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Decolonising Religious Studies and Promoting Student Retention

Phase 1 has been completed, and an application for Phase 2 of this project has been approved in principle and is being refined in light of feedback received from the FASSTEST Coordination Group and EDI team. Details will be available soon. 

A227: Exploring Religions entered its first presentation in 2017J and was a conscious attempt by the Religious Studies Department to explicitly move from one model of presenting the subject, known in the Religious Studies world as the ‘World Religions’ paradigm, which scholars have recently critiqued for extending the legacies of ‘colonial’ views of the world (i.e. that religions could be categorised using white Anglo-European Protestantism as a normative template). 

The model to which the Department tried to adopt for A227 was based on a pedagogical emphasis roughly known as the ‘lived religion’ thesis, which overlaps strongly with the decolonialisation agenda. This makes the subject as we teach it very different to how it is currently taught in most schools. 

Despite some very good student feedback, A227: Exploring Religion suffers from higher than expected student attrition. We would like to understand more fully what the barriers are to student retention on this module and explore what pro-active interventions might help improve student experience and enable more students to achieve their study goals. 

In particular research questions will focus on: 

(1) What challenges can attempting to create a paradigm shift in understandings of ‘religion’ as a concept pose to students and staff (i.e. moving students away from a ‘World Religions’ based understanding of the subject area to a more decolonial approach)? How can these challenges be better addressed? 

(2) How can equality, diversity and inclusion be more effectively promoted in the curriculum? What challenges does doing this potentially pose to staff and students? How can these challenges be better addressed? 

Initial scoping into this issue suggests that: 

  • The paradigm shift we are trying to enact needs more careful explaining as a means of managing expectations. We need more research to explore how best to provide conceptual scaffolding to enable more students to achieve their study goals. 

  • The students who are most likely to drop out and not meet their full potential are also facing a range of other pressures on their time and attention for study. In particular, students who are from lower SES status, those in full-intensity study, carers, as well as those with mental health issues and physical disabilities find staying on the module harder than students who do not face these challenges. There may be specific interventions we can do to make study for these groups more manageable. Further research to determine the most appropriate interventions for promoting more equality, diversity and inclusion is likely to create resources which will improve and enhance the learning experience of all students, enable more students to achieve their study goals, as well as promoting institutional attainment and retention goals. 

While in some ways these are two separate issues, they are also interconnected. A more integrated approach to paradigm shifting will engender greater engagement for those students who are struggling with other aspects of the lives; conversely, making practical interventions to improve accessibility and inclusion will help free up energy for the primary intended pedagogical intervention around understanding ‘religion’ as ‘lived’ and deconstructing colonial assumptions about ‘religion’ as a category of thought. 

This project will additionally seek to clarify to what extent the curriculum of A227 does follow best practice in applying the principles of ‘decolonialisation’ and ‘accessibility’ which are related aims in helping all students better achieve their study goals. This audit will forward-feed into future Religious Studies curriculum, e.g. new material for DD113 and A332R, as well as potentially enabling to consider ways of better promoting ‘lived religion’ approaches to colleagues in schools and colleges (e.g. in partnership with the National Extension College). 

Bibliography: 

On Religious Studies: 

Martin, C. 2017. A Critical Introduction to the Study of Religion. Routledge. 

Nongbri, B. 2013. Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept. Yale University Press. 

Nye, M., 2019. ‘Decolonizing the Study of Religion’ Open Library of Humanities, 5(1): 43. http://doi.org/10.16995/olh.421 

On decolonising the curriculum: 

Arday, J., D. Z. Belluigi and D. Thomas (2020) ‘Attempting to break the chain: reimaging inclusive pedagogy and decolonising the curriculum within the academy,’ Educational Philosophy and Theory, https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2020.1773257 

Butcher, J., D. Gray, W. Fowle and J. Young (2020) ‘Decolonising the curriculum to reduce the black attainment gap’ internal Open University study and tool for curriculum review. 

de Oliveira Andreot, V., S. Stein, C. Ahenakew and D. Hunt (2015) ‘Mapping interpretations of decolonization in the context of higher education’ Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 4(1): 21-40. https://decolonialfuturesnet.files.wordpress.com/2018/02/mapping-decolonization-he.pdf 

On student retention: 

Bagrıacık Yılmaz, A, Banyard, P. (2020). Engagement in Distance Education Settings: A Trend Analysis. Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education, 21(1):101-120. http://doi.org/10.17718/tojde.690362 

Baxter, J. (2012). Who am I and What Keeps Me Going? Profiling the Distance Learning Student in Higher Education. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 13(4): 107–129. 

Gaytan, J. (2015) Comparing Faculty and Student Perceptions Regarding Factors That Affect Student Retention in Online Education, American Journal of Distance Education, 29(1): 56-66, http://doi.org/10.1080/08923647.2015.994365 

Simpson, Ormond (2013) Student retention in distance education: are we failing our students?, Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning, 28(2): 105-119, http://doi.org/10.1080/02680513.2013.847363 

Radovan, M . (2019). Should I Stay, or Should I Go? Revisiting Student Retention Models in Distance Education. Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education, 20(3): 29-40 . http://doi.org/10.17718/tojde.598211 

Rose-Adams, John and Hewitt, Lindsay (2012). ‘What retention’ means to me: the position of the adult learner in student retention. Widening Participation and Lifelong Learning, 14: 146–164.