Journal article
The meaning of religious education in English legislation from 1800 to 2020
- Abstract:
- The importance of key legislation in framing religious education in England is widely assumed, and indeed some argue that these Acts – of 1870, 1944 and 1988 – demarcate pedagogical phases, or paradigms. Policy and historical analyses have revealed the political and social disputes around legislation, but often conflate legislation with other policy. This paper reassesses the statutory meanings of ‘religious education’ through a textual analysis of legislation from 1800 onwards, exploring: the positive entitlement to religious education; the negative freedom not to be subjected to other forms of religious education; curriculum specifications. Sixty-five Acts were reviewed. Presented chronologically, the analysis shows that: the term has a long and varied development that predates compulsory education; several neglected Acts have been pivotal in shaping the subject – notably in 1841, 1869 and 1936; religious education is continuously a marker of religious autonomy for individuals and increasingly for schools, and its curricular use stems from this; the newest related terms are for inspection purposes. The implications are discussed for accounts of the subject, curriculum development and further research, both in England and more widely.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 668.5KB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1080/01416200.2021.1968793
Authors
- Publisher:
- Routledge
- Journal:
- British Journal of Religious Education More from this journal
- Volume:
- 44
- Issue:
- 4
- Pages:
- 497-511
- Publication date:
- 2021-09-21
- Acceptance date:
- 2021-08-11
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1740-7931
- ISSN:
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0141-6200
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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1193681
- Local pid:
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pubs:1193681
- Deposit date:
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2021-09-01
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Nigel Fancourt
- Copyright date:
- 2021
- Rights statement:
- © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
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