Dear Parent,
Welcome to Interfaith Explorers – a quality educational resource that helps your child value and respect cultural diversity!
We hope you enjoyed watching the teacher’s introduction video, which gives you a flavour of what it’s about – and below are some additional FAQ’s to help you understand what we do. If you have any further questions feel free to contact us here.
Interfaith Explorers is a great free online learning resource, supported by UNESCO, which helps pupils understand the world around them as well as respect cultural and religious diversity.
All schools have to respond to requirements relating to religious education, citizenship and promoting fundamental British values. There is also growing recognition that now more than ever, the need for ‘religious literacy’ is crucial for young people growing up, especially due to the diversity of religious beliefs and cultures in the world today.
Interfaith Explorers can help teachers to promote religious literacy and cultural understanding among their pupils.
Interfaith Explorers is designed to compliment RE and PSHE teaching, alongside citizenship education and SMSC development in schools. It offers teachers a bank of high quality cross-curricula resources to use with pupils at Key Stage 2 and those embarking on their Key Stage 3 transition (pupils aged from 7 to 11 years).
It also offers a bank of quality assured and trustworthy resources for pupils to use when exploring different faiths and cultures in the world.
Interfaith Explorers offers practical activities that promote ethical thinking and supports the development of universal core values such as respect, responsibility integrity and compassion too.
Mapped to National Curriculum requirements, the Learning Unit at the heart of Interfaith Explorers is designed to enrich your school’s curriculum and can be used in international learning environments as well.
It offers a practical and comprehensive educational resource, which is easy to implement as can be delivered as a six-week unit or in parts throughout the academic year.
How does the Learning Unit support pupils’ educational development?
The Learning Unit is based on a robust pedagogy, which supports core personal and social skills development such as problem solving. It also promotes self-directed and exploratory learning.
Specifically, the Learning Unit focuses on three key areas of skill development so that pupils are supported to become:
As these are universal skills, the Learning Unit has a range supporting materials can be used in a wide variety of cultural and contextual contexts.
Additionally, there is a strong emphasis on research-based learning and teaching, which is built in throughout the Learning Unit.
The Learning Unit also contains guidance and supporting materials to help teachers with implementation.
As well as guidance for RE and PSHE lessons, there is also guidance on how the Learning Unit can be applied across the school curriculum, as it supports important aspects of the national curriculum for England and Wales such as literacy, numeracy, music, computing, art and design.
Supporting materials are easy to adapt by teachers for use in their own specific school or classroom context.
Interfaith Explorers is a project of the Khalili Foundation, an international charity promoting understanding and respect between the people from the three Abrahamic faiths through the power of creativity, intercultural dialogue and education. Amongst it supporters are some of the world most highly respected religious leaders and prominent figures.
The Khalili Foundation recognises that tensions existing in the world today are the result of ignorance and lack of understanding. If ignorance is the problem, then education must be the answer.
