Disentangling ‘worldview’ in Religion & Worldviews Education

Plater, M. (2025) Disentangling ‘worldview’ in Religion & Worldviews Education. Journal of Religious Education. ISSN 1442-6200

Text Plater_disentangling worldview in religion_2025.pdf - Accepted Version Restricted to Repository staff only until 23 September 2026. Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial. Download (334kB)

Abstract

This paper addresses the conceptual confusion surrounding the term "worldview" in the context of England's proposed shift from traditional Religious Education to Religion and Worldviews education, as recommended by the Religious Education Council's Commission on Religious Education (CoRE) report (2018). The analysis reveals significant ambiguity in how "worldview" is applied to both personal existential experiences and organized community belief systems, creating pedagogical and theoretical challenges. Through examination of key documents from the REC Worldview Project and related scholarly responses, the paper demonstrates persistent definitional inconsistencies that undermine the clarity needed for effective classroom implementation. Conflating personal and institutional worldviews obscures important distinctions between individual meaning-making processes and collective religious or cultural frameworks. The paper proposes an alternative framework that reserves "worldview" exclusively for individual, lived experiences while introducing "community shared perspectives" for organized belief systems. This distinction recognizes that institutions provide agreed stories and practices but cannot themselves inhabit worldviews—only individuals can do so through their personal engagement with reality. The proposed model structures Religion and Worldviews education around three interconnected dimensions: personal worldviews (individual lived experience), communities of alignment (social groups sharing perspectives), and interpretive frameworks (belief systems and truth claims). This approach acknowledges the dynamic interplay between individual meaning-making, community belonging, and ideological influences while maintaining conceptual clarity. The framework positions Religion and Worldviews education as fundamentally concerned with exploring the human condition—addressing young people's needs for both belonging and meaning in an increasingly fragmented society. By providing clearer definitions and a more coherent pedagogical construct, this approach offers practical guidance for educators while honouring the complexity of religious and non-religious perspectives in contemporary multicultural contexts.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This is an author accepted manuscript of an article published by Springer in its final form on 23rd September 2025 in the Journal of Religious Education. Uploaded in accordance with the publishers self-archiving policy.
Depositing User:	Mark Plater
Date Deposited:	29 Sep 2025 09:36
Last Modified:	29 Sep 2025 09:36
URI:	https://lbro.repository.guildhe.ac.uk/id/eprint/1266

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