Choosing three of the QCA units of work for Christianity, evaluate them with regard to the impression that the pupils may gain of the Christian tradition. How far can this be a realistic impression? To what extent are the units linked to shared human ex

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Kristina Roe        Page         10/02/2008

M.Ed Teaching Christianity in Religious Education

Choosing three of the QCA units of work for Christianity, evaluate them with regard to the impression that the pupils may gain of the Christian tradition.  How far can this be a realistic impression?  To what extent are the units linked to shared human experience? What opportunities are provided for pupils to reflect upon their own patterns of belief? Compare your conclusions with three of the units from your school scheme, in the light of your understanding of effective RE.

The three units to be assessed are What does Jesus’ Incarnation mean for Christians today? (8A), What does the Resurrection of Jesus mean for Christians today? (8B), and Where are we going? Rites of passage (9A).  The units will be evaluated with regard to the impression the students may gain of the Christian faith, and how far this is realistic.  The questions of whether the units draw on shared human experience and whether there are opportunities for the students to reflect on their own pattern of belief will also be addressed. Comparisons with units of work from the author’s school will be made at the end together with a brief reflection upon the author’s understanding of effective RE.

Before each unit is assessed it is important to address the question as to whether the QCA units were constructed to give the students a realistic impression of the Christian faith.  Astely (1992) points out that “there is no such thing as Christianity” rather there are a plurality of Christian beliefs and practices which one could term “Christianities” (p.4); Brown (1992) also notes that there are over “20,000 Christian sects” (p.17). To give students a realistic impression the teacher clearly should take into account the plurality of the Christian faith.  Smart (1979) also argues even though Christianity is not “a single thing” (p.7) it should in some way relate to Christ “either in historical continuity or through religious experience or both” (ibid, p.128), and Cooling (1996) believes in order to give the students an accurate understanding of Christian belief the units of work used in RE lessons should reflect the self understanding of the faith communities. To avoid homogeneity Cooling also argues that the Christian concepts included in a school’s syllabus must be ones which most Christians would recognise and identify with. (pp.170 -173).   In an effort to avoid the homogenous teaching of the Christian faith before the 1994 SCAA (now QCA) model syllabuses were issued, a national consultation was carried out asking a variety of different groups what Christian teachings should be taught in schools.  This information was then used to inform the inclusion of the Christian concepts in the model syllabuses (Cooling, 2000, p.160).  Assuming therefore that there is a link between the SCAA model syllabuses and the 2000 Units of work, these units introduce the students to some of the key concepts that most Christians would agree with and the students, in this respect, gain a reasonably realistic impression of the Christian faith.

What does Jesus’ Incarnation mean for Christians today?

At the beginning of each unit there is a section entitled ‘About the Unit’, and it is here that the unit outlines its objectives and much of the unit’s ethos and understanding of effective Religious Education (RE) comes across.  In this unit it states:

“This unit looks at the ways in which Christians today find meaning in the accounts and stories of Jesus’ life, especially those associated with his birth.  Using a variety of written and visual sources, pupils learn and understand some of the ways in which Christians celebrate Jesus’ birth.  The unit offers opportunities for pupils to examine and reflect upon the concepts of incarnation, virgin birth and salvation.  Pupils develop their understanding of a Christian sacred text.  They evaluate the relationship between belief and practice for a Christian believer today” (QCA).

 It is clear from this that the unit is concerned with content and particularly with the key Christian concepts of the importance of Jesus’ incarnation for Christians encompassing the ideas of salvation, sin and love, and as it has been indicated this should be a realistic impression of what most Christians would agree with.  Within this unit the students are also introduced to the concept of the Messiah by looking at a modern day rescue story.  The idea of Jesus as the Messiah, and the Christian belief that he was sent by God to rescue humankind from sin is a very important concept.  Indeed, the identification of Christ as the Messiah, or the Christ, was central to what it meant to be a Christian in the early church, as Hebblethwaite (1996) argues “For, one way or another, it was Jesus of Nazareth whom the Christians identified and accepted as the long-expected ‘anointed one’ – God’s instrument of restoration” (p.86).  The unit does not specify which rescue story should be used but Brown (1992) warns one should be careful how a rescue story involving a super hero is compared to the Messianic and divine mission of Jesus Christ.  He argues that by comparing Jesus to a Superman type figure the students could be given a false impression of the role of Jesus as the Messiah as, unlike Christian belief in Jesus as the Saviour of the World, Superman does not allow humanity to take responsibility for their actions; Superman is also not of this world, whereas it is very important to a Christian that Christ was fully human (pp.13-14).  In contrast the author has found that referring to a superhero such as Spiderman, Dare Devil and even characters such as Neo in the Matrix is a good way of introducing the idea of a Messiah to the younger students, and that however true Brown’s warnings are, they do not become relevant until the students are in the higher stages of their secondary education.  

In relation to the concept of rescue and the role of the Messiah this unit goes on to suggest that students read some excerpts from the book of Isaiah and make a list of the qualities the Messiah would have: it also states the students should be informed of whom Isaiah was, and about the period in which he wrote. The author believes that to talk about who Isaiah was would be misleading as traditional and modern liberal scholarship disagree on this point: for example some modern scholars argue that there may have been two, three or even four authors of this text (Bowker, 1997, p.478).  Shannon (1995) also argues that a good RE teacher should be up to date with modern biblical scholarship and to be able to relate some of this to the students (p.41).   Despite this surely it is more important for the students to understand the nature of prophecy, the meaning of these prophecies in the context of the incarnation of Jesus Christ, and to link this to their lives.

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In an effort to explain what the incarnation of Christ means the unit then focuses on Jesus’ birth.  It specifies that a picture or a video of Jesus’ birth should be shown and contrasted with the beliefs contained in John’s prologue. The birth narrative in Luke’s gospel is then used and the students are asked to identify key Christian ideas about Jesus in the story from their work on John’s prologue.  If this was to be a more realistic portrayal of the birth narratives and the controversies connected to them, why is Matthew’s gospel not referred to? The students ...

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