Interdisciplinary approaches to learning are reshaping religious education and science classes in schools.
"Do humans have free will, or are we determined by our biology and environment?" "What does it mean to be human in the age of Generative AI?" Dr. Berry Billingsley is helping educators reimagine how classrooms engage with questions like these.
As technological advancements and societal challenges continue to grow, there’s a pressing need to create space in science and religious education for students to explore philosophical, moral, and existential inquires that transcend traditional subject boundaries.
In this episode of Stories of Impact, Billingsley offers insights into how classrooms can better equip students to explore big questions about life, the universe, and human existence through interdisciplinary teaching — fostering not only subject-specific knowledge but also critical thinking skills and a deeper understanding of knowledge itself.
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Dr. Berry Billingsley is a professor in Education at the University of Swansea and the former Director of the Learning about Science and Religion Centre at Canterbury Christ Church University.
Her interest in reshaping the way we approach big questions in classrooms began with a personal frustration. After completing a PhD on how people think about bridging science and religion, she entered the classroom eager to explore big questions with her students, only to find that the structure of science lessons left little room for them. Later, while observing her students in their Religious Education (RE) classes, which are part of the required curriculum in UK state-funded schools, she saw a striking difference. It was in RE that she saw students begin to wonder about themselves and the universe. “Suddenly they could ask all those questions I wanted them to ask in my science lesson,” she recalls.
That contrast led her to examine how traditional science classrooms often leave little room for open-ended inquiry. “Creating the space to make it happen in a school room is incredibly difficult,” she says. “It just doesn’t fit comfortably in the format of what we have in science.”
Siloing education — keeping science focused on “recipe investigations” and limiting philosophical questions to RE — not only limits learning in both areas, it can also shape how students think for years to come. This kind of separation adds a layer of indoctrination, with long-term effects on students’ capacity for critical thinking.
Billingsley's work seeks to bridge this gap. By fostering epistemic insight, i.e., an understanding of how knowledge is constructed, Billingsley believes students can better grasp the different strengths and limits of science, religion, and other disciplines. Many students, she notes, mistakenly think that science should answer all types of questions, including those about meaning and purpose, because they haven’t been taught how different disciplines approach different kinds of inquiry. “The most important thing of all is helping children to see that science and religion are mostly concerned with different sorts of questions,” she explains, “and that we use different sorts of methods to try and work out those different sorts of questions.”
But addressing the issue isn’t just about individual lessons. “We need to change what’s happening at every point in the chain,” says Billingsley. That includes teacher training, curriculum design, and support for educators who want to collaborate across subjects.
Policy makers are part of the picture, too. “Once you demonstrate what is missing, and then you show what the children can gain by putting it back in,” she explains, “those teachers, those policy makers, they want to come on board and they want it to happen too.”
Ultimately, Billingsley argues that big questions are inherently multidisciplinary, and that schools should reflect that. “The solution is not just to give it to one classroom,” she says. “If you could put the religious education lesson with the science lesson... what an incredible setting that would be for school children.”
Listen to the full episode to hear more of Dr. Billingsley’s insights on reshaping education for today’s learners.
Learn more about TWCF-funded research projects related to this episode:
Built upon the award-winning video series of the same name, Templeton World Charity Foundation’s “Stories of Impact” podcast features stories of new scientific research on human flourishing that translate discoveries into practical tools. Bringing a mix of curiosity, compassion, and creativity, journalist Richard Sergay and host Tavia Gilbert shine a spotlight on the human impact at the heart of cutting-edge social and scientific research projects supported by TWCF
