Professor Andrew Wright

I have taught on the following courses:

• PGCE in Religious Education
• PGCE educational issues
• Religious education INSET
• MA in Religious Education
• MA in Theology & Education
• MA Youth Ministry
• DMin
• MPhil/PhD research training programme
• EdD research training programme
• Doctoral supervision (MPhil/PhD, EdD)

I was programme director of the PGCE in Religious Education between 1995 and 1998. The PGCE offers initial professional education for entrants to the teaching profession through a mixture of college-based study and supervised school placements. Along with my colleague (and current programme director) Ann-Marie Brandom, I helped edit the programme textbook, Learning to Teach Religious Education in the Secondary School (Routledge, 2000). I continue to lecture and run workshops on the place of spirituality in schools as part of the 'general educational issues' course offered to all PGCE students.

I was co-ordinator of the religious education INSET programme between 1995 and 2000. My work here focused on two action research projects organised in conjunction with Croydon Local Education Authority and funded by St Gabriel's Trust: 'Implementing Short-Course GCSE Programmes' (1996-97) and 'Developing Non-Examination RE in the Sixth Form' (1996-97). In 1999, at the suggestion of a number of past PGCE students, I initiated a termly curriculum development workshop which provided INSET via a student-led agenda. The workshops are organised by a committee of King's staff and classroom teachers and attract serving teachers and school-based PGCE mentors, as well as Masters and doctoral students.

I was programme director of the MA in Religious Education between 1998 and 2001. The programme provides teachers with the opportunity to engage in the academic study of religious education in the context of the subject's historical development and the changing nature of multi-faith Britain. Students are encouraged to reflect critically on their professional involvement in religious education in the light of cutting-edge academic research and pedagogical practice. My teaching has focused on the following five courses, the last of three of which were derived directly from my ongoing research:

• History of curriculum development adopts a standard chronological approach, its distinctive slant being the use of critical realism and a critical theory of religious pedagogy as twin interpretative tools
• Multi-cultural society is a foundation course that seeks to explore the cultural context in which religious education takes place; inter-disciplinary in nature, it is distinctive in seeking a synergy between sociological, theological, psychological and philosophical perspectives
• Hermeneutics and religious education seeks to explore the process of teaching religion in the classroom in the light of philosophical and theological hermeneutical theory
• Spirituality and education addresses the spiritual formation of children in the context of classroom teaching; the course focuses on the nature of spiritual experience in the light of conflicting religious and secular truth claims, and the contrast between experiential and cognitive styles of learning
• The representation of religion in the classroom considers the problems and possibilities presented to the religious educator by the reification of religion in academic discourse, the impact of rational, romantic, post-modern and critically realistic philosophy, and the insights of post-colonial criticism

I currently teach a module on theological education as part of the EdD programme, as well as a series of combined lecture-workshops dealing with the theoretical aspects of educational research as part of the department's MPhil/PhD and EdD research training programmes. These sessions focus on the philosophy of education, hermeneutics and education, post-modernity, and critical realism. The major focus of my teaching is now the supervision of ten research students following the MPhil/PhD routes.