and experiences of students who had worked to understand the relationship between faith and educa­tion in so many different ways. The stories are particular and personally inspired by faith but they are also universal.

Every teacher and everyone involved in education struggles in some way to reconcile or comprehend their personal beliefs in the context of the bigger education picture. The expectations of curriculum and institutions, Ofsted or professional codes means that we must all find ways of being true to our beliefs while upholding the highest professional standards. The chapters in this book provide a glimpse of how difficult that juggling between faith, belief and professionalism can be, but also how valuable and how rewarding.

Lynn Revell

Programme Director, Ed. D

Canterbury, April 2015

Introduction

Canterbury Christ Church University celebrated its Diamond Jubilee in 2012. As part of a suite of celebratory initiatives, we designed and welcomed a Christian cohort onto our professional doctorate, the Ed. D. The outcome of this venture was a critical mass of thinkers and research that began to debate the Christian contribution to public education. As the group of 15 students began their journey, it was clear that they were beginning to bring their lived experience and researched perspectives to shape new thinking in education. This book is the published reflections of that cohort.

The experience of the Jubilee Research Cohort

From the outset, it was clear that this cohort of students was special, evidenced in the energy that was felt when the group convened for the residential conferences that focused upon philosophical, political, sociological and methodological dimensions of education alongside the insights of Christian thinking. In this group we had students who were headteachers and teachers in both the primary and secondary sectors studying alongside Church ministers and chaplains. To complete the cohort there were also staff from the University, educationalists from the health sector and people in early retirement. Together we formed a temporary community, committed together for the duration of the taught programme. At the end of the initial 18-month period of face-to-face teaching, before the students progressed to conduct their field research under supervision, they agreed to write an article for publication. It is this you now hold in your hands. The writing is creative, reflective and above all, earthed, arising from the lived context of practitioners who are developing as reflective researchers that feed back into their praxis. They all comment on the experience of what it is to be Christian in a changing landscape.

What being Christian feels like in Britain today

There has been significant shift in public thinking in the UK in recent years. It seems as if the historic confidence of religious faith is no longer available in public discourse. Maybe religious thinking has lost its privileged position as occupying the moral high ground and must now compete for a humbler place. In this competed space the measured, gentle voice of historic faith is not often heard, since it is drowned out by the more extreme voices of either religious fundamentalisms or confident humanisms. As well as an increasing secularist confidence, another factor impacting on Christian experience and the lived reality of all engaged in public schooling is the influence of political intervention. The educational policy landscape in the UK has been characterized by high levels of government intervention since the Education Reform Act (ERA 1988). This period coincides with the wider public reforms that Conservative, New Labour and then the Coalition governments initiated. At the heart of these reforms was a view that the public sector could not be left to the professional groups that traditionally ran them. New policies for education saw the introduction of an internal market where schools were encouraged to compete for pupils and resources allocated on the basis of need. The reforms were based on the idea that the public sector could learn from the private sector and were characterized by high levels of managerialism where the focus was on the ‘delivery’ of public serves that were efficient, effective and economic. This has led to what can be termed ‘the commodification of education’ where education has been subjected to high levels of marketization. The resulting educational sphere has been referred to as a ‘quasi market’. The essence of this shift has been that education is moving from a social to an economic good, where ‘particular versions of events’ are generated as policy discourse. This has been a rich vein of research for our Jubilee cohort of doctoral students who have reflected this shift in their discussions, research and writings.

A Christian response to education?

In parallel with the education policy backdrop sketched above, the church has traditionally worked in three particular ways in education: mission, nurture and service. Seen in broadest terms these might be described as:

Mission: viewed as a broad concept, yet both explicit (such as mentioning Jesus, prayer) and implicit (such as doing things in a Christian manner, relying on God’s Holy Spirit);

Nurture: nurturing people in faith or simply as human beings and nurturing the developing child;

Service: serving the nation. This is an inclusive understanding of education, often attached to government agendas.

To paraphrase Jeff Astley, Honorary Professor in the Depart­ment of Theology and Religion at the University of Durham, these concepts might also be described in three distinct styles of seeing Christian involvement in education. These are:

Education into Christianity

Education about Christianity

Education in a Christian manner

The Jubilee cohort were students who could relate to these various