Stephen Pett, National RE Adviser

Why RE?

RE is the best subject! An opportunity for pupils to consider some of the biggest questions about life, to learn how people have responded to those questions through the ages, to explore the best ways to find answers, and to reflect on their own personal worldviews.

My experience:

30 years as a teacher, subject leader and Adviser.

In-school experience:

I was a subject leader in secondary community schools for 14 years, teaching 11-19s, including GCSE and A level. For seven of these years I was an Advanced Skills Teacher, working on teaching and learning in my own school, and supporting primary and secondary schools with RE across the county. I was Chair of my local SACRE for 9 years.

Adviser experience:

I support a number of SACREs, three of them for at least 10 years, which has included developing their agreed syllabuses and support material, and delivering training and CPD.

I love working with teachers and have run many training days and workshops – from syllabus launch conferences with hundreds of teachers to in-school sessions with a handful of staff.

I really enjoy developing new approaches in RE and the resources to equip teachers. I led the development of Understanding Christianity, and the multidisciplinary RE project for the Big Questions in Classrooms programme. I was project leader for the RE Council’s religion and worldviews project, and am currently leading on our Understanding Muslims, Understanding Islam project. I have enjoyed working with the Understanding Unbelief and Explaining Atheism research projects, developing classroom resources as part of their public engagement strand.

Areas of interest:

• Pedagogy in RE
• Religion and worldviews approaches
• Multidisciplinary approaches
• Diversity in Christian and Muslim worldviews
• The diversity of non-religious worldviews
• Developing creative and scholarly teaching and learning ideas
• The brain and learning
• Making research findings accessible in the classroom

Publications:

My first solo publication (well, with the brilliant Emma Yarlett whose artwork makes it really pop) was The Bible: The Big Story (2011). You can see some of that working its way through into Understanding Christianity: Text, Impact, Connections (2016) – also with Emma’s wonderful art.

I have been a writer for many primary book series, including Big Questions, Big Answers, and Exploring Worldviews.

Other primary publications include Share a story with… and Talking Pictures.

I started writing for RE Today before I became an adviser – an article giving classroom resources on euthanasia and sanctity of life drawing on a case study: conjoined twins Jodie and Mary, conjoined twins case from 2000.

Since working at RE Today, I have been writer for and editor of over 40 books in the secondary series since 2009:

• Questions in RE
• Essential RE: Examining Religion and Belief
• Challenging Knowledge in RE
• Investigating Worldviews

One of my favourite publications – written with Lat Blaylock – is Picturing Islam, Picturing Muslims (2020), which was a taster for our new resource, Understanding Muslims, Understanding Islam (2025).

Written articles include:

The fruit of the RE Council religion and worldviews project – I wrote the draft Handbook in 2022 and the final Handbook in 2024:

• Developing a Religion and Worldviews approach in Religious Education in England: A Handbook for curriculum writers (2024), REC

I spent some years attempting a PhD before I ran out of time. Here is one of the only concrete outputs - an early paper in a research journal:

• ‘The contribution of religious education to the well-being of pupils’, (2012) Research Papers in Education 27:4, 435-448 https://doi.org/10.1080/02671522.2012.690244

The result of a collaboration with Prof. Trevor Cooling, exploring the hermeneutic approach underpinning Understanding Christianity:

Stephen Pett & Trevor Cooling (2018) ‘Understanding Christianity: exploring a hermeneutical pedagogy for teaching Christianity’, British Journal of Religious Education, 40:3, 257-267.

Written articles for REtoday magazine include:

• Ten fine ways to use visual images of Islam in the RE classroom (2020) REtoday 37:3
• With Professor Jon Lanman: Handling non-religious worldviews in the classroom (2019) REtoday 36:2
• Beyond words in Buddhism (2018) 36:1
• Using Bible texts in RE: readers and meanings (2016) REtoday 33:3

Written articles for Professional REflection include:

• Religious/non-religious: planning beyond the unhelpful binary? (2024) 41:3 [This was a write-up of a session from the NATRE Strictly RE conference, and explores the complex and fuzzy relationship between religion and non-religion.]
• NATRE curriculum symposium: teacher reflections (2022) 40:1 [It was a privilege to curate the views of some brilliant teacher contributors.]
• Where do you stand? Insider and Outsider views on religion in RE (2018) 36:1 [This one is an early exploration of positionality in RE – I’d like to claim it as prescient in relation to the developing religion ad worldviews approach!]
• Making a difference? Developing ‘Understanding Christianity’ (2016) 34:2 [RE Today was commissioned to ‘make a difference’ to the teaching of Christianity in RE in England and Wales. This article explores our purposes and methods.]

Training courses I deliver:

• Understanding Christianity – courses for primary and secondary teachers, and for advisers to become trainers
• Religion and worldviews approaches – exploring and applying the RE Council’s RW approach, National Statement of Entitlement and National Content Standard
• Who are the Nones? Exploring non-religious worldviews

See what consultancy services we provide