Session Title: "Education, Faith and Place"

 

Organiser: Peter Hemming (Cardiff University)

 

 

The role of faith in education is an issue that often features prominently in media and policy debates in a range of national contexts. In the UK, this was demonstrated most recently in relation to the so-called ‘Trojan Horse letter’, which involved an alleged plot to install Islamist governors in a number of Birmingham state schools. Similar scenarios are found across the world, from resistance to new Islamic schools in Australia (Bugg & Gurran 2011), to the debate over the teaching of creationism and ‘intelligent design’ in the US (Reiss 2011), to the banning of the headscarf in schools in France (Scott 2007).

 

Scholarly interest in the intersection between education and religion has continued to grow over the last few decades as a result of this, particularly within the discipline of education itself, but geographical work in this area has been rather less prominent. Whilst geographers have made important research contributions to debates about faith-based schooling and associated policy discourses, interrogating its significance for community belonging, urban citizenship and national identity and values (e.g. Dwyer & Parutis 2013, Hemming 2011, Kong 2006, Valins 2003), there remains a way to go before this work reaches critical mass. Indeed, Lily Kong (2013) has recently called for geographers to pay more attention to faith schools and their significance for wider debates in the discipline.

 

Yet the relationship between faith and education is about much more than faith-based schooling. The curriculum itself is a contested space and one that is fought and negotiated at the classroom, the institutional, the local and the national scale. This is not only the case for religious education, but also subjects as diverse as sociology, science and sex education. Similarly, religion is an important influence on individual experiences of education for both students and educators. The practices of educational institutions and the ways in which they interact with religious identities are often place-specific and can have important consequences for citizenship and belonging.

 

The proposed session aims to explore the role that geography can play in interrogating the relationship between faith and education (broadly defined) through a particular focus on place. Contributions are invited that engage with, but are not limited to, any of the following issues:

 

-  Faith-based education and its relationship to community

-  Education and the post-secular city

-  Faith and rural education

-  Religion, education and local / national values

-  Education in multi-faith contexts

-  Faith, curriculum and place

-  Spatial variations in religion and educational policy

 

If you are interested in presenting a paper please send your 250 word abstract to Peter Hemming ([log in to unmask] by MONDAY 27 OCTOBER. You will be notified of acceptance by 31 October, by which point you will need to have registered at www.aag.org to receive your AAG PIN.

 

 

Dr Peter Hemming
Lecturer in Social Sciences (Sociology of Education)
School of Social Sciences
Cardiff University

1.22 Glamorgan Building
King Edward VII Avenue
Cardiff CF10 3WT

+44 (0)29 208 70911
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http://www.cf.ac.uk/socsi/contactsandpeople/academicstaff/G-H/dr-peter-hemming-overview.html