Work

Religious education and curriculum making in comparative perspective: exploring Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence and the Curriculum for Wales

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: Scholarship on Religious Education (RE) has increasingly paid attention to curriculum making, comparative research and international knowledge transfer. This article engages with these themes by offering the first extended comparative exploration of Religious and Moral Education (RME) in Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) and Religion, Values and Ethics (RVE) in the Curriculum for Wales (CfW). By analysing a range of sources from both countries and drawing on a curriculum making framework attentive to supranational, macro, meso, and micro levels, the article examines curriculum as text and as practice. The article examines areas of connection and divergence across different sites of curriculum making and concludes that curriculum making at various sites can both heighten and mitigate the marginalisation of RE.

Source: Journal of Religious Education

DOI: 10.1007/s40839-026-00314-6

Authors: Stephen C. Scholes, Jennifer Harding-Richards

Institutions: Queen Margaret University, Swansea University

Language: English

Topic: Religious Education and Schools

Subfield: Education

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Quality education

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $3,090