The importance of the legacy of Ninian Smart is a crucial issue, precisely because, to the author's mind, much of contemporary British religious education has signally failed to face up to the reality of its historical and continuing failure to further and realise liberal educational aims: it congratulates itself on its achievements while…

In the December 2008 special issue of the "Oxford Review of Education" John Furlong focused upon Tony Blair's modernisation of the teaching profession and associated attempts to harness teacher professionalism to a broader reform agenda. This article responds to Furlong's contribution through an examination of the evidence base used to…

In their rejoinder to our article about their work on evidence-based science education, Millar "et al." (2008) claim that we misrepresented their position, and that our argument was false or unclear in key respects. In this brief reply we argue that their criticisms are misdirected, and that they fail to engage in the sort of dialogue…

A reader of Traianou and Hammersley's article (in this issue), which discusses at some length the work we undertook in the "Evidence-based Practice in Science Education (EPSE)" Research Network, might attribute to us views that are rather different from those which we in fact hold, and which we have sought to present in our own accounts…

In this paper Gewirtz and Cribb offer a response to Hammersley and Abraham's criticisms of their arguments about the place of values in social research published in this issue of BJSE. In doing so, they make clear that most of the positions that Hammersley and Abraham attribute to them are ones that they do not identify with and that, like…

This article presents the authors' response to Harman and Sanderson (2008) who address the important question of how person-centred active support is. The authors' intention is not to disagree with Harman and Sanderson's general point that combining active support (AS) with person-centred planning (PCP) is better than either approach being…

This article is a reply to Gewirtz and Cribb's argument for ethical reflexivity, presented in a previous issue of this journal. These authors compared their views with mine, suggesting a way in which the differences between our positions could be overcome. I argue that, while there is certainly substantial agreement, there are also some…

The author has been invited to reply to this response to her article of December 2006 in this journal. This response can only be a summary of some of her findings and a reiteration, in very truncated form, of her arguments. She would refer any interested reader back to her original extended review of the PIRLS project as it was there that she lays…

What does Penny Thompson really want? Reading her article in "BJRE" 26 (1) proved a baffling experience: it clearly wanted to say something, and to say it passionately, yet signally failed to do so. It fails largely because it lacks an argument; there seems also to be conceptual muddle at its heart. A fuller critique will need to attend…

In this article, the author comments on Professor White's response to his criticisms of White's attack on compulsory religious education (White, 2004). Religious education, the author contends, raises questions of fundamental importance and complexity that compulsion is necessary if people are to create anything resembling a religiously literate…

Andrew Wright has recently criticized an article penned by the author, which suggests that no good reasons have been given why religious education should be a compulsory school subject. In this article, the author explains the two misunderstandings Wright has about his position. First, Wright characterized the author's thesis as arguing "from…

This paper discusses aspects of Andrew Wright's version of a liberal, critical religious education and his criticisms of some other views of modern religious education. This is attempted not by examining these "other views" as such but by concentrating on the work of John Hick. The reason for this is that Wright, like Cooling (in his…

Though religion continues to enjoy a global significance for humankind, any justification of the compulsory status of religious education must be made on the basis of reason rather than public consensus. We live in a pluralistic world in which contrasting world views, grounded in radically conflicting ontological assumptions, vie for our…