Becoming An RE Teacher: A Life History Approach

This paper discusses why life history method was considered to be the most appropriate approach for investigating what it is like to become and be a teacher of religious education (RE) at the present time. The study in question followed a cohort of Secondary Post‐Graduate Certificate of Education (PGCE) in RE students through their training and into their first years of teaching. Within England and Wales, religion per se tends to evoke suspicion and even hostility and the stereotypes associated with religion‐related identities are often negative. We wanted to investigate both what it was like for particular individuals, each with his or her own unique history, to become and be RE teachers and also, how contemporary and dominant perceptions of and attitudes towards religion, together with the ways in which RE is positioned within schools and the curriculum, influence and impact upon that experience. Life history method has the ability to bestride the micro‐macro interface and to consider the dialectical relationship between the individual and society. In this paper, we make our case for using it.