Decolonising Religious Studies and Promoting Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

In line with colleagues in many other institutions, the Religious Studies Department at the Open University has adopted a pedagogical emphasis roughly known as the ‘lived religion’ thesis. This makes our approach different to what many of our students experienced in school, which is roughly known as the ‘World Religions’ paradigm. The ‘World Religions’ paradigm has been critiqued for extending the legacies of ‘colonial’ views of the world (i.e., that religions could be categorised using criteria drawn from white Anglo-European Protestantism). 

Our main research questions are:  

(1) What challenges to students and staff may have been created in attempting to create a paradigm shift in understandings of ‘religion’ as a concept (in moving away from ‘World Religions’ towards ‘lived religion’)?  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? 

In autumn 2020, we interviewed several of the tutors teaching on our second-year undergraduate course, A227: Exploring Religion: Places, Practices, Texts and Experiences about their impressions of the curriculum and the difficulties faced by students. This initial ‘scoping research’ suggested that the paradigm shift we are trying to enact needs more careful explaining as a means of managing expectations. 

The current ‘Stage 2’ project (2021-22) seeks to deepen our understanding of these questions by 1) exploring OU student perspectives on aspects of A227: Exploring Religion which they find most challenging (as well as most engaging) and how we can better promote equality, diversity and inclusion to all students; 2) interviewing 10 colleagues in Religious Studies departments across the UK to explore shared challenges and articulation of ideals in implementing Equality, Diversity and Inclusion and ‘decolonisation’ reforms across the sector and 3) continuing our interviews with Associate Lecturers teaching on A227: Exploring Religion on their responses to the main research questions. 

This research aims to produce publishable research of relevance to Religious Studies colleagues and others interested in the pedagogical challenges of reframing a subject area. It will also forward-feed into the creation of new Religious Studies curriculum at the Open University, as well as potentially enabling us to consider ways of better promoting best practice approaches to colleagues in the teaching of religion in schools and colleges.