Building capacity and self-efficacy in teaching Scripture to early years learners

Building capacity and self-efficacy in teaching Scripture to early years learners

This thesis reports on a major and minor study involving a team of religious education leaders and teachers of preparatory to year three learners from Catholic schools in southeast Queensland. This inquiry used the approach of design-based research to collaboratively work with practitioners to discover what learning environments support the meaningful teaching of Scripture to young children. This inquiry also explored factors, processes, and strategies that enabled professional learning about Scripture with the goal to transform professional practice. Both teams met multiple times over a year to investigate needs and design interventions for teachers to trial and provide feedback for analysis and explore the research questions. Thematic analysis supported the identification of key themes and findings from the data, with multiple insights discovered. Two precursors emerged of teachers needing to achieve readiness to teach the text and build skills for informed pedagogical decision-making before teaching Scripture. Twelve pedagogies and seven teacher capacities emerged to create meaningful Scripture learning environments. The data also revealed that teachers value professional learning that responds to three core needs, as well as identifying that building social capital, creating a strong culture for learning and embedding effective monitoring practices all significantly contribute to enabling professional learning to transform practice. Due to the limited research in this area, the findings have relevance for all early years teachers and religious education leaders in Catholic schools, universities, or education systems who seek to build capacity for the meaningful teaching of Scripture to early years learners and the broader application of these insights. This research resulted in the construction of several seminal models and frameworks for others working in similar contexts. The major contribution is a multi-layered framework constructed from theory and practice insights, for building capacity to teach Scripture.

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