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Much of the debate surrounding the impact of faith schools on wider society has focused on the extent to which they promote social cohesion in urban communities. Yet, much of the faith-based sector in both England and Wales actually consists of small, rural, Anglican primary schools. This article takes a closer look at these schools to further investigate their influence on social cohesion and community relations, as well as wider questions concerning the significance of religion for contemporary rural life. With reference to an in-depth case study comparison of two Anglican primary schools in western England and southern Wales, the article draws on qualitative data from staff, pupils, parents and local villagers to explore different approaches to community engagement and their consequences for social cohesion. In so doing, the article makes important contributions to the literatures on faith-based schooling, rural education, social cohesion, and religion in rural contexts.

Since the Children Act (2004) in both England and Wales, schools are expected to give due attention to the issue of children’s rights, particularly respect for the views of pupils in matters that affect them, as outlined in Article 12 of the UNCRC. However, one theme that has been relatively unexplored in the literature on children’s rights and education is religion and the role it plays in everyday school life, an issue that has relevance for Article 12, but also Article 14, which refers to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This article approaches the topic of religion, schooling and children’s rights empirically, through a focus on rural church schools. It draws on in-depth qualitative research with pupils and other stakeholders from two case study schools in order to explore the significance of ethos values and experiences of religious practices for debates in this area.

This chapter explores the concept of “religious citizenship,” in the context of state-funded schooling in England and Wales, and against a backdrop of growing religious pluralism. The chapter considers the role of various educational actors in determining the extent to which schools recognize and accommodate diversity of religion and belief. With reference to the existing research literature, religious citizenship is explored through various dimensions of education, including faith schools and pupil admissions, religious education and festivals, collective worship and prayer, and pupil values and interfaith relations. In so doing, the chapter highlights an important dimension of the informal citizenship education that state-funded schools in England and Wales provide to pupils on the basis of their religion and belief.

Non-religion and unbelief are under-researched phenomena in the social sciences but the\ud growing significance of the worldwide non-religious population is leading to more interest in\ud this previously neglected topic. However, with the exception of a handful of studies, little\ud attention has yet been directed towards non-religious youth, despite the emergence of a\ud substantial body of research on youth and religion, and ongoing concerns about the conduct of\ud young people more generally. This article draws on mixed-method data from the British Youth\ud On Religion study to explore the responses of participants identifying as religious ‘nones’. The\ud analysis focuses specifically on young people as citizens through their relationships with wider\ud society, including the broader meaning of non-religious identity, views on morality and values,\ud and approaches to, and relations with, religious others. As such, the article speaks to wider\ud debates about youth, citizenship and community cohesion, as well as non-religion and unbelief.

Researchers have begun to explore the role that faith schools play in contemporary educational markets but the emphasis to date has been on urban rather than rural contexts. This article approaches the issue of marketisation through a qualitative case-study comparison of two Anglican primary schools in contrasting rural localities in England and Wales. Engaging with a range of stakeholders, including parents and pupils, the article explores reasons why the schools were valued, drawing on wider constructions of childhood, religion and rurality. The consequences of the schools’ popularity on factors such as traffic, parking, school ethos and local community ties are also considered. The findings of the study problematise some of the prevalent assumptions about marketisation, including the role of social class and geography in these processes. As such, the article makes an important contribution to the sociological literature on faith schools, rural schools and educational markets.

Popular and academic interest in the phenomenon of ‘non-religion’, including atheism, humanism and agnosticism, is currently on the rise, reflected in the proliferation of social research on this important theme. Yet, despite a parallel growth in scholarship on childhood, youth and religion, little interest has so far been directed towards non-religion in this context. This article brings together these two concerns through a review of research themes concerned with non-religion and their potential relevance for childhood and youth studies. In so doing, it maps out an agenda for future social research in the field of childhood, youth and non-religion.

This article addresses the issue of children’s spiritual, relational and emotional encounters with the primary school environment, with reference to concepts and theories from both education studies and human geography. Drawing on mixed-method qualitative research in two case study institutions, the article examines pupils’ photographed ‘special places’ and the embodied spiritual practices that occurred within everyday informal spaces around the school environments. The significance of adult power and children’s spiritual agency is explored in the analysis, emphasising the potentially political nature of spiritual practices and processes. In so doing, the implications for spiritual citizenship are addressed as part of the current wider interest in children’s rights and participation in school ethos and decision-making.

This article offers a reflexive account of the process of researching religious identity with young people, and considers how combining methods may enable young people to explore their own identities in different ways. Drawing upon three participant case studies it explores the public–private spectrum produced as part of discussion groups, semi-structured interviews and an innovative online e-Journal research activity. As participants moved through each stage of the research process, the way in which they represented their religious identities shifted as they encountered differing social environments, became more practised at telling their own lives, or had evolved their own perspectives over time. Employing mixed methods contributes a more nuanced understanding of the role of religion in young people’s lives yet also raises important ethical implications surrounding participant confidentiality in research.

The place of religion in the English education system has always been an issue of debate, ever since the establishment of universal schooling around the turn of the 20th Century. Such questions have often focused on the extent to which religion should be viewed as a public or private affair, and hence whether or not it should have a role in state schooling. This article presents qualitative research that examines the role of religion in the ethos of two different schooling models and the associated construction of state institutional space and home/civic space in each. Drawing on Davie’s (2007) concept of ‘vicarious religion’, the article highlights the continued presence of certain types of religious and spiritual manifestations in the public sphere. In so doing, it contributes to wider debates about secularization and the role of religion in modern liberal democracies.

Research on children, young people and religion is becoming more prevalent following an increased interest in this traditionally under-researched area. However, little discussion has taken place to date on the appropriateness of past frameworks for making sense of children’s religious lives. This article calls attention to the issue of religious identity in relation to children and young people. By drawing on the diffuse body of interdisciplinary social scientific research in this area, the article seeks to apply the new social studies of childhood model through the two concepts of complexity and agency. Following this, it then goes on to make some suggestions for future directions in the study of children, young people and religious identity.

There are few published articles on conducting large-scale surveys in secondary schools, and this paper seeks to fill this gap. Drawing on the experiences of the Youth On Religion project, it discusses the politics of gaining access to these schools and the considerations leading to the adoption and administration of an online survey. It is concluded that successful research in schools has to be planned carefully in collaboration with key members of staff, and justified as an educational activity. Providing speedy feedback was helpful to ensure schools benefited from the research and to keep them engaged with the project. © 2011 The Author(s). Children & Society © 2011 National Children’s Bureau and Blackwell Publishing Limited

Much attention has been paid to the introduction of Citizenship Education in 2002 as a curriculum subject for schools in England and Wales. However, schools have a much wider role in educating children for citizenship through the informal curriculum and everyday socio-spatial practices. This article draws attention to the issue of ‘religious citizenship’ as an important area of study for geographers, through a focus on a particular space: an English multi-faith community primary school. The model of religious citizenship that was provided and promoted by the school is considered, with reference to the way in which religious minorities were recognised and accommodated. Through this analysis, the significance of procedural liberalism is highlighted, particularly the way in which the concept of neutrality may inadvertently privilege certain groups over others. The multi-scalar nature of the issues in question are also shown through reference to particular constructions of the nation and national identity, along with the significance of everyday micro-spaces for the contestation and negotiation of religious citizenship.

Education is of immense significance to political and economic life, particularly in advanced capitalist societies where specific levels of educational attainment are deemed essential in the reprod...

Recent debates about state-funded faith schools in England have focused on the way in which they either promote or discourage social cohesion between different cultural, ethnic and religious groups. While one argument suggests that children must experience interfaith and intercultural encounters in order to understand each other, another insists that values of tolerance and acceptance can instead be taught as part of the curriculum. Despite this, much research to date has tended to focus on macro-processes such as selection procedures and residential segregation at the expense of micro-processes within school space itself. This article seeks to address this conspicuous lack of empirical research, by drawing on qualitative fieldwork in a state-funded Community primary school and Roman Catholic primary school located in multi-faith districts of an urban area in the North of England. It will examine a number of ways in which the two schools tried to encourage positive and meaningful encounters between children of different religious backgrounds, as well as the extent to which such attempts were successful. The article will focus particularly on the role of bodies and emotions in making sense of these processes.

Human geographers are increasingly employing mixed-method approaches in their research, including in children's geographies, where ‘child-centred’ methods are often used alongside participant observation and semi-structured interviews to investigate children's perceptions and experiences. Mixing qualitative methods in this way raises a number of ethical and methodological issues, particularly regarding the changing power relationships between researchers and participants. This article considers the challenges and potential benefits of combining methods from participatory and interpretive approaches through triangulation or ‘crystallisation’. The issues are illustrated through an empirical case study on children, health and exercise in the everyday spaces of the primary school.

The current UK policy concern with children's health has led to primary school practices of sport, exercise and active play aimed, in particular, at constructing children's bodies as ‘healthy’. Qualitative explorations of children's own values and experiences however, reveal that their understandings of sport in school differ considerably from its potential to be healthy, instead emphasising emotional geographies of pleasure and enjoyment. This article aims to develop a better understanding of children's ability to modify and reconstitute discursive corporeal regimes through their own agency, thus highlighting the fluid nature of the primary school as an institution. Adult discourses and children's bodily challenges to these mingle and intersect, creating spaces of competing values and discourses that work to transform and renegotiate the primary school. Although this article focuses particularly on the UK context, the findings will be relevant for any country in which child obesity is of current concern for social and education policy.

1. Introduction 2. Religion, Citizenship and Society 3. Education, Religion and Ethnography 4. School Ethos and Religion 5. Post-Secular Values 6. Meaningful Encounters 7. Cohesive Communities 8. Religious Difference and Citizenship 9. Conclusion

This article also appears in: Borders, borderlands and bordering. Ten years ago, the decision was taken to close Brunel University's Department of Geography and Earth Sciences and its undergraduate programmes. Since this time, most of the human geographers have remained at Brunel, but now work from beyond the boundaries of conventional academic Geography. In this paper we argue that this situation, which is not uncommon for geographers in the UK and elsewhere, has significant implications for both individuals and the discipline more broadly. Through our everyday experiences of interdisciplinary working, this paper reflects on what it means to be a geographer working outside of 'Geography'. The paper examines the implications of this at three different yet related scales: the immediately personal scale in terms of identity and individual academic performance, the institutional scale and its organisation that can lead to the presence/absence of academic subject areas, and then finally the disciplinary scale with its attendant spaces of knowledge generation, dissemination and protectionism. Our arguments are framed by neoliberal-led higher education changes and conceptualisations of institutions, (inter)disciplinarity and identity, and point to broader significances for the shape of the discipline.

This chapter addresses the contentious issue of faith in education, especially the role that religion plays in and around state-funded education systems. It focuses on the significance of geography for making sense of these debates and its potential to enrich this interdisciplinary field of research. The chapter begins by outlining recent developments in the “new” geographies of education, particularly the significance of space, place and scale for analyzing educational processes. It then goes on to consider three main areas in which religion often features in educational arrangements and experiences. The first of these is the contested curriculum, where religious education, science and sex education are central concerns. The second is the faith schools debate, which features competing constructions of community, some that emphasize belonging and cohesion and others segregation and division. The third is the relationship between religion, citizenship and identity, particularly the extent to which schools recognize and accommodate religious minorities. In each of these contexts, the importance of geography is highlighted through reference to various spatial and scalar dimensions. The chapter ends with reflections on the contributions that geographical scholarship on religion in education could make to broader questions about the purpose of education and the place of religion in wider society.

Globalisation has led to increasing cultural and religious diversity in cities around the world. What are the implications for young people growing up in these settings? How do they develop their religious identities, and what roles do families, friends and peers, teachers, religious leaders and wider cultural influences play in the process? Furthermore, how do members of similar and different cultural and faith backgrounds get on together, and what can young people tell us about reducing conflict and promoting social solidarity amid diversity? Youth On Religion outlines the findings from a unique large-scale project investigating the meaning of religion to young people in three multi-faith locations. Drawing on survey data from over 10,000 young people with a range of faith positions, as well as a series of fascinating interviews, discussion groups and diary reports involving 160 adolescents, this book examines myriad aspects of their daily lives. It provides the most comprehensive account yet of the role of religion for young people growing up in contemporary, multicultural urban contexts. Youth On Religion is a rigorous and engaging account of developing religiosity in a changing society. It presents young people’s own perspectives on their attitudes and experiences and how they negotiate their identities. The book will be an instructive and valuable resource for psychologists, sociologists, criminologists, educationalists and anthropologists, as well as youth workers, social workers and anyone working with young people today. It will also provide essential understanding for policy makers tackling issues of multiculturalism in advanced societies.