By Denise Cush, Dave Francis, Philippa Hulme & Michael J. Reiss
Since its inception, in 1989, the Sea of Faith Network has been proactive in launching several educational projects and programmes. Notably, in 2013, Solarity¹ provided online resources and detailed plans for religion and philosophy clubs. Eighty-two complete sessions are included, providing a good model for those who wish to set up such a club, often taking children deeper than the regular curriculum.
SOF then linked with the ‘Big Ideas for Religious Education’ project. Led by former HMI, Barbara Wintersgill, and involving RE specialists from across England as well as three of the authors of this piece, the project has evolved into a more-or-less complete programme for an education in religion and worldviews for 4-18 year-olds. We believe it makes a considerable contribution to the subject of RE in schools. It has already been influential in several Local Authority Agreed Syllabuses and the national online Oak Academy.
Here, we examine one of the units developed for the Big ideas for RE website². It was suggested by Mark Chater, who noticed that 2025 was 100 years after a teacher, John Scopes, had been put on trial for teaching about evolution, thereby contravening the Butler Act of Tennessee that made it “unlawful for any teacher … to teach any theory that denies the Story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals”.
The law was repealed 60 years later, but in some states of the USA today there remain permissions and protections for biblical creationist ideas to be taught in the state-funded schools. In the original case, Scopes volunteered to provide a test case for the law. The local civic leaders wanted more publicity for their town. They encouraged two famous lawyers to fight out the case; William J Bryan, a former presidential candidate, who wanted to defend the literal biblical account of the world’s creation, and Clarence Darrow, who thought it time to challenge the idea that believing in the Bible meant not believing in the evolution of human beings as presented in Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.
American media sensed a story: science versus religion! It became the very first trial to be broadcast live on the radio. Several plays and films of the trial have since been made, notably the excellent ‘Inherit the Wind’ staring Spencer Tracy.
At the end of the trial, which put literal interpretations of the biblical creation story on the stand, Scopes was found guilty. The judge fined him the maximum $100 (later overturned on a technicality) and the journalists lampooned the locals as having been left behind by the 20th century. Perhaps this was where today’s so-called culture wars began; people were presented with a choice: creation as described in the Bible, or Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection.
Our unit introduces students aged 11-14 to the main issues so that they can understand the original debate and be brought up to date with both scientific findings and developments in thinking about the interpretation of religious texts. And this is where Big Ideas comes in.
Big Ideas
Anyone putting together a curriculum has to have some way of starting. They might simply amend a previous curriculum or begin afresh but they need to have some idea, whether implicit or explicit, of why certain things should be in the curriculum while others need not be. Back in 2005, two USA academics, Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins, argued that there was a lot to be said for using the concept of ‘big ideas’ to help determine curriculum content³. A big idea is a concept that is core to a subject – something one wants students really to have understood, not merely to have covered. McTighe and Wiggins give the example of the physics concept: ‘Energy cannot be created or destroyed, although in many processes energy is transferred to the environment as heat’ (McTighe & Wiggins, 2005, p.10).
Big ideas apply to any subject but one of the first people to run with the notion was the indefatigable science educator Wynne Harlen. Using the money she had won when awarded an international prize, Harlen gathered together an international group of scientists and science educators, and the group ended up producing a report (Harlen, 2010)⁴ which advocated that the 5-16 school science curriculum be structured around 14 big ideas. Ten of these were ideas of science, for example that ‘The composition of the Earth and its atmosphere and the processes occurring within them shape the Earth’s surface and its climate’, and four were ideas about science, for example that ‘Applications of science often have ethical, social, economic and political implications’.
The Big Ideas movement has been a powerful one in science education, with a number of countries using these Big Ideas (or modified versions of them) to restructure their school science curricula. The movement also spread to other subjects, of which Religious Education was one of the first. Back in 2016, the redoubtable Barbara Wintersgill got in touch with three of us, asking us to work with her and others on what became Wintersgill et al. (2017)⁵.
The one of us who was a member of both the science education and the RE Big Ideas groups found the similarities and differences between them to be fascinating. In fact, there were far more similarities than differences. In both cases, a group of people with many years’ experience of their subject had been assembled, individuals who were passionate about their subject and concerned that many school students did not agree, choosing instead to stop studying the subject as soon as they could. In both cases, too, there was extensive discussion, indeed, considerable argument, as to what should be the purpose of teaching the subject. There seemed to be just two differences: the science educators were more secure about the position of their subject in the school curriculum, and they agreed more among themselves than did the RE experts as to what should be taught in their subject.
In terms of the Big Ideas in Science Education report, the ones that are most relevant to the Scopes trial are one of the ideas of science – ‘The diversity of organisms, living and extinct, is the result of evolution’ – and one of the ideas about science – ‘Scientific explanations, theories and models are those that best fit the facts known at a particular time’. Within the science education community, the one about evolution is uncontroversial. However, the one about scientific explanations, theories and models is a bit more controversial. Despite the best efforts of historians and philosophers of science, few science undergraduates are taught much about the history and philosophy of science, and while the first version of the National Curriculum in England had a great deal about scientific explanations, theories and models and how and why they change over time, thanks largely to the remarkable Joan Solomon, this has been diluted in successive versions of the National Curriculum for science.
One of the satisfying features of our work on the centenary of the Scopes Trial has been how we have drawn on both the Big Ideas of Science Education report and on the Big Ideas for Religious Education report.
Collaborative planning in RE & Science
To match the selected Big Ideas in Science, Denise and Dave used two of the age-related statements for Big Idea 6 in the RE project, namely that: a) Religions/worldviews provide ‘grand narratives’ of how and why the world is as it is: the big questions about the universe and humanity, and b) Authoritative texts / traditions are interpreted in different ways.
The six Big Ideas in RE themselves were put together after much debate and discussion by a team of teachers, advisers and other RE professionals from across the country. They are: 1. Continuity, Change and Diversity; 2. Words and Beyond; 3. A Good Life; 4. Making Sense of Life’s Experiences; 5. Influence and Power; 6. The Big Picture.
These are the things that we want pupils to ‘get’ about religion and worldviews through their RE studies. We have constructed age-related objectives to go with them.
Having been put in touch with Marianne Cutler and Philippa Hulme at the Association for Science Education, we put together a complete scheme for schools that, ideally, could be taught cooperatively by the RE and Science teachers. There’s flexibility though, so that each part of the unit can be taught separately.
It begins with an activity for students, who take on roles based on the original trial – thanks to Ruth Marx for supplying the initial sets of role play cards. The lessons then go on to explore the science of understanding evolution today.
Exploring the science of evolution
The science section begins with an arresting image of a bed bug, its bites, and a question: Why, in the 1950s and 1960s, did bed bug shells become thicker in response to the use of insecticide sprays? Was it because the shells of individual bugs thickened in response to frequent spraying? Or was it the result of natural variation in shell thickness, with thicker-shelled individuals being more likely to survive to reproduce? In the lesson, students use their prior learning to weigh up the two options. It is the second explanation, of course, that correctly exemplifies Darwinian evolution.
Having contemplated two scientific explanations for bed bug evolution, students move on to comparing a theological explanation with a scientific explanation. This time, the context is eyes. In 1802, English theologian William Paley argued that observations of complex functionality in nature imply the action of a supernatural designer. For example, just as a watch does not come about by chance, but is the work of a skilled watchmaker, so the existence of nature is not accidental, but the result of the work of an intelligent designer. Fifty years later, Darwin considered the evolution of the eye too. At first glance, he writes in On the Origin of Species, the evolution of the eye by natural selection seems absurd. However, he continues, there are many types of eyes. Complex eyes could have evolved from simple ones by natural selection, if each change was useful. The key, says Darwin, is to find intermediate eyes to demonstrate a path from simple to complex.
The lesson continues by setting out evidence for a series of steps through which complex eyes may have evolved, from the evolution of light-sensitive cells in Euglena, to pigment pits in arrowworm plankton, to eyes with lenses that allow animals to see clearly and judge distances. For each step, students engage with the content by suggesting benefits to the organism of the new structure.
As well as reinforcing prior learning of an idea of science – evolution – the lesson segment on eyes supports learning of ideas about science. For example, what is the evidence for a scientific explanation? In the case of the evolution of eyes, much evidence comes from observations of organisms alive today whose eyes (or eye precursors) demonstrate different steps in eye evolution.
It is not easy to create practical classroom activities on evolution. However, this lesson delivers, with an activity on vegetables. Did you know that six vegetables – cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli, sprouts, kohlrabi and kale – all originated from one plant species, the wild mustard? Kale is the result of breeding – over many generations – from individual wild mustard plants with bigger leaves. And cauliflower is the result of selective breeding from wild mustard specimens with bigger flower buds. How is this evidence for evolution? If artificial selection can lead to changes to organisms over generations, then – the argument goes – it is reasonable to assume that changes resulting from natural selection are also possible.
The second of the science lessons is an opportunity for students to scrutinise recent research on evolution. Again, the lesson supports learning of ideas about science. For example, as the technology to collect evidence develops, so scientists can collect evidence that – even a few years earlier – might not have been possible. And by highlighting some of the scientists who did the research, students can realise that science is not a completed body of knowledge. Rather, it is a human endeavour – perhaps one to which they might contribute one day. The teacher might point out that every scientist has their own motivations and agendas, with consequent potential for messiness and disagreement.
Three pieces of modern research are highlighted; students learn about these cooperatively in groups, through the ‘jigsaw’ technique:
Investigation 1 – reported in 2022 Scientists use digital electronic scales to demonstrate that Atlantic silverside fish evolved to be heavier or lighter depending on selective harvesting.
Investigation 2 – reported in 2022 Scientists use X-ray powder diffraction to analyse fish teeth piled up by ancient fires, providing evidence that humans cooked fish 780,000 years ago. Improved nutrition may have contributed to the evolution of the human brain.
Investigation 3 – reported in 2024 Scientists use synchrotron microtomography to analyse coprolites (fossilised poo) and other remains from dinosaurs in what is now central Europe. They use the evidence to infer food webs in ancient times, thus revealing a likely timeline of five steps in dinosaur evolution.
Religious Education and the Scopes trial
Religious Education has changed massively in the past 100 years, especially in Great Britain and Scandinavia. In the USA, the first amendment to the Constitution has been largely interpreted as ruling out any RE at all, so that some teachers told us in 2004 that they were afraid to even mention Jesus. In England in 1925, RE in fully state-funded schools consisted of ‘non-denominational’ Christian RE based on the Bible. Church schools were allowed to continue with denominational RE. Some Local Education Authorities began to create Agreed Syllabuses for RE. The 1944 Education Act offered full funding for those church schools that provided Agreed Syllabus RE, but those that wished to continue with denominational RE had to provide a proportion of the funding – an option taken up particularly by Catholic schools. 1971 marked the revolutionary turn to non-confessional multifaith RE, which was the norm by the time the 1988 Education Act established a National Curriculum that left RE to local authorities and religious communities. The 2018 Commission on RE⁶ began the current movement towards a ‘Religion and Worldviews’ approach of which the Big Ideas project is a part.
The RE part of our unit on the Scopes trial reflects these changes. Big Idea 6, ‘The Big Picture’, explores the idea that worldviews, whether religious or not, often present a ‘grand narrative’ that attempts to explain ‘life, the universe and everything’ and to give meaning to our lives. We emphasise the point that, in traditions based on a sacred text, diversity of belief and practice often springs from the variety of interpretations given to the relevant texts.
Thus, an important part of our unit explores genres of literature and how this affects interpretation. A poem is not the same as a scientific report, yet both can express truths of different kinds. It is important to explore the difference between believing in creation and being a ‘creationist’ to avoid a simple binary of ‘evolution versus religion’. The unit also stresses the sheer diversity of beliefs about creation, drawing upon a range of stories from global traditions, as well as exploring the different types of ‘creationist’ views, which are not all ‘literal’ readings of Genesis.
It is also important for students to discover that there are religions that have no need of divine creation, such as Jainism or Buddhism, or where it is not a once-and-for-all event, or is in a sense illusory, such as in various strands of Hindu tradition.
For atheists, agnostics and the majority of theists who accept the scientific evidence for evolution it is important to understand that a ‘fundamentalist’ approach to the text of the Bible is not the only motivation behind rejection of evolution. Both in 1925 and today, there are concerns that accepting evolution means replacing Christian values of love and compassion with a selfish and ruthless interpretation of the ‘survival of the fittest’. The Nazi regime’s goal of exterminating those categories of people deemed ‘inferior’, including people with disabilities, shows that this was a genuine danger, and such attitudes have not altogether disappeared today.
The ‘worldviews’ approach⁷ is based on the understanding that everyone has a ‘worldview’ in the sense of a general approach to life involving certain assumptions, emotions and behaviour, whether religious or not, and whether consciously articulated or not. It is important to realise that students do not arrive in our classrooms without these, and that this will affect their learning in all subjects including science and RE. Teachers can help students reflect on their own worldviews, the influences on them and the provenance of knowledge.
The Scopes trial is still very relevant today for many reasons. The specific issues it raises are still reverberating; about science and religion, the aims and content of education, sources of knowledge, and types of truth. More generally, it can be seen as the first example of a media-fuelled ‘culture war’, where people are encouraged to take up binary positions and abuse the opposition rather than seeking solutions together. Debates about what should be prioritised in the school curriculum are continuing, with some issues in the USA replaying Scopes. Meanwhile, Big Ideas provide a useful tool for prioritising curriculum content, aims and pedagogy. In English Religious Education, the Big Ideas project is part of, and a major influence on, a larger ‘Religion and Worldviews’ approach, supporting the adoption of a National Content Standard⁸, including a National Statement of Entitlement, to underpin a fairer and more inclusive RE curriculum for all children, whether religious, non-religious or non-binary in relation to religion.
Author biographies:
Michael Reiss, as well as being an Anglican priest, is professor of science education at the Institute of Education, University College London, where he is assistant director. As Chair of the Association for Science Education and proponent of the use of Big Ideas in Science education, he has supported the development of Big Ideas for RE, acting as a key adviser from the start of the project, and in developing a specific scheme of learning based on the ‘Scopes Monkey Trial’ of 1925.
Philippa Hulme was intimately involved with the development of the science components of our collaborative project commemorating the Scopes Monkey Trial, and was a key presenter of the material at the Association for Science Education’s national conference earlier this year. She has published a wide variety of school science resources, and created innovative activities bringing contemporary science into the classroom for the ASE, the European Union, Practical Action, Sheffield Hallam University, the British Council and Google Expeditions. As well as writing, Philippa now consults internationally on textbook development, working (mainly remotely) alongside Ministry of Education staff in Uzbekistan, The Gambia and – currently –Tonga.
Denise Cush is Professor Emerita of Religion and Education, Bath Spa University. Her interests include Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity and alternative spiritualities such as Paganism, as well as RE. She taught Religious Studies at school and university levels, and RE in both primary and secondary teacher education. In 2016 she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Uppsala, Sweden. She was a member of the REC Commission on RE, whose 2018 report has been the foundation of current developments for a national plan for the subject. She is a member of the core team producing materials for the Big Ideas for RE website.
Dave Francis is an adviser for religious education and spiritual, moral, social and cultural development, currently working with Dr Barbara Wintersgill and Prof Denise Cush on the Big Ideas for RE project. He was a teacher of RE for 14 years, including ten as Head of a Department of Religion, Philosophy and Social Education, and has since held advisory posts in several local authorities and, notably, as Lead Consultant for REonline. Dave is member of the Steering Group of the Sea of Faith Network and writes the Worldviews Navigator column of Sofia.
Footnotes:
- http://www.solarity.org.uk/
- https://bigideasforre.org/exemplar-units-of-learning/ > Ages 11-14 > The Big Picture Exemplar 2.
- Wiggins, G. P., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design, 2nd edn., Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
- Harlen, W. (ed) (2010) Principles and Big Ideas of Science Education, Duns. https://www.ase.org.uk/bigideas
- Wintersgill, B. (ed) (2017) Big Ideas for Religious Education, University of Exeter. https://bigideasforre.org/Big-Ideas-Publications/
- Commission on Religious Education (CoRE) (2018). Final Report. Religion and Worldviews: The Way Forward. A National Plan for RE. REC. www.religiouseducationcouncil.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/1-Final-Report-of-the-Commission-on-RE.pdf
- Pett, S. (2024). Developing a Religion and Worldviews approach in Religious Education in England: A Handbook for curriculum writers RE Council of England and Wales. https://religiouseducationcouncil.org.uk/rwapproach/
- Religious Education Council of England and Wales (2023). National Content Standard for Religious Education. https://religiouseducationcouncil.org.uk/rec/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/National-Content-Standard-for-Religious-Education-for-England.pdf