From knowledge transfer to meaning attentiveness

If there is one thing that I keep returning to in my research and scholarship, it is the Bible in religious education. This list of my publications to date reveals the ‘addiction’ I have to the topic. It began with a conference about 10 years ago at Canterbury called Reenchanting the Academy which explicitly sought to challenge the positivistic and materialistic constraints around academic research that seemed to exclude fields that were less easy to navigate but nonetheless seemed to matter.

We might even say that certain ways of thinking have colonised the mind. Fields where knowledge building happened with a more aesthetic language, even spiritual, drawing more on the arts than the social sciences do exists even if they have become less popular in subjects framed for school examinations.

The psychological end of the social sciences are much more interested in this territory, as wellbeing and health research connects with deep matters, and brain studies embrace things like functional MRI scanners to ever more closely measure the changes in our brains. It would seem that the empirical measurement of spiritual flourishing is getting closer and closer.

My reason for starting here is that it was the spiritual exercises of the Jesuits that draw me into an entirely different register of encounter with sacred texts, through imaginal meditative practices, and also at times choral singing, which brings s different experience of understanding and meaning which I encountered at a school in my own education.

I presented a paper that asked why the spiritual techniques for text encounter seemed so far away from the school classroom use of texts in argumentation. Here I am referring to English education where examinations invite the memorisation of quotes as proofs for arguments, proof texting, as part of the key educational aim for the exam subject called Religious Studies GCSE (and sometimes the odd sermon too).

Now, as then, I am frustrated that somehow the class study has departed from scholars’ engagements with texts. Proof texting is roundly critiqued by scholars of sacred texts and authorities of organised religion yet is a mainstay of classroom practices, encouraged by the design of exams.

My most recent journal article identified that a hermeneutical revolution occurred in the twentieth century. It remembered something long forgotten from the Hebrew and Greek Biblical religious traditions that galvanized a sophisticated level of criticality in Catholic as well Protestant sacred text study, deeply rooted in the ancient processes of text engagement.

If a classroom subject should in some way emulate, or have natalty with the disciplines the knowledge rests on, then the scholarship of sacred text hermeneutics is a worthy focus for the classroom. Subjects like History take great care about the approach to and use of evidence and sources as part of the method of the subject. I think Religious Studies GCSE looks a little more like philosophical argumentation, than the study of meaning and sometimes the resources and the exams seem to encourage prices the wrong kind of study. Exciting and important, but does it lead to wisdom in how traditions are inspired by their sacred texts?

Approaches to teaching the Bible and hermeneutics is a topic that many others have raised concerns about.

Yet I am also interested in the language of spirituality, which no doubt some would call confessional. If meaning is something that happened with contributions from our experience and the text, as surely all language must require to some degree, then we must draw students into their subjective encounter with the words, and help them come to see how significant meaning arises in that space.

There is nothing new in this for those who are scholars of hermeneutics, or cognitive linguistics, or indeed inter cultural understanding, and the Hebrew Scriptures are filled with this cyclical process of rereading previous texts in the new context, as Ezra surely exemplifies among others.

For a while I worried that the evidence from RE departments suggested our GCSE Religious Studies had gone in the wrong direction, with the addition of content over riding giving more attention to the handling of content.

But we found, through research with teachers, that relatively modest good staff development could make a significant difference to teachers’ approaches in the classroom, their understanding and the pupil experience of the lessons, as Text for Teachers showed. I am hopeful.

We have reports from RE teachers who have been enthused to change their engagement strategy with sacred texts and who have found better methods for the classroom that seem to be more meaningful for their students and indeed their own Biblical understanding. Curricula are changing and seeking to articulate a better aim for religious education, as the Catholic RE Directory for England and Wales exemplifies

This has not gone unnoticed in other parts of the world, where interest in good sacred study as a core component of RE is wished fore. What I find most hopeful is the opportunity to gently reorientate a part of the subject from one which tends to be rather focussed on knowledge transfer, to one more concerns with attentiveness to meaning, an the realisation that this is, ultimately something of an encounter between some knowledge or something beyond us, and our lexicon for ordering and sense making.

Here is a full list of the work to date, many of which have links to open access documents.

2025 Bowie, R.A. Charting the hermeneutical turn, its impact on religious education curricula and developing principles for pedagogy. j. relig. educ.https://doi.org/10.1007/s40839-025-00270-7

2025 Bowie, R. A. Hermeneutical bible study: A ‘tradition thought contribution’ to religious education in plural and diverse contexts. in: Fuglseth, Kåre S., ter Avest, Ina and Skeie, Geir (ed.) A Pluralist We in Religious Education: Old Narratives in New Contexts Munster, Germany Waxmann. pp. 89-106 https://repository.canterbury.ac.uk/item/9qq66/hermeneutical-bible-study-a-tradition-thought-contribution-to-religious-education-in-plural-and-diverse-contexts

2022 Bowie, R.A with Farid Panjwani and Katie Clemmey ‘A ‘meta’ approach to texts in Religious Education: Researching teachers’ engagement with sacred text scholarship in English secondary schools’ British Journal of Religious Education Published online: 24 Mar 2022 https://doi.org/10.1080/01416200.2022.2054773

2021 Bowie, R.A ‘Multidimensional competence and the space between faith formation and Scripture study’ In G. Byrne and S. Whittle (Eds) Catholic Education: A Lifelong Journey, Dublin: Veritas, pp.261-272.

2021 Bowie, R.A ‘The implicit knowledge structure preferred by questions in English Religious Studies public exams’ In G Biesta, P Hannam (Eds) Religion and education: The forgotten dimensions of religious education? Leiden: Brill | Sense, pp.112-123.

2020 Bowie, R.A ‘The collective consciousness of an RE department during curriculum change: scripture, representation, science, fear and anger.’ Journal of Religious Education. 2020, 68(3), 305-313; https://doi.org/10.1007/s40839-020-00111-9

2020 Texts and Teachers Findings report and Texts and Teachers Practice Guide. Canterbury, UK, Canterbury Christ Church University. https://repository.canterbury.ac.uk/item/8vzy1/texts-and-teachers-the-practice-guide Texts and Teachers Findings report and Texts and Teachers findings report

2018 Bowie, R.A with Coles, R We reap what we ‘sew’: perpetuating biblical illiteracy in new English Religious Studies exams and the proof text binary question British Journal of Religious Education 2018,40(3), 277-287 https://doi.org/10.1080/01416200.2018.1493270

2017/18 Bowie, R.A ‘Interpreting Texts More Wisely: A Review of Research and the Case for Change in English Religious Education’ In Christian Faith, Formation and Education, edited by R Stuart-Buttle, Ros and J Shortt. Palgrave (sole- authored chapter in a peer-reviewed academic book) https://repository.canterbury.ac.uk/item/886v8/interpreting-texts-more-wisely-a-review-of-research-and-the-case-for-change

2017 Bowie, R.A ‘Stepping into sacred texts: How the Jesuits taught me to read the Bible’. In Reenchanting the Academy, edited by A Voss and S. Wilson, Rubedo Press. (sole-authored chapter in an edited academic book) https://repository.canterbury.ac.uk/item/87z66/stepping-into-sacred-texts-how-the-jesuits-taught-me-to-read-the-bible