Unit 3 GENERAL PRINCIPLES AND APPROACHES OF TEACHING RELIGIOUS STUDIES
Key Unit competence: Describe the general principles and
approaches of Religious StudiesTeaching.
Introductory activity
Using the lower and upper primary Religious Studies syllabus, choose
two topics. Then, propose and justify the appropriate approaches ofteaching each one.
3.1 Principles of teaching and learning Religious Studies
Learning activity
Suppose that you are going to teach “Jesus the Saviour of Humanity”
lesson in P5 and in this class you have pupils who belong to various
religious groups (Christians, Muslims, etc.).
1. Which principles would you use to ensure that your lesson is
successful for all leaners?
2. How your professionalism and these principles will help you toachieve your objectives?
Teachers are influential people. However, it is important that this influence
be exercised in a professional and responsible manner. In regard to Religious
Education, teachers and tutors are encouraged to be aware of the religious
diversity of students. Therefore, teachers should strive to handle religious
topics in professional and educational ways. This need has brought about
setting some guiding principles in teaching and learning Religious Studieslessons:
Respect of one’s belief
The teacher will not undermine or impose a given set of beliefs. In fact, the
reality is that students in schools belong to different religious denominations
and religions. It is not surprising to see a Muslim in a Christian school or
vice versa. Religious Studies should be learned in a conducive environment
that allows every learner to express his or her ideas freely, respecting
everybody’s belief and recognizing the diversity of religious denominations
and religions. Therefore, depending on the religion that the school has
chosen, the learner will enjoy his or her freedom of religion by respecting
and following what is supposed to be taught.
Focusing on values
Religious Studies deal with religious teachings. They aim at changing
behaviors, inculcating values and developing attitudes in learners. It is
not surprising that learners have critical engagement and respectful,
vigorous debate where deep thinking is valued. In this case, the teacher
will encourage the learners to think skillfully and critically about, reflect
on and take responsibility for the beliefs that shape their behaviors and
attitudes so that they continue in or develop their beliefs through lifelong
critical reflection.
In this sense, the teacher is encouraged to use a variety of learning methods
and aids and carefully use appropriate assessment tasks that allow learners
to think critically but also help them to adopt positive attitudes and values
imbedded in the learnt religious themes. This religious theme should be
relating to the learners’ real-life situations.
Openness
Appropriate openness about what a teacher believes can be a professional
asset. This means that teachers should be prepared to answer questions
and talk about their own beliefs when that is appropriate in a way that
enables pupils to develop their own learning. Teachers will make their own
professional judgment on the extent to which they should be open about
their own beliefs. In this case, the teachers should judge if revealing whathe or she believes in, will help learning.
Promotion of fairness
In schools, pupils may belong to various religions. This diversity may be
at the same time an opportunity for both conflict and co-operation. It is
the role and responsibility of teachers to value and manage this diversity
positively by always striving for fair and accurate representation of religions
in forming groups for a given task. Hence, teachers should treat diversity
as an opportunity to work with others in the shared task of achieving
excellence in teaching and learning. In this case, they develop a sense of
belonging, cooperation, collaboration and do away with bias or eventual
religious conflict.
Role Modelling
Teachers of religion have always been considered as role models for the
students of their class or for the entire school. Teachers of religion or
Religious Studies should always strive to be exemplary and have sound
judgment and attitudes so that their students emulate their good behaviors.
The professional life of Religious Studies teachers should be guided by
humility and other good values.
Impartiality
Teachers should be impartial in dealing with controversial religious issues.
The position should always be based on facts and truth not just opinions of
students. The teacher is encouraged to respect freedom of opinion; but with
regard to taking a decision on a given controversial issue he or she should
be guided by facts and teaching of a given religious belief even when the
teacher find it uncomfortable for him or her.
Note: The list of these principles is not exhaustive; there are others that
should be considered while teaching Religious Studies such as inclusiveness,
gender balance, etc.
Application activity 3.1
Choose a religious topic of your own from the syllabus and explainreligious principles that would help you to deliver this lesson successfully.
3.2 Approaches of Religious Studies
Activity 3.2
Using the principles of teaching Religious Studies and the knowledge
aquired in Foundations of education on approaches in teaching and
learning, search and indicate the most appropriate teaching approachesto Religious Studies. Justify your answer.
An approach in pedagogy refers to the way of looking at teaching and
learning that gives rise to methods, which use classroom activities or
techniques to help learners to learn. In Religious Education, teachers are
encouraged to diversify teaching and learning approaches so that pupils
can make progress at a good pace and achieve the highest standards of
which they are capable.
In fact, Religious Education improves where teachers don’t just transmit
knowledge but enable pupils to be active, thoughtful, reflective and
expressive in their handling of questions about beliefs, religion, spirituality
and values. For this, teachers should adopt a wide variety of professional
pedagogy and use varied range of teaching and learning strategies in order
to make Religious Education dynamic and challenging for all students. Sixexamples of different approaches are given here and developed below:
1. Life approach
Life approach is commonly and widely used in teaching Religious Studies.
In the life approach, the teacher uses the actual day to day experiences of
learners and moving through reflection on these experiences to a religious
understanding of them (Shitohi 2008). It is a recommended way of teaching
primary school pupils, because it focuses on reflection and critical thinking
and promotes interactive and participatory learning. Life approach has five
steps as follows:
a. Human experience
This is the first step of the lesson. Teachers and learners discuss
an event or experience in the life of the learners. The experiences
discussed can be current or those that happened in the past. Events
could be those that affected other people or those read or reported in
the print and electronic media. Human experience should always bebased on the known.
b. Scripture experience
It is the second step. The teacher introduces a relevant scripture
passages or texts. These are read and discussed. The biblical text or the
Qur’an passage for Islamic Religious Studies should shed light on the
theme of the lesson. The learners reflect on this to see the connection
between the biblical and the human experience to discover how God
reveals Himself through the human experience.
c. Explanation
At this third step, the teacher explains and elaborates the biblical
experience and analyses issues at hand so that the learners understand.
The main points of the lesson are explained in a logical way, using a
variety of teaching methods and aids.
d. Application and Response
This fourth step give learners an opportUnity to respond or to react
to the message.The teacher guides learners to identify the relevance
of the content to their individual lives. The learners are also helped
to reflect, analyse and synthetise information so as to apply it in their
lives. It should make them better people in their personal relationship
with God and others.
e. Pupils’activity
This is the fifth and last stage of the lesson. The teacher gives
learners learning activities which are meant to assist them express
their responses practically. Such activities include writing, singing,
drawing, role-play and reciting memory verse.
2. A Phenomenological approach
The phenomenological approach to Religious Studies treats religion as a
phenomenon. Associated with this is the attempt to approach a religion in
a presuppositionless way, namely through the procedure of bracketing-out
possible distorting pre-conceptions.
The advantage of this approach consists of helping learners to overcomestereotypes of any religion in their own quest for meaning. This involves
students looking at personal life experiences through the various dimensions.
Using this approach there can be discussion about stories, beliefs, ethics,
etc., that are of personal significance to them (Ian L. Higgins I.: 1984).
In a Religious Studies class, a phenomenological Approach focuses on
studying religions through stories, moral behavior, rituals, beliefs,
experiences and community life, the art and architecture of the faith. For
example: A teacher plans to introduce a class to the Mystery of Death and
Resurrection of Jesus Christ and uses a selection of artefacts from the church
(crucifix, portraits of Jesus, film on the passion of Jesus, etc.). Children are
asked to develop their understanding of what Catholic Christians believe,
what they say and think about Jesus’ actions. Pupils make a selection of 10
artefacts, images and texts to sum up all they have learned so far about the
catholic faith.
3. An Experiential approach
In the context of Religious Education, “experiential” is often used to refer to
anything connected with the realm of “lived” experience or human experience.
The experiential approach (also referred to as existential approach) is
based on the principle that all experience is essentially religious. Thus,
man’s experience of awe and wonder, guilty and anxiety, joy and sadness
always bears a religious dimension (Surin K.: 1984). The objective of the
experiential approach is to get the pupils to reflect on these fundamental
experiences, to recognize the cognitive and affective significance of these
experiences in their live and to make reasoned judgments (including valuejudgments)
about them.
In the classroom, the application of this approach will take as its startingpoint
the ordinary, everyday, experiences of pupils and teachers, and
the encounters between teachers, teachers and pupils, and the pupils
themselves. How, and on the basis of what principles, pupils and teachers
respond to these experiences and encounters constitutes the subject-matter
of Religious Education (Surin K.: 1984). For instance, in the light of a guided
story on Pesach which focuses on Jewish concepts of freedom, tradition and
community, the pupils express their own spiritual ideas about concepts
like these and concepts of love, sacrifice, submission or thankfulness in
sculptures and poems. In sum, the experiential approach enables spiritual
development in learners.
4. Concepts for learning Approach
This approach takes key concepts from a given religion and from Religious
Studies as a discipline and enables pupils to increase their understanding
about this religion and its beliefs.
For example, in the Unit about Christian beliefs about God, pupils learn
three concepts: Incarnation, Trinity and Resurrection. They enquire into
the ways these concepts make sense of the Christmas and Easter narratives
and how these festivals are celebrated. They develop understanding of
beliefs and think about how beliefs can be tested by argument or experience,
moving towards analyzing for themselves truth claims from religion.
5. Ultimate questions as a focus Approach
This approach uses ‘big questions’ of meaning, purpose and truth to explore
the impact of religion on life, to construct meaning and to challenge the
learners to deepen their own ideas. Pupils begin a Unit of work by raising
all the questions they would like to ask of God / the creator / the Supreme
Being / the Almighty. With stimulus from religious texts and practices,
learners in groups for example and under the guidance of the teacher
explore the pupils’ own questions. Afterwards, the class develops pieces
of personal work using their own and religious ideas about the ultimate
questions explored.
6. Pupils’ world views Approach
A world views approach develops answers to human questions, using
religious ideas and teachings as a resource for pupils’ own development.
During teaching about commitment and values, pupils begin with their
own commitments and generalize from these. Exploring the ways in which
their everyday commitments can be structured into a view of what matters,
a view of the world, is more important than gathering understanding of
religion, as the aim of Religious Education is to clarify the learner’s vision
of life.
Application activity 3.2
Using various resources from the library and TRC, internet and the
religious studies in lower and upper primary syllabus, find out topics wherelife phenomenological, experiential and life approaches can be used.
Which approach do you think is most suitable to teach “Relationship and
friendship” in primary school. Justify your choice.
3.3 Methods of teaching Religious Studies
Activity 3.3
Basing on your own experience and on the knowledge acquired in
foundations of education, identify the methods that you think can be
used in the teaching and the learning of Religious Studies and explainwhy?
In teaching Religious Studies in primary school, the choices made on the
methods depend on the content being taught, the mental age of the learners
and their levels of interest. It should help learners to discover truths for
themselves and relate them to their life experiences. Teachers may choose
any of the following methods when teaching Religious Education (Shitohi:
2008).
3.3.1 Story telling
It is a common method used in teaching Religious Studies. This method was
used by Jesus himself (See Jesus’ parables). It is an appealing method in
both lower and upper primary classes. The value of this method lies not only
in entertaining the student and capturing the pupils’ attention, but also
stories linger in the memory, instruct in rights and wrongs, and move the
hearers to change.Stories can be drawn from the Bible, traditional Africancommunities and daily experiences.
The teacher should consider some of the following points:
▪ Read and understand the story in depth.
▪ Prepare the lesson plan such that follows a logical sequence.
▪ Involve learners actively in the story being told.
▪ Demonstrate actions that need to be shown practically to reinforce
understanding.
▪ Use of tone variation to avoid monotony.
▪ Choose an effective way of ending a story so that it is brought to a
climax.
3.3.2 Dramatization/role play
Drama is an exciting and motivating method of teaching Religious Education
when exercised in an appropriate way by a competent and imaginative
teacher. This method is used by religious teachers to reinforce the contents
taught. An effective use of this method follows the flowing steps:
▪ Together with learners, review the content taught to ensure that
learners have understood the lesson.
▪ Ask learners to volunteer to take part in the drama.
▪ Identify the characters and ensure that the case is made up of learners
of different abilities.
▪ Add tasks to different characters and consider gender and personality
traits.
▪ Give adequate time to characters to rehearse their parts prior to the
lesson.
▪ Prepare appropriate costumes and props.
▪ Organize the drama for the religion class or the whole school.
▪ Evaluate the effectiveness of the drama by asking oral questions.
▪ Emphasize important points and lessons learnt.▪ Guide the learners to write down important points of the lesson.
It is a method used to reinforce facts or information already taught like
dramatization. However, it does not require a lot of time to prepare. Few
minutes of the teaching time may be set aside to prepare for the role-play.
For example, the students may role play the parable of prodigal son.
3.3.4 Group discussion
Discussion still has a place in Religious Education. Conventionally, it is done
in form of “spokes of wheel”, where the teacher responds to each contribution
from the class. One of the weaknesses of this form is that individual pupils
have very few opportunities to speak. In order to enrich this method, its
variations have been developed. They include: pupils discussing in pair
at the beginning of a lesson, perhaps arguing for and against a particular
course of work; small discussion groups dealing with a question arising
out of a story the class is reading; groups of pupils working out the most
appropriate way to present a topic in assembly, or amount a display, or planwhat questions to ask a visitor to the class (Holm J.: 1984).
For a class debate to be effective the teacher has to play a great role; it is up
to him/her to conduct/facilitate it. According to Keller, T., Whittaker, J., &
Burke, T. (2001), three major stages mark an effective run of a class debate:before, during, and after.
3.3.5 Discovery method
This method leads learners to discover truths, values and information
for and by themselves. This method is used by teachers of religion when
they involve learners in the process of finding out or becoming aware of
something. The teacher facilitates and guides in the learning process and
engages learners in the teaching and learning process so that they are able
to use their imagination and creativity to think critically. The teacher asks
leading questions to help learners to arrive at a particular answer.
Discovery method can also be used on Scripture based lessons. For instance,
the teacher can read a Bible story for the pupils and suspend the reading
at certain point. This strategy helps the pupils to discover the originality
of the story. Its advantage is that it attracts pupils’ attention as they are
curious of knowing the end of the story. For this, the teacher must choose
the right and interesting point on which he suspends the reading (Niyigena
J.-P.: 2018). Example: what would be the attitude of Joseph when he meets
his brothers who sold him into Egypt? (Genesis 37: 12-36). The exercise is
performed as follows:
▪ Choosing a Scripture story and begin to read it for learners
▪ Suspending the reading at an interesting point and asking the learnersto complete it, individually or in groups through writings or drawings
▪ Sharing with others in the classroom achievements by individuals or
groups: pupils should explain why they have chosen to complete the
story that way. Through those explanations, ideas and values appear;
they can be compared, corrected and appreciated;
▪ Reading the unread part of the original story;
▪ Comparing with learners their works and the original story looking
for similarities and dissimilarities (what matters at this stage is not
indicating who was wrong or true; difference does not always imply
that the other is wrong);
▪ Articulating pupils’ ideas and values with the lessons hidden in the
Bible story.
To sum up, in order to make Religious Education a lively and active subject,
there is avariety of teaching methods that the teacher is encouraged to use.
Those methods include art, music, discussion, the development of thinking
skills, drama, the use of artefacts, pictures, modelling, visits, miming,
question and answer, demonstration, memorization, stories and the use ofperiods of stillness.
Application activity 3.3
1. Suppose that you are given to teach a lesson on “Ububabare n’izuka
bya Yezu” (Christian Religious Studies P3, Unit 3). Explain the
most suitable methods you would use to effectively teach this topic.
2. Why fasting is necessary for Muslim during the month of Ramadhan(Islamic religious studies P4 unit 3).
End Unit Assessment 3
1. Kaliza is a Religious Studies teacher in Dutsinde Catholic Primary
School. Today, she has planned to develop “Christianity and
persecution” topic. In her class, she has a Muslim, protestant,
catholic and Seventh Day Adventist pupils. Advise her on the
principles she can use in order to deliver well this religious studies
lesson.
2. Explain the teaching and learning approaches used in ReligiousStudies.