“…Recently, Hand's account of the epistemic criterion has been criticised. One critic, who has also proposed a different criterion, is Trevor Cooling (). Cooling is particularly concerned with implications the epistemic criterion has for the treatment of religious beliefs in education.…”
Section: Mapping the Field: The Proposed Theoretical Criteriamentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Cooling is particularly concerned with implications the epistemic criterion has for the treatment of religious beliefs in education. He believes that the epistemic criterion is too concerned with rationality and that this comes at a cost: ‘The weaknesses of the epistemic criterion’, he writes, stems from an ‘over‐reliance on the decisiveness of reason and failure to attend to the need for fairness’ (Cooling, , p. 169). As an alternative to the epistemic criterion, he proposes what he has called the diversity criterion : [We] should teach as controversial those matters where significant disagreement exists between different belief communities in society where those communities honour the importance of reason giving and exemplify a commitment to peaceful co‐existence in society and teach as settled only those matters where there is demonstrable consensus in society which derives from wide agreement and compelling evidence (Cooling, , p. 177).…”
Section: Mapping the Field: The Proposed Theoretical Criteriamentioning
This article addresses the ongoing debate over which criteria should determine what teachers ought to teach as controversial. I argue that this debate rests on false assumptions. It is a mistake to assume that 1) there should be a context-transcending criterion, 2) such a criterion can be prescribed a priori and universally, and 3) this criterion can be utilised by teachers by means of deductivism. Instead, I argue in favor of a situationist stance in which the means and ends are both worked out from within the situation. This implies that a theory must begin from a practical starting point. In practice, the situation should be the foremost guide rather than a definite criterion.
“…Recently, Hand's account of the epistemic criterion has been criticised. One critic, who has also proposed a different criterion, is Trevor Cooling (). Cooling is particularly concerned with implications the epistemic criterion has for the treatment of religious beliefs in education.…”
Section: Mapping the Field: The Proposed Theoretical Criteriamentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Cooling is particularly concerned with implications the epistemic criterion has for the treatment of religious beliefs in education. He believes that the epistemic criterion is too concerned with rationality and that this comes at a cost: ‘The weaknesses of the epistemic criterion’, he writes, stems from an ‘over‐reliance on the decisiveness of reason and failure to attend to the need for fairness’ (Cooling, , p. 169). As an alternative to the epistemic criterion, he proposes what he has called the diversity criterion : [We] should teach as controversial those matters where significant disagreement exists between different belief communities in society where those communities honour the importance of reason giving and exemplify a commitment to peaceful co‐existence in society and teach as settled only those matters where there is demonstrable consensus in society which derives from wide agreement and compelling evidence (Cooling, , p. 177).…”
Section: Mapping the Field: The Proposed Theoretical Criteriamentioning
This article addresses the ongoing debate over which criteria should determine what teachers ought to teach as controversial. I argue that this debate rests on false assumptions. It is a mistake to assume that 1) there should be a context-transcending criterion, 2) such a criterion can be prescribed a priori and universally, and 3) this criterion can be utilised by teachers by means of deductivism. Instead, I argue in favor of a situationist stance in which the means and ends are both worked out from within the situation. This implies that a theory must begin from a practical starting point. In practice, the situation should be the foremost guide rather than a definite criterion.
“…Nevertheless, any time an adolescent grapples with 'God's Word', they are in some sense reworking the text to discover its contemporary relevance. Scriptural authority, especially as it relates to the interpretation of a metanarrative, allows for a dynamic hermeneutic that resists proof-texting and staid literalism (Cooling, 2012;Wright, 1991). Provided that teachers help students to understand and respect how devotees reverence their own Scriptures, a constructivist approach to engaging these sources is educationally admissible.…”
Section: Moving Beyond Civics and Citizenshipmentioning
This article considers the Australian Curriculum, Assessment, and Reporting Authority's (ACARA) plan for Civics and Citizenship, assessing the role of religions therein. Through a dialectical hermeneutic, ACARA is brought into a mutually critical conversation with the work of curriculum theorist Dwayne Huebner. Both of their distinct visions are found to make space for diverse religious identities, and to affirm students taking responsibility for what they make of this world. They clash, however, over the path to societal harmony and the place given to discussing our deepest differences in belief and practice. In this article it is argued that a constructive use of Sacred Texts in Civics and Citizenship may facilitate a synergy between ACARA and Huebner that is educationally viable and democratically profitable. This would require that curriculum content is decentred to serve a dialogical pedagogy built on the sharing of our foundational narratives as together we pursue the common good.
“…But is it because human reason might never be able to answer religious questions decisively that it is not worth reasoning about them? Arguing that religious beliefs are not controversial because they are foreign to any kind of rationality is actually unfair towards the diversity of beliefs, and unproductive in terms of peaceful co-existence (Cooling 2012).…”
Section: Evaluativism and Religious Convictionsmentioning
This article presents the epistemological paradigm in which Philosophy for Children (P4C) is embedded and the personal epistemological positions that are promoted by P4C, in order to address the concern that P4C might induce relativism in pupils. On the basis of theoretical considerations and empirical results, it is shown that P4C does not promote absolutism or relativism, either in its premises or in pupils' personal epistemology. Rather, this method is related to a socio-constructivist and pragmatic paradigm and it promotes an evaluativist position. The relevance of promoting evaluativism (rather that absolutism or relativism) during RE lessons in pupils is then examined through a psychological perspective. The conclusion is that it is worth integrating P4C in RE because it stimulates an evaluativist perspective that is beneficial in terms of both personal need for meaning and social cohesion.
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