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This article reconceptualises school teachers and pupils respectively as 'pedagogical bricoleurs' and 'bricolage researchers' who utilise a multiplicity of theories, concepts, methodologies and pedagogies in teaching and/or researching. This reconceptualization is based on a coalescence of generic curricular and pedagogical principles promoting dialogic, critical and enquiry-based learning. Innovative proposals for reconceptualising the aims, contents and methods of multi-faith Religious Education in English statemaintained schools without a religious affiliation are described, so as to provide an instance of and occasion for the implications of these theories and concepts of learning. With the aim of initiating pupils into the communities of academic enquiry concerned with theology and religious studies, the 'RE-searchers approach' to multi-faith Religious Education in primary schools (5-11 year olds) is cited as a highly innovative means of converting these curricular and pedagogical principles and proposals into practical classroom procedures that are characterised by multi-, inter-and supra-disciplinarity; notions of eclecticism, emergence, flexibility and plurality; and theoretical and conceptual complexity, contestation and context-dependence.

In response to contemporary concerns, and using neglected primary sources, this article explores the professionalisation of teachers of Religious Education (RI/RE) in nondenominational, state-maintained schools in England. It does so from the launch of Religion in Education (1934) and the Institute for Christian Education at Home and Abroad (1935) to the founding of the Religious Education Council of England and Wales (1973) and the British Journal of Religious Education (1978). Professionalisation is defined as a collective historical process in terms of three inter-related concepts: (1) professional self-organisation and professional politics, (2) professional knowledge, and (3) initial and continuing professional development. The article sketches the history of non-denominational religious education prior to the focus period, to contextualise the emergence of the professionalising processes under scrutiny. Professional self-organisation and professional politics are explored by reconstructing the origins and history of the Institute of Christian Education at Home and Abroad, which became the principal body offering professional development provision for RI/RE teachers for some fifty years. Professional knowledge is discussed in relation to the content of Religion in Education which was oriented around Christian Idealism and interdenominational networking. Changes in journal name in the 1960s and 1970s reflected uncertainties about the orientation of the subject and shifts in understanding over the nature and character of professional knowledge. The article also explores a particular case of resistance, in the late 1960s, to the prevailing consensus surrounding the nature and purpose of RI/RE, and the representativeness and authority of the pre-eminent professional body of the time. In conclusion, the article examines some implications which may be drawn from this history for the prospects and problems of the professionalisation of RE today.

In this paper, we take a semiotic/dialogic approach to investigate how a group of UK 12-13year-old students work with hierarchical defining and classifying quadrilaterals. Through qualitatively analysing students' decision-making processes, we found that the students' decision-making processes are interpreted as transforming their informal/personal semiotic representations of Bparallelogram^(object) to more institutional ones. We also found that students' decision-making was influenced by their inability to see their peers' points of view dialogically, i.e., requiring a genuine inter-animation of different perspectives such that there is a dialogic switch, and individuals learn to see the problem Bas if through eyes of another,^in particular collectively shared definitions of geometrical shapes.

TITLEExploring the ontological dimension of dialogic education through an evaluation of the impact of Internet mediated dialogue across cultural difference AUTHORS Wegerif, R; Doney, J; Richards, A; et al. JOURNAL Learning, Culture and Social Interaction DEPOSITED IN ORE AbstractIt has been claimed that dialogic education implies a direction of change upon an ontological dimension from monologic closed identities in the direction of more dialogic identifications characterised by greater openness to the other and greater identification with the process of dialogue. This paper recapitulates that theory and then provides an empirical illustration of what it looks like in practice. In order to do this a methodology for researching the impact of dialogic education is outlined and applied to the evaluation of the impact of a programme designed to promote greater dialogic open-mindedness: the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change's Generation Global Project (GG) supports schools in over twenty different countries to engage in dialogue with each other through videos and blogs.The methodology put forward argues that the understanding sought by educational research is dialogic in that it emerges from the dialogue between inside and outside perspectives. The findings offer some clear evidence of a shift in identifications resulting from dialogue through the analysis of changes in online language use supported by interview evidence. This study suggests that a pedagogical intervention can produce identity Page 2 of 23 change in the direction of becoming more dialogic and shows that it is possible to evaluate this change..