Transcript Extract From A Focus Group Discussion

Focus group of trainee teachers

This is part of a transcript of a focus group.

Context: a small group of secondary PGCE students (graduates training for school teaching), mostly science, but including a few religious studies specialists. They were being asked about the issue of science and religion, which is part of the UK recommended curriculum for religious studies in lower secondary school (i.e. ages 11-14).

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(This is part of work carried out for the LASAR (Learning about Science and Religion) Project.

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The focus group discussion

Note: SB and SG are used to refer to male and female students speaking, not to identify specific participants.

Researcher's introduction

1. ... the research we’re interested in is about the learning of science and religion in schools. ... I’ve got two lots of questions – the first is four questions and I’ll give you those four to start with ... Is it helpful if I do suggest someone to chair or –

2. SB: Could we just start talking? (general laughter) [see transcription conventions]

3. KT: Yeah

4. SB: Me? Um, who knows what the different viewpoints are?

5. SB: Well, are there any technical definitions or are you just talking about – so, if there are any technical points you know – ‘cause you sound like you did.

6. SB: Well, from the stuff I’ve done, there’s basically, science and religion are in conflict, they are complementary or they’re just working completely separate fields and they don’t relate at all with the three general (code?) ways of looking at the problem –

7. SB: I’ve not seen any evidence at my school that they’ve conflicted in anything that I’ve seen so far but then I’ve not been in any of the more conflicting topics – so, I’ve not been in any {values} lessons that they’ve done – evolution and things like that which I’ve seen the teacher do with them – or, could be seen like a ‘hot potato’.

8. SG: I’ve been in the school not – when I was doing supply teaching that – where the kids were not allowed to be taught about sexual education as such, um, they were allowed to be taught about reproduction but without specific reference to anything sexual – I’m not sure about what it was –

9. SG: Was it about science or was it PSE or something?

10. SG: No, it wasn’t – it was something to do with the school –

11. SB: But, was that –

12. SG: Catholic

13. SB: So, it was – it was on religious grounds

14. SG: Yeah

15. SB: Did they explain why? So, what was it that wasn’t allowed to be taught because there’s the -

16. SG: the emotional kind of thing – relationship –

17. SB: Yeah, there’s that bit and then there’s the pure biology of it which is part of the national curriculum, I believe

18. SG: Yeah, it was – I can’t actually remember but it was something to do with – when – it was something to do with sex specifically – so, reproduction was okay but sex was not – it was like – I think it was like how does this thing happen which is likely to be dubious but the actual biology of it was explained

19. SG: So, it wasn’t depending on the {task} – which was used by the teacher in the class - was that controlled?

20. SG: Yeah, yeah – they weren’t allowed to speak in the – in certain tasks – if you know what I mean

21. SB: So, that’s interesting because that’s kind of a separate area to the usual area that we think about in terms of – sort of clash of different world views of different ways of the world or of different conclusions about the world – that’s something a bit different – that’s agreement between people of religious faith and scientists about the way the world works but an unwillingness to talk about it, presumably?

22. SG: mm – ‘cause kids that young shouldn’t know about sex – I guess, that’s their –

23. SG: No, I think if it was a Catholic school, it’d be because their views are no sex before marriage, they wouldn’t want to kind of promote this idea of sex because they don’t want the kids to be doing it – not thinking about doing it outside of the context of marriage. I mean, I actually went to a Catholic school and the kind of sex education I received I had it – I obviously had it in biology because as you said, it’s part of the national curriculum but it was just the technical stuff but we did actually have – because the teachers themselves weren’t allowed to talk about it because of the Catholic school, we had letters sent to parents that we were allowed to say whether we – you were allowed to take the PSE lessons which actually, specifically talked about precautions you could use in sex and that kind of stuff and obviously, many Catholic parents opted out for their children –and they didn’t have to do that – that’s a choice that can be made – so, I don’t know really if past conflict whether that would apply in that situation.

24. SB: At the school I’m at –they do actually do biology, the general reproduction but then they had a staff PD day – and there was something like, they had like personal development days, so Year 10 had a whole day of sex education, so out of the whole – they take out of the timetable, then they go like, through everything, all day – (laughter)

25. SG: Was that quite separate from science, then?

26. SB: Yeah – but I think it’s different –

27. SG: except for in science and religion, it’s kind of - you’re trying to distinguish, say in the Catholic school, they’re saying : there’s biology but the rest of it has nothing to do with us– so, we’ll teach you the science but not any actual religious part of it -

28. SB: Yeah, but this school I’m at – it’s just like a – it’s a village college but it’s not an emphasis if you know what I mean, well, there’s no need to go into, like if you teach reproduction, you know, it could go into relationships, midway through your lesson – well, I {wouldn’t like that} (laughter)

29. SG: I was in a different context to sexual reproduction, um, it was evolution we were doing in the lesson, in biology and most of the class were engaged in the lesson and the teacher was very much -this is the only answer, the sort of classic scientific explanation for the evolution of the world and there were a couple of girls at the back that were messing around, so, I walked over to them and one of the girls said: Oh, it’s just complete rubbish, and I said to her: why do you think that? and she said: Oh because there’s God, um, but I think she – I wasn’t certain whether she did it to try and provoke me or whether she genuinely thought that and that’s why she wasn’t engaged in the lesson, it was a bit difficult because when I said to her: Well, can you expand on that or, you know, have – she then just looked at me and was taken aback because I was engaging with her rather than just going – Oh well, stop thinking that and focus then –

30. SB: There’s an opportunity there, isn’t there, to, um, to talk about the value of discussing scientific ideas that you may have reasons to thinking that they are unhelpful or wrong ideas but you can still discuss them in the way that you say, discuss, say, the history of science or

31. even things like Newtonian mechanics which are known to be incomplete but are still worthy of study – I think that’s a help – that’s quite a helpful way in but you can study these ways of modelling the universe - whatever it said, you agree with them because - I think it’s just habit – this sort of polarised view that scientific ideas are right or wrong, um, in science it doesn’t really work like that – there’s very little kind of way of evidence, kind of, much of it is quite prescriptive that they’re kind of told it and they accept it, whereas, kind of, when you tell them something where may – where another scientist has another view – where, for example, global warming, or whatever, they find – I’ve seen them – some children find it very difficult to hold two opposing views and the way they kind of have to make some kind of decisions.

32. SB: In my experience, in RE classrooms that really comes out – a lot of kids have it in their head that scientific truth is kind of – real truth and when we talk about religious truth, they’re talking about kind of fairy-tale truth which is – real truth is just something that we have to talk about because we just have to – which is a bit of a shame for us (laughter)

33. SG: There is that issue, though – I mean, religion isn’t in the same way – you can’t investigate it using the scientific method and the scientific method makes sense to people in terms of – yeah, you look at something and then you – if you agree or disagree or you refute a particular viewpoint or not – but I think religion is not like that – you can’t absolutely refute anything, you can’t absolutely confirm anything –

34. SB: but I said – really, I was just {making a point?}

35. SB: but you can’t – go on, Tom

36. SB: But what I think he was actually trying to get at was the fact that, what he was trying to get at – was that in schools, there isn’t any awareness that there is discussion within scientific groups, so, it’s presented as just black and white and, maybe, it would be a bit more accessible if it was open to people to say: there are actually different views –

37. SB: I’ve heard people – almost like – I’ve heard {noise} in the scientists are afraid to mention that - if they’re so confident about evolution, I can’t see the problem - if they have like a lesson, to talk about it – {noise} should be simple, it should be easy to show up why there is such scientific evidence to support it at all – it’s not like, I mean, I’m not going to fight it myself, but I’m not like afraid of it – it’s not going to destroy my world or something like that - I’m not afraid to mention it in the classroom –all the kids have something to say: Alright, they think –

38. SB: {very noisy part} I think it’s just funny how it gets treated, like, in some {schools}, they might not even want to hear it mentioned, they’re quite scared of the phrase – well, if they think it’s such a non-threat– then, why don’t they just mention it briefly and say, well, make their minds up and then – they say, well, there is definitely something in the scientific evidence which seems to support it -

39. SG: Should it be the remit of a science lesson to discuss creation or should it be the remit of an RE lesson in that respect, should science just be teaching things that have been {extraordinary or} discovered or whatever –

40. SB: Well, science is developing, the most – I’ve been in lessons when I was at school – the best ones were the ones where the boundaries were a bit blurred – well, when it’s relevant, we would have a discussion about it and you’d have kind of {mixed themes} from religious people who kind of disputed science, the very, very scientific ones who were kind of atheistically militant through the whole spectrum and kind of having a discussion about it but then also the teacher moving on when that discussion had been had – was one of the most useful bits of our topic –

41. SB: It was for your overall learning but it still goes back to my pet hate subject of – if a teacher gives that lesson how are they going to evaluate it, how, if there are no marks that can be given and no sort of key words that can sort of go into an exam question where, say, this is the answer?

42. SB: Yeah, it’s how people think of the world and you take education out of these sort of tests –

43. SB: Yes, that’s the problem – that’s not how we test – {that’s the orientation in education}

44. SB: I’m all for free education but –

45. SB: Exactly -

46. SG: Sorry to throw in another point which is related to that –– how is that – how are they going to - is that how they deliver science because I {noise} just think in terms of – what do they believe {just} {noise} or do they believe that science tells them about something which is real about the world or not or do they believe that science can ultimately explain everything about the world? I think that’s really – because I guess religion says: no, they can’t. Is that what you’re kind of {want to say?} {noise}

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Index of topics