There is a growing impetus, from university students and administrations, to decolonise the curriculum and develop diverse reading lists. Yet, there is limited theoretical or empirical analysis of the authorship of current reading lists to justify this imperative. The present study developed and applied a method for auditing the authorship on…

This paper examines the debate between Liam Gearon and Robert Jackson concerning the politicisation of religious education. The debate concerns the extent to which secularisation frames religious education by inculcating politically motivated commitments to tolerance, respect and human rights. Gearon is critical of a supposed…

This article examines and compares the hotly debated issue of national identity in the Taiwanese and English citizenship curricula and investigates the extent to which schoolteachers' perceptions fall in line with the written curriculum. The author describes the background to the evolution of national identity in each country. Following this…

In the final eleven months of its five-year term, the Coalition Government placed much emphasis in the education system on what it called fundamental British values (FBV). The phrase had its origins in counter-terrorism strategies that were of dubious validity both conceptually and operationally, and the trigger for its introduction into the…

The early days of non-confessional, multi-faith religious education in Britain benefitted from close collaboration between academics in universities, teacher educators and teachers. This article attempts to initiate a revival of such a dialogue, by summarizing some developments in religious studies at university level and suggesting possible…

This paper seeks to examine the influence of Fabian Socialist thinking as the primary force in the development of critical theory as applied to higher education in Britain. The paper covers the impact of scientific Fabian Socialism and the establishment of the London School of Economics and Political Science, the Frankfurt School and the rise of…

This article provides a detailed reconstruction of the processes leading to the formation of the widely influential Birmingham "Agreed Syllabus of Religious Instruction" (1975). This is contextualised within one of the most significant periods in the history of race relations in the United Kingdom. The authors discuss how this syllabus,…

The purpose of this paper is to articulate a new perspective on British multi-faith religious education that both complements and, in part, subsumes existing critiques. My argument, while controversial, is straightforward: it is that British religious education has misrepresented the nature of religion in efforts to commend itself as contributing…