Beyond Proof Texts
Teaching passages in context to improve evaluation in GCSE Religious Studies
If students are going to evaluate well, they need more than quotations. This post explores how contextual teaching can strengthen evaluation in GCSE Religious Studies.
What if one reason students struggle with evaluation in GCSE Religious Studies is that we have taught them quotations, but not context?
In GCSE Religious Studies, half of our marks come from evaluation questions.
My experience as a teacher, and as somebody who has marked for two exam boards, is that students often fall short in two areas. This post will focus on the second.
First, they do not answer the question carefully enough. They do not pay enough attention to words the question hangs on, such as all, never or always.
Second, they do not really evaluate. Even very bright students often produce what are really two detailed 6 or 8 mark answers: two perspectives on the statement, both supported by evidence, but with no real weighing up of how convincing that evidence is. They explain both sides, but they do not judge them.
My own view is that we spend too much time worrying about structures like PEE, PEEL, FARM, SONIC or KISSJO, and not enough time thinking about the evidence we actually want students to use within those structures. I say that as somebody who has written previously about our ABCD structure.
If students are going to write meaningfully about whether a piece of evidence is convincing, they need to move beyond out-of-context proof texts. They need to know something about the context of the text, the author, what comes before and after it, and how it connects to other teachings. In practice, that probably means teaching fewer texts and focusing more on stories, while deliberately choosing stories or writings that students can contextualise and evaluate.
In my view, this starts at KS3. This is not about teaching GCSE content early. It is about thinking carefully, at KS3 and perhaps even earlier, about which stories students need to know if they are going to develop a secure understanding of the religions they study later on. That is not teaching GCSE early, it is great RE and that will always pay off at GCSE. It also means choosing stories or texts that create genuine opportunities for evaluation.
A few examples have been especially useful for us.
St Paul’s epistles
Our students meet Paul in Year 8. They learn who he was, about his conversion, and about the first followers of Jesus in Rome: a community divided by tensions between Gentiles and Jews, with the wider backdrop of Claudius expelling the Jewish community. Paul is trying to unify this community and find what can bring them together rather than divide them.
It is also important that students know that the epistles are letters, written to particular communities at particular times. In addition, Paul was probably expecting Jesus to return soon, and that must have shaped his message.
That matters for evaluation. When students use evidence from Paul’s letters, they can do more than simply quote it. They can point out that we need to be careful when applying a letter written to a specific community in a specific context directly to life today. At the same time, they can recognise that Paul’s letters are among the oldest parts of the New Testament, which can make them especially significant for Christians. That creates a genuine evaluative tension: these texts are early and influential, but they are also occasional documents written for particular communities.
In order to teach this GCSE content well, firm KS3 foundations in both Christianity and Judaism need to be in place. At the start of the GCSE, we briefly teach students about the Council of Jerusalem and the debates over whether followers of Jesus needed to keep Jewish law. However, that only really makes sense because students already have some understanding of Jewish law, covenant and identity, as well as the development of early Christianity. Once those foundations are secure, passages such as “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” make far more sense, as does Paul’s teaching about justification by faith. Students are then in a much stronger position not only to explain these teachings, but to evaluate them.
The Sermon on the Mount
I noticed recently that we were using random passages from the Sermon on the Mount completely out of context. We now spend time at GCSE stepping aside from the specification and looking at the sermon as a whole.
Our students are very familiar with the story of Moses from KS3, so as soon as I describe Jesus as a Jewish man giving moral teaching from a mountain, they can immediately see that Jesus is being presented as a new Moses. That knowledge becomes very helpful when we reach the relationships theme and students can see that Jesus is actually tightening the rules around divorce.
In Year 8, our students also learn about the persecution experienced by the first followers of Jesus. That helps them contextualise “Blessed are those who are persecuted” and recognise that this teaching emerged from a very particular context. More importantly, it opens up evaluation. Students can compare the experience of Christians 2,000 years ago with the situation of Christians today and ask whether persecution should still hold the same priority for all Christians now.
Once students understand that these teachings are part of one sermon, they are able to make much stronger evaluative points. They can argue that these are central teachings of Jesus and therefore carry particular weight for Christians. They are not random platitudes, but part of a wider vision of what life in the Kingdom of God could look like. Students can then ask whether Jesus is offering practical moral rules, an ideal vision for discipleship, or a deliberately radical challenge to ordinary ways of living.
The Parable of the Sheep and the Goats
The Parable of the Sheep and the Goats is such a useful text for both the religion and themes papers that it is worth taking the time to make sure students really understand it. It gives them far more than a quotation about helping others. It gives them a framework for evaluating Christian ideas about judgement, salvation and moral responsibility.
A vicar once pointed out to me that this parable appears very late in Jesus’ life, close to his final teachings before the Last Supper. That does not automatically make it more important than every other teaching, but it does give students a worthwhile evaluative point. Christians may see this parable as carrying particular weight because it comes so near the end of Jesus’ ministry.
It is also a story that repays careful contextual teaching. Students need to know that this is a parable about judgement. The separation of the sheep and the goats is based on how people have responded to human need: feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked and visiting the sick and imprisoned.
This is where the parable becomes especially useful. It forms a strong contrast with the emphasis in Paul, and later in Luther, on salvation through faith and grace rather than works. Here, judgement seems to rest on practical action. That gives students something genuinely worth weighing up. Does Christianity teach that salvation is about faith alone, or does this parable suggest that care for others is central?
If students only know “whatever you did for one of the least of these”, they can use it as evidence. If they know the whole story, where it appears, and how it sits alongside other Christian teachings, they can actually evaluate.
If we want students to evaluate well, we need to give them something worth evaluating. That means moving beyond isolated proof texts and helping students understand where passages come from, why they mattered, and how they connect to wider Christian and Jewish ideas. Context does not get in the way of evaluation. In my experience, it is what makes real evaluation possible.
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