Methods and techniques employed in the religious education of Year 5 students

Abstract

The main aim of this research was to study how Religious Education (RE) is being taught and delivered to year 5 primary school children. In particular, an emphasis was made on the perceptions that teachers and students hold of different methods and techniques. The teachers’ perspectives were gathered through a questionnaire that was filled in by year 5 teachers working in state and church schools. On the other hand, year 5 children voiced their ideas through focus groups. Findings show that teachers hold a positive attitude towards RE, and that the majority of them are shifting away from traditional pedagogies such as relying only on books. In fact, teachers most two preferred methodologies were video forum and storytelling. The study also indicates that teachers should be aided more in developing innovative pedagogies since there are teachers who are not comfortable doing so due to their background in the subject. With regards to children, it was found that they enjoy the subject; however, there is still a lot of emphasis on examinations which is leading them to value more the methodologies that target only the cognitive domain.