How can Research on Teaching and Teaching Religious Education Come Together? Experiences from England

Abstract Taking the situation in England as its context, this paper addresses the question of what is already known about making connections between research and teaching from debates as to the feasibility of promoting teachers as researchers. This paper builds on the work of the Teachers as Researchers (TasR) project, which found that RE teachers did not differ significantly from what was reported in the research literature about other teachers. However, for the RE teachers, orientative knowledge played an important role in the process of translating generic research into their practice in RE in the absence of opportunities to engage directly with subject specific research. One of the priorities for future research identified by the TasR participants was finding examples of ‘best processes’ for developing sustainable partnerships. To this end, a Delphi Seminar was organised and the implications of the outcomes, in particular a focus on subject didactics, for identifying viable models for bridging the gap between teaching and research are explored here. Although more work needs to be done on the specifics of aligning the focus of inquiry in curriculum development and subject didactics with research methods, there were strong indications of how the examples given of existing experience could be built upon.