Reflections from an Independent Evaluation of TWCF’s BQiC Priority
Templeton World Charity Foundation’s Big Questions in Classrooms (BQiC) helps pupils and teachers explore how knowledge works by bringing science, religious education (i.e., “RE,” a required subject at state-funded schools in England), and philosophy into dialogue through inquiry-rich lessons, practical tools, and teacher development.
An independent evaluation of BQiC by the think tank New Philanthropy Capital (NPC) reviewed a suite of 13 BQiC projects in the UK. The report found early signs that pupils began to “know well,” engaging thoughtfully with evidence, making cross-subject connections, and showing greater agency, while teachers shifted from delivering content to facilitating inquiry and collaboration. It also flagged some key impact enablers (high-quality, dialogic materials; leadership buy-in) and constraints or barriers (time pressures, siloed curricula, COVID-disrupted data) of the BQiC approach.
Editor's note: Bonnie prefaces her responses by noting COVID-related school closures limited the collection of outcome data for pupils in many projects, and affected how well researchers were able to make definitive statements about changes in pupils.
Bonnie Zahl: What came through from the evaluation report was a sense that students were beginning to move away from seeing “knowledge” as simply facts about the world, and becoming more aware of how knowledge produced and becomes secure. In school science, it’s easy to mistake scientific knowledge as objective facts and to distinguish that from “opinion.” But when we consider knowledge from other subjects, we realize knowledge production is a good deal more complicated than just producing “facts that are true.” It seems like BQiC programs helped students to start noticing these subtle differences by drawing attention to the myriad of ways in which we say we “know” something to be true, especially when considering comparing scientific, religious, and other kinds of knowledge.
The report also highlighted how BQiC programs seemed to give students a sense of intellectual agency and independence that was probably lacking in the classroom. We were encouraged by reports of students questioning their teachers when lessons seemed too narrow or siloed, and how they were beginning to spontaneously make connections between different subjects, exploring the social implications of science, and bringing topics from their own lives into the classroom unprompted. To me, these represent steps that students are taking to become learners who are able to make meaningful connections between all the knowledge that they are gaining.
Our grantees Jo Fraser-Pearce and Alexis Stones describe “epistemic literacy” as “the competency and proficiency in the identification, interpretation, understanding, questioning, navigation, and communication of knowledge.” Their shorthand for this is “knowing well.”
This matters profoundly today because we are inundated with information and, unfortunately, misinformation. Without epistemic literacy, it’s difficult to evaluate competing claims that arise from different ways of knowing. Is a claim scientific? Is it philosophical? Is it historical? Is it ideological? Is the evidence used to make those claims appropriate and suitable? We hope that BQiC projects helped students to become more aware and able to navigate different knowledge systems, respect diverse perspectives, and base their arguments on evidence, so that as they are more reflective of the information that they are bombarded with on a daily basis, and so that they can make informed choices as they participate in social and public life in the future.
One other thing that was interesting about the projects was how they impacted different kinds of students, and sometimes in different ways. One project, led by SAPERE, explored using Philosophy for Children to encourage students to explore philosophical questions about knowledge, truth, justice and values in science and RE. Evaluators found that the philosophical inquiry approach seemed to benefit neurotypical students as well as those with special educational needs. At the same time, it was clear some students still seemed to have misconceptions about how questions, methods, and norms of thought in science differ from RE and other humanities. In some cases, higher performing and more confident students seemed to benefit more from the more open learning environment afforded by the project, and lower performing students found some of the material challenging, which led to lower engagement. Yet we also had teachers in other projects report seeing lower performing get more out of the BQiC projects. This tells me there isn’t a one size fits all approach to helping students develop “knowledge about knowledge," and invites further reflection from educators on how to do this in classrooms of mixed abilities and backgrounds.
We know from decades of research that when learning is active, engaging, and personally meaningful, it sticks. The ASE's project skillfully incorporated these insights by creating a brilliant, cinematic quality short film about Mary Anning titled: "Sea Dragon: A Natural History Heist." The film was the entry point for a set of learning resources that teachers can use to teach about evolution, the nature of scientific inquiry, and how people in the past negotiated religious and scientific ideas as they changed over time. The protagonist, Mary Anning, was 12 years old—just a little older than the children who would learn with these resources—when she correctly identified the first ichthyosaur skeleton that she discovered on England’s Jurassic Coast. The film is a reenactment of a heist in where she sneaks into an auction to steal a part of the fossil that she discovered, and is exciting and fun to watch. Watch the trailer here, and read a blog post about the curriculum here.
Children seemed to love this, with reports of high levels of engagement and continuing conversations outside lessons. One teacher commented: “Seeing how the students altered their thoughts and ideas as the project moved forward, and how they would listen to each other a little more rather than shouting over each other to put their opinions forward was really interesting.”
Teachers also felt that this was a rare and meaningful opportunity for them to develop their pedagogy:
“From a teaching perspective, offering time for students to work by themselves, to develop their ideas as individuals and in small groups was so valuable. Using diagnostic questioning rather than leading them to an answer made them think more about their own questioning and thoughts. Learning myself to allow students to think for themselves was a great learning practice for myself. This is something I am starting to incorporate more into my teaching across the year groups I teach. This was a great project and I'm grateful for having had the chance to participate.”
“We realized that we usually teach science in isolation. We have enjoyed the multidisciplinary aspect as we have been striving to make strong connections in our spiral curriculum. When connections are genuine, the learning is better and deeper. The multidisciplinary teaching was a powerful tool in helping children understand their learning and retain it.”
“The film captured their interest […] [and] was a great motivator, especially for children who usually aren't interested in science and don't normally think it's for them.”
Other projects had some really hands-on elements. Berry Billingsley’s project on Epistemic Insight produced an interactive Discipline Wheel where a student could type in a question, like 'Why did the Titanic sink?', and consider how different disciplines might answer that question. Students who participated in that project also had opportunities to build and engage with robots, and were encouraged to construct questions that sit at the boundaries of different disciplines. Younger students would discuss how a theologian and biologist might talk about ‘what it means to be alive’. Older students had the opportunity to play with a robot that responds to clapping, and then consider what else it would need to demonstrate in order to be able to even begin to answer the question: 'Can a robot hear?' Students responded really well to these structured opportunities to explore, to ask questions without fearing wrong answers, and co-construct their understanding.
For a lot of teachers—especially science teachers in secondary schools—who took part in BQiC projects as research participants, it was the first time in their training or their careers to think about how the subject that they teach relates to other subjects. What stood out from the report was the power of connections between teachers of different subjects, the value of reflecting on the bigger purposes of teaching, and the beginnings of genuine collaboration. For some teachers, it was the very first time they had ever co-planned lessons with their colleagues. In some schools, we began to see organic informal discussions across departments. Some of the concepts that were used in BQiC projects: argumentation, worldview, epistemic literacy, etc. became common language for teachers to instigate meaningful conversations about the nature of subjects that they teach. And many of the teachers who participated mentioned how the cross-disciplinary engagement was enjoyable, motivating, and inspiring for them. Some teachers found it initially scary, but ultimately liberating, to step into the role of facilitator rather than lecturer.
I think this kind of role will become increasingly important, and will be crucial for education, especially when students can get answers about facts so quickly with the rise of AI. They won’t need teachers to answer their questions—they’ll ask ChatGPT. But they will need teachers who can skillfully create opportunities for them to develop their reasoning and critical thinking abilities, and their ability to articulate and communicate their ideas with each other so that their knowledge is deepened. It seemed to me that many BQiC projects encouraged teachers to reflect on their own roles and behaviors as pedagogues.
I would characterize the shift as being one from a “teacher as a deliverer of facts” to a “teacher as a facilitator of inquiry.” The English education system, especially at the secondary level, is geared towards high stakes public examinations. Because of this, teachers are under immense pressure to “teach to the exam” and to make sure students have the correct facts, knowledge, and skills to pass exams. BQiC projects offered the opportunity to see their role differently and to experiment with teaching with different goals in mind. Some teachers reported feeling better equipped and more confident to tackle “bigger issues” with students, and rather than seeing complexity, ambiguity, and difficult-to-answer questions as things to be avoided, they saw them as learning opportunities for their students. Some teachers said they made a conscious shift in their practice to be not just a transmitter of knowledge, but also to help students create knowledge and grapple with how to do that well. Some teachers reported feeling empowered to experiment with the curriculum and even critically question their existing syllabi—an indication of an increase in their sense of professional agency. Some of them reported feeling a renewed motivation and excitement for teaching. It seems to me that for some teachers, participating in these projects reminded them of why they wanted to be teachers in the first place.
This was probably the hardest part of the project. We knew going into this initiative that there is a lot of inertia in education, particularly in England, and that change at the school or system level would be difficult to achieve without other levers that are more challenging to pull on. The report makes it very clear that real, sustainable change requires more than just inspiring individual teachers; it has to take root in the school's culture and structures, and it takes a long time. This is a high bar. The most critical factor, which the report emphasized repeatedly, was buy-in from school leadership. Where we saw school-level changes, it was driven or actively supported by headteachers who were willing to embed interdisciplinary engagement into their school ethos and created new structures that formalized those cross-department collaborations. Some projects saw counter-examples: even with the most enthusiastic teachers, lack of buy-in from senior leaders—on whom there are so many demands and who face many challenges beyond thinking about what kinds of curriculum their school should offer—made it difficult for teachers to take the collaborative work forward.
BQiC had three outcomes: to build an evidence base of the potential benefits of cross-disciplinary learning to enhance knowledge development; to develop tools that teachers can use; and to contribute meaningfully to broader conversations about the purpose and enhancement of education. We wanted outcomes in all of these areas because we knew it would not be enough to only address one outcome, and we knew it wouldn’t be possible for any single project to cover all three outcomes. We remain persuaded that all three are needed, and we’ve been deliberate in partnering with a range of grantees—from education researchers to professional associations to organizations that engage with senior leadership. The report signals some meaningful early progress. But we also came to see more clearly the reality that curriculum questions have been, and continue to be, eclipsed by other urgent and fundamental problems that the education system faces such as the teacher shortages, high workloads, significant funding gaps and budget cuts, widening inequality and attainment gaps between disadvantaged and wealthier students, challenges in supporting pupils with special needs and concerns about student and staff mental health and wellbeing eclipsing questions about curriculum policy. Nevertheless, we have been encouraged by some positive signs:
There seems to be some traction on national, policy-level conversations, particularly about RE. TWCF-funded work and TWCF grantees were referenced in the 2021 Ofsted Research Review on Religious Education. [Find the report here.] Ofsted is a hugely influential body in the English education system. For our grantees' research to be cited in their periodic review of the state of the subject demonstrates that some of these ideas are being taken seriously at the national policy level.
The biannual RExChange conference, spearheaded by Culham St Gabriel’s Trust with TWCF’s support, was seen as a successful model for bridging the gap between academics and teachers. It created a space for genuine dialogue, where teachers felt valued and were given “permission to undertake research while not being 'an academic'.“ We were able to partner with RExChange to deliver BQiC-related content to teachers and believe this kind of partnership is essential for ensuring that research is grounded in classroom reality and that practice is informed by rigorous inquiry.
The ideas and work of our grantees have been taken up internationally as well. “The Sea Dragon / Key Moments in History“ materials have been translated into Spanish and have been trialed by teachers at events hosted by the University of Navarra’s Museum of Natural History, and have even inspired additional teaching and learning materials suitable for the Spanish context. The worldviews approach to religious education, championed by the Religious Council of England and Wales, is also being explored by educators in Australia.
I’m incredibly proud of the work that TWCF grantees have done and what they have achieved through these grants. The care and thought that they’ve given to their projects, and to the teachers who have participated in research, in developing and trialling resources, and in delivering the programs has really inspired me. While COVID might feel like a distant memory, a good number of our projects were impacted by COVID which led to school closures and major disruptions to education. We knew BQiC would be challenging to teachers, and it was made even more challenging by circumstances. Our grantees and the participating schools and teachers rose to the challenge, and I am inspired by their commitment.
A really memorable experience for me was when I observed a teacher training session where science teachers and RE teachers were shown some national curriculum materials where the subject title and other details that might disclose the subject, like key disciplinary content and topics, had been redacted. The teachers had to figure out which document reflected which subject, and explain why. What was really interesting and striking was how similar the language was across the two documents, once you take out the obvious disciplinary differences. If you had asked a science teacher and an RE teacher whether the learning outcomes for science and RE are similar, they would probably say, “no.” But this exercise gave teachers some insight about how, in fact, there are more similarities between those subjects than they would have realised. I think often teachers of different subjects across the humanities and sciences do not necessarily realize they may have shared goals, and seeing that a-ha moment on teachers’ faces was really memorable.
When he was alive, Sir John Templeton loved asking questions. For him, questioning was a posture for living with humility and curiosity. He loved to say, “How little we know! How eager to learn!” His interest in asking questions about the fundamental nature of the world, and big questions that link what we can observe to the deeper meanings behind it, stemmed from his own personal faith and belief. He had this optimism that the reality-focused model of knowing through science, and the deep spiritual wisdom of theology and religion, could enrich each other. In his book Possibilities for Over One Hundredfold More Spiritual Information: The Humble Approach in Theology and Science, he wrote, “It may be possible for many scientists and theologians to assist one another in a spirit of mutual excitement over exploring reality both in its purely physical aspects as well as in more ultimate or spiritual aspects. Clearly, serious commitment to humility would be needed on both sides for such a dynamism to develop without one group seeking to reduce the significance of the others’ expertise and point of view.” (Possibilities, p. 35)
Going forward, I think TWCF will always be looking for people who are not satisfied with singular or narrow ways of searching for truth about the nature of the world and of reality. Templeton Prize winners are perhaps the most visible exemplars of people who do this. The award is given to people whose work display Sir John Templeton’s core conviction that there is a deeper level of reality that can be accessed through rigorous research, especially in the sciences. BQiC aspired to create the conditions in education that might inspire and enable young people to think about the deeper level of reality, and how they might learn and know more about it. I have hope that, in the future, a Templeton Prize winner might trace the path of their curiosity and accomplishments back to an experience in the classroom or a teacher who inspired them to pursue deep questions about the universe and their place within it.
