The purpose of this article is to review the place of Humanism in religious education in England and Wales and to initiate a debate on the importance currently accorded to it. Our discussion begins with a short account of historical efforts to include the study of Humanism in religious education, followed by an equally short account of more recent…

The aim of, Jane's, Soundwaves Early Childhood Music lead, and Karen's, Early Childhood Studies lecturer, inquiry is to encourage new insights into how multiple relationalities and learning play out, throughout Soundwaves, an early childhood music education (ECME) programme. We work with Barad's diffractive methodology to shape our…

In England, music education policy is deeply rooted in neoliberal ideologies, shaping classroom practice and assessments. This paper presents findings from a four-year funded longitudinal project exploring the impact of musical partnerships on young people at risk of educational exclusion. Through a posthuman lens, the researchers made a…

By troubling notions of time-as-progress and human exceptionality, this paper considers what shifts in conceptualisations of children's literacies and futures might be possible in the context of faltering of capitalist logics of progress. The paper draws on a 3 year ethnographic study with families and young children in northern England, which…

This article, which is developed from a keynote given to the Humanists UK RE conference on 28 November 2020 draws attention to the interest groups that operate in and around the world of professional religious education (RE) in England. It argues that reform of RE could still fail. Two factors could spell its end. First is the "politics of…

In this paper, we dwell amongst what was agitated from enacting Neimanis' (2012) hydrofeminism in an 'aqueous-body-writing-reading' experiment that unfolded in discrete but entangled locations (London and Cape Town) to actively disrupt and reformulate ideas about what it is to do scholarly work. We consider how we might dislodge anthropocentric…

The title for the project, "Eloquence in Talke and Vertue in Deedes," comes from educational theorist William Kempe's claim that the early modern humanist educational system was guaranteed to produce eloquence and virtue. It is, however, my argument that the educational failed in its promises. This project seeks to dissect the…

This article offers the first modern explication of the educational writings of Charles Hoole (1610-1667), arguing that his writings offer significant insight into the educational aims and methods of school instructors in seventeenth-century England. From attending to the needs of slow learners, to promoting learning games, to emphasising that…

In this paper I consider whether forest schools provide a space where we could rethink pedagogy in the Anthropocene. I explore the challenges and possibilities of thinking beyond the business-as-usual of human-centric pedagogies drawing upon an ethnographic study of two forest schools, located in the West Midlands of England conducted in…

Pedagogue's fallacy occurs when epistemological principles are applied by educators that in fact do not tell of, or explain, or help understand, the subject at hand. It is identified and introduced in this article to raise an important issue in the construction of pedagogical models of religious education: knowledge is reduced and/or distorted to…

In 2015, the High Court ruled that the British Government had made 'a false and misleading statement of law' when it claimed a Religious Studies (RS) GCSE syllabus that excluded the systematic teaching of non-religious worldviews like humanism would meet the statutory requirements for teaching Religious Education (RE) at Key Stage 4. This was…

Background: Schools are commonly asked to take on roles that support the emotional well-being of students. These practices are in line with humanistic education theory and can be difficult to fulfil by schools. Broader ecological pressures, such as periods of austerity, are likely to add to the difficulty in meeting students' needs. Aims: To…

Engaging with posthuman theorising, this article puts to work a number of concepts to produce generative reimaginings of early years leadership. In 1992, Deleuze argued that we are witnessing a transition from societies of confinement to 'societies of control'. In societies of control, power operates through neo-liberal corporate worlds via a…

In the age of Anthropocene, we problematize the multitudes of affordances of humanism that we are ultimately entwined by and within. Education is a discipline that always placed predominance to the human centredness ignoring several non-human and non-living objects that also form a part of teaching and learning. However, the humanistic notions of…

Within the current global refugee crisis this paper emphasises the fundamental role of education in facilitating the integration of young new arrivals. It argues that a humanitarian problem of such scale requires a commensurate humanitarian response in the form of socially-just educational policies and practices in resettlement contexts within…