Argumentation in Religion and Science Project

The Study aims to support teachers of Science and Religious Studies in exploring a range of strategies to support the development of pupils’ higher order thinking skills (argumentation.) The study seeks to bring teachers together with each other and also with teacher educators to collaborate in order to share knowledge and expertise.

Aims

The aim of the OARS (Oxford Argumentation in Religion and Science) project is to understand how argumentation works in science and religion, both in terms of the nature and development of arguments, and also in terms of how the teaching and learning of argumentation can be supported in science and religious education.

Background

Teachers and pupils often face difficult judgments that demand understanding of various kinds of information, opinion, values and ethical principles, and understanding of different processes of argumentation, deliberation and debate.

Resources

Many complex everyday problems thus require interdisciplinary conversations in order for teachers and pupils to make judgements about a whole range of issues that have both scientific and religious undertones. Such interdisciplinary conversations often resort to exchanges of claims and reasons about particular issues.

Impact

The ongoing professional development programme is aiming to facilitate further conversation between the science and religious education teachers so as to expose further the issues that emerge in their collaborations as well as their lessons in teaching argumentation.

Pupil Involvement

The OARS project began in September 2018 and it involves partnership of University of Oxford and secondary schools in England teaching 11–14 years-old students. Thirty teachers from 15 schools, including a range of faith/maintained and religiously plural/religiously uniform, are currently participating in the study. A science teacher is paired with a religious education teacher in each school to ensure cross-curricular collaboration.