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Beyond Boundaries: Exploring philosophical and religious studies (PRS) learning and teaching in non-PRS departments

Andrew Cochrane and Clare Saunders

1. Introduction

There is plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that a great deal of the learning and teaching of philosophical and religious studies (henceforth 'PRS' - an umbrella term for the cluster of disciplines supported by the Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies. These include philosophy; theology; religious studies; history and philosophy of science, technology and medicine) in higher education takes place outside of 'core' PRS departments - for instance, by means of specialist PRS courses which are an element of other degree programmes (e.g. ethics for medical students) or PRS components in interdisciplinary programmes (e.g. area studies). However, it is often difficult to find out more about such provision - for example, to what extent do such courses draw upon the resources of 'core' departments and programmes (and vice versa)? What (if any) are the distinctive challenges and opportunities of teaching 'PRS beyond boundaries', and how might these be addressed most effectively?

The Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies thus decided to undertake an exploratory survey of 'PRS beyond boundaries', in order to discover more about such provision, and to gain a more complete picture of the true size, nature and diversity of PRS learning and teaching in higher education.

2. The 'Beyond Boundaries' project: design and methods

The following aims and objectives were established for this project:

It was hoped that the project would thereby contribute towards an improved understanding of the extent and nature of PRS learning and teaching in UK higher education; and thus assist the Subject Centre for PRS in developing provision that is tailored to meet the needs of our diverse academic community, including those working 'beyond boundaries' of philosophical and religious studies departments. (See section 5 of this report for further details of the Subject Centre's response to the project findings.)

In order to achieve these objectives, the project began by conducting a survey of the PRS academic community. It was acknowledged that this was unlikely to be a comprehensive study - of its nature, 'PRS beyond boundaries' teaching may often be found in unexpected areas of the academy, may not be well connected with the 'core' PRS community and, thus, may be difficult to reach.  However, it was hoped that this preliminary scoping study would give at least a flavour of 'PRS beyond boundaries' provision that could form the basis for further investigation or development if appropriate.

An informal survey was designed which asked the following questions:

The survey was circulated in October 2008 via discipline-specific email discussion lists, subject association newsletters, the Subject Centre for PRS's own website and journal, and the other Subject Centres in the Higher Education Academy. (See Appendix 1 for further details of the survey design and distribution.) In each case, recipients were encouraged to assist with 'viral marketing' of the survey by circulating further to colleagues to whom it might be of interest - in this way, it was hoped to address the challenge of reaching PRS lecturers based in 'unlikely' departments.

Survey responses were supplemented by the following means:

The information collated via these methods was used to produce the desired map of PRS provision outside core PRS departments (see section 3 of this report), and as data for analysing any distinctive features and challenges of 'PRS beyond boundaries' (section 4).

3. Project findings I: A (partial) map of 'Philosophical and Religious Studies beyond boundaries'

Survey responses

A total of twenty-seven survey responses were received by the end of January 20092. Responses have come from academics teaching in the following departments:

Of these twenty-two respondents (the remaining five respondents either did not have, or did not specify, a non-PRS department in which they were based), seventeen are involved in teaching philosophy modules (or modules in which philosophical topics are central), and at least eight are involved in the teaching of theology or religious studies (TRS) modules (or modules in which TRS topics are central). At least three respondents were involved in teaching both philosophy and TRS topics.

Out of the full twenty-seven respondents, fifteen also replied to the question 'which academic subject(s) do you identify with?'. Out of these fifteen replies, seven reported that they identified, inter alia, with PRS academic subjects; one identified with no academic subjects ( asserting that they were "optimistic about being trans-disciplinary"); and seven did not report that they primarily identified with PRS academic subjects.

Two respondents reported certain PRS topics and issues are quite commonplace in (a) the teaching of research methodology, and (b) the teaching of biology.

Supplementary desk research

Following up on the survey responses, it was initially intended that a random sample of university websites would be searched in order to identify just how widespread PRS-relevant teaching is in non-PRS departments, in the areas identified by survey respondents. However, this attempt to get a snapshot of the breadth of teaching by taking a sample of universities was abandoned due to the fact that different departments within different universities often provide very different degrees of information regarding their modules, and some universities offer much clearer module lists and information than others. It was therefore decided that a simple accumulative acquisition of data on PRS teaching in non-PRS departments would be preferable.

The web-searches did not try to locate ethics teaching in non-PRS departments, since this is already well-documented, and would have needlessly swamped the mapping of non-ethics PRS teaching provision3.

The early results of these searches indicate that there is widespread teaching of PRS in the following non-PRS departments:

Also, and less surprisingly, modules engaging with PRS issues / topics are commonly taught in Law, History and Politics departments.

This additional research has thus identified some disparities with the results of the survey - viz., no survey responses came from staff in Classics departments, and only one response came from staff in French departments. Follow-up work may therefore be useful to explore further the nature of PRS provision in these fields.

Web-based searches have also found PRS teaching within the following additional departments:

Additionally, colleagues in other Subject Centres provided further general information about the role of PRS in the teaching of their disciplines:

Summary of findings

As anticipated, the project findings do not yet constitute a comprehensive map of the field, but rather a sample of PRS provision outside core PRS departments. However, although a project of this small scale is not alone sufficient to furnish definitive data on the extent of PRS 'beyond boundaries' in a quantitative sense (how many courses, students etc.), it does perhaps already suffice to illustrate its scope in a qualitative sense - that is, the range and diversity of such provision. Even this brief informal survey has identified examples of PRS teaching in all major 'faculty level' subject groups - physical and life sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities, as well as vocational degree programmes4.

It should be noted that the current survey has identified more 'philosophical' provision than that relating to theology and religious studies, or to history and philosophy of science, technology and medicine. Without further research it is difficult to be clear whether this is a true reflection of the state of 'PRS beyond boundaries', or merely an artefact of the current project's methods - given our reliance on 'viral' distribution, this result may simply be a product of the fact that there exists a well-established email discussion list for philosophy, with well over 4,000 subscribers5.

4. Project findings II: Key features and challenges of 'Beyond Boundaries' provision

The range of PRS provision identified by this survey does, however, present a challenge when it comes to answering our additional research questions - namely: what are the key learning and teaching issues for this constituency, and what support would be useful? - insofar as the diversity of the field makes it difficult to furnish any meaningful generalisations about distinctive features, needs and interests of 'the PRS beyond boundaries constituency'.

One common theme, explicitly identified by three survey respondents (and perhaps tacit in others), is the challenge of developing PRS provision beyond 'core' departments - particularly if there is no such core PRS department at the higher education institution in question. Comments included "it can be a lonely task", and "so I'm very keen to… find how best to support [philosophy] in this kind of way".

Beyond this, it is difficult to discern many distinct patterns or commonalities across PRS 'beyond boundaries' provision - excepting, perhaps, the widespread practice of teaching applied ethics (which is already relatively well established)6, PRS teaching outside core departments is fairly eclectic. Other trends in curriculum content arguably include the teaching of spirituality and faith; and PRS dimensions of 'cultural studies' (broadly construed to encompass literature, language and area studies, history and classics) - but such analysis is at best provisional on the evidence of this project alone.

Of course, such diversity also problematises the task of providing appropriately tailored support to the academic community/ies in question - for example, how might one best support the sharing of teaching practices in this field (and hence address the challenge of developing PRS teaching in relative isolation from 'core' provision, as identified above), when the field itself is so varied and, as a result of this, it is often unclear how much such teachers will have in common? It is thus likely that this survey will provide just the first step in an ongoing programme of enhancing our understanding of, and support for, 'PRS beyond boundaries'.

5. What next?

Limitations of the current study and scope further research

The current project methods - informal survey plus web-based research - clearly fall short of a robust and comprehensive study of the field. It is likely that the 'map' of PRS provision thereby obtained is at best partial, for a number of reasons, including the following:

As indicated in section 3 above, there are also some surprising gaps in the findings - not least the absence of any significant history and philosophy of science provision - which further suggests that this map of 'PRS beyond boundaries' is not yet complete.

It is possible that a more complete picture could be obtained by further extending the survey, for instance by designing and circulating a number of more discipline-specific versions which include tailored examples to encourage respondents to identify relevant PRS provision (e.g. 'do you teach science students ethics, philosophy of science…?'). It is far from guaranteed, though, that this would generate significant further responses, let alone a comprehensive set of data. However, it is proposed to continue the survey via the project website, and to update periodically the findings of this study in light of further responses.

An alternative approach might be instead to supplement the existing survey by targeting students as well as academic staff - e.g. 'are you studying for a non-PRS degree, but have studied PRS-related topics?' - but this raises further challenges of how to distribute such a survey effectively8.  It is thus likely that any such study would merely provide further samples of such provision, rather than furnishing a definitive picture. (It may, however, prove fruitful to explore whether students' perspectives of key learning and teaching issues, and what support would be useful, are the same as those of their teachers).

In light of these considerations, it was decided instead to supplement the 'broad brush' survey findings with a set of in-depth case studies which would provide more detailed snapshots of 'PRS beyond boundaries' provision in a range of contexts.

Further activity to support Philosophical and Religious Studies 'Beyond Boundaries'

In order to capture the diversity of 'PRS beyond boundaries' provision, and to explore in more depth the learning and teaching issues raised thereby, a representative sample of survey respondents were invited to contribute case studies of their teaching. It is hoped that these will provide both a 'showcase' of the range of philosophical and religious studies teaching in UK higher education, and also a resource which can be used and adapted by other teachers of these subjects. The case studies are available on the Beyond Boundaries case studies page of this site

The Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies will continue to encourage PRS teachers to contribute further case studies to be added to this database.

The Subject Centre for PRS will also seek to develop networks or 'special interest groups' in order to assist 'PRS beyond boundaries' teachers in countering the sense of isolation commonly expressed (see section 4 of this report) and in establishing contacts with colleagues in similar fields to facilitate the sharing of teaching practices. In the first instance, these will focus on areas which currently lack tailored support (and thus will not include applied ethics, for which several such special interest groups already exist), where the 'beyond boundaries' study has identified a significant amount of PRS learning and teaching, such as:

The survey findings indicate that, in many cases, teachers of such PRS topics do not identify themselves primarily (if at all) as PRS academics; therefore such networks will be developed in collaboration with other Subject Centres and subject associations as appropriate.

Interested parties are invited to contact the Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies with suggestions for networks or for further details (see section 6 below for contact information). The Subject Centre will provide support and assistance in setting up such networks, although it is anticipated that these will become self-sustaining. Subject Centre support may also be available for the development of any network resources (e.g. learning and teaching materials).

6. Sources of further information

Additional information about the project, including the proposed 'special interest groups', is available by contacting Clare Saunders (Senior Academic Co-ordinator, Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies): clare@prs.heacademy.ac.uk.

This website also provides a number of links to other relevant resources on PRS-related topics such as:

Notes

  1. The survey deadline of end January 2009 was a notional cut-off point for the purposes of compiling this project report. Further responses have been received since this date, and it is hoped to provide ongoing updates to the map of 'PRS beyond boundaries' provision.
  2. For further details of ethics teaching, see for example the outcomes of the ETHICS project: http://prs.heacademy.ac.uk/projects/ethics/index.html.
  3. It also seems likely that PRS provision is an element of many (if not all) degree programmes not identified via this project – e.g. medicine (ethics and/or history of medicine), literature (philosophy and religion), engineering (ethics). The project focused on PRS-specific courses within degree programmes, and thus is likely to have overlooked any provision which is embedded within other modules but not explicitly characterised as PRS in module descriptions, for instance.
  4. The discussion list in question is Philosophy in Europe (Philos-L): http://listserv.liv.ac.uk/archives/philos-l.html - 4,269 subscribers as at 8 April 2009.
  5. See note (3) above for details of previous Subject Centre research and resources in this field.
  6. Indeed, one of the survey respondents raises precisely this point: "However, possibly many [biologists] would not regard themselves as teaching philosophy".
  7. As many academic colleagues will be aware, existing student surveys such as in-house course evaluation questionnaires or the National Student Survey present significant logistical challenges. It would be still more challenging to conduct an effective national survey without recourse to such institutional mechanisms.

This page was originally on the website of The Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies. It was transfered here following the closure of the Subject Centre at the end of 2011.

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The British Association for the Study of Religions
The Religious Studies Project