Religious Education

 “RE Genius Hour”

At the beginning of 2014, I asked the RE teachers at the College “what’s worth knowing?” for our students in Religious Education. What is important to them? What is valuable in their eyes? It was from this line of thinking, and reflecting on the College’s objective of giving students greater choice in their learning that the RE KLA implemented Genius Hour in the Year 9 RE program for 2015.

RE Genius Hour is an approach to learning built around student curiosity, self-directed learning, and passion-based work. It allows students in Year 9 RE to identify what is worth knowing for them, then spend one hour per timetable cycle (fortnight) exploring that RE topic/concept/idea. This equates to approximately 20% of their class time. RE Genius Hour provides students with the freedom to design their own learning during this set period of time. It gives them opportunity to explore their own curiosity, to research and study while within the support system of the classroom.

In ‘traditional’ learning, teachers map outcomes and plan units of work and lessons based around those outcomes. In the Genius Hour model, students choose what they study, how they study it, and what they do, produce, or create as a result. As a learning model, it promotes inquiry, research, creativity, and self-directed learning.

The Genius Hour concept is most notably associated with Internet giant Google, where employees are able to spend up to 20% of their time working on projects they’re interested in and passionate about, in other words “non-commissioned work”. The study and work is motivated intrinsically, not extrinsically. The benefit for Google is that employees motivated by curiosity and passion will be happier, more creative, and more productive, which will benefit the company in terms of both morale, and productivity. This is commonly referred to as the ‘80/20 principle.’ We believe RE Genius Hour, with its intrinsic motivation will have similar results in terms of engagement and learning in Religious Education.

So far in 2015, Year 9 RE has had 3 Genius Hour lessons, Weeks 4, 6 and 8.  During the first two lessons students were given the opportunity to identify the topic/theme within RE that they are curious about. Students have been encouraged to think broadly, and with a learning area as diverse as Religious Education students have identified interests which include; world religions, creation/evolution, truth (religious and scientific), ancient religions and mythology, afterlife, the implications of extra-terrestrial life for religion and, the life of Christ. Classroom conversations between teachers and students during RE Genius Hour have shifted from instruction to theology as a result.

This week Mrs Morton led a lesson on research skills, searching the Web and, information literacy for all of Year 9. With religion being a topic people are passionate about, we are aware of the wonderful information that can be found on the Web, equally we are conscious of the ‘not so good’ information that is out there. Student’s workshopped skills to evaluate Web sources based on currency, reliability, authority and purpose/point of view; skills that will be valuable across all of their learning and throughout their learning life.

RE Genius Hour projects last for a semester; projects are not assessed. However, they will be published for the College and the community to see the results of Year 9’s religious curiosity. We look forward to sharing the results with you later this year.

Mr Mark Gilham – Religious Education KLA Leader