6 Big Questions

I first came across the work of Ann Taves while writing for the RE Council’s Worldviews project. I saw her work as a brilliant way to organise learning within RE as it poses questions and organises knowledge in non-theological ways. Her framework poses fundamental questions that all human’s ask about their experiences and the world around them regardless of their religious or non-religious worldview.

Taves’ research is gaining well deserved attention in Britain, with Barnet SACRE developing their Locally Agreed Syllabus around Taves’ work. You can read and watch more about this work at the CSTG website.

Worldview Analysis as a Tool for Conflict Resolution

The research that has become known as “6 Big Questions” is best explored in the paper Worldview Analysis as a Tool for Conflict Resolution with various models and questions posed. These 6 questions are the core ones that all humans pose and are divided across areas of academic study, or -ologies.

1. Ontology (reality) – What exists? What is real?

2. Cosmology (origins) – Who are we? Where do we come from? How did we get here?

3. Epistemology (knowledge) – How do we know these things? (about ourselves and reality more generally)

4. Situation – What is the situation in which we find ourselves?

5. Axiology (goal): What is the good (the goal) for which we should strive?

6. Praxeology (path) – What actions should we take? What path should we follow?

In wider RE discussions the -ology names tend to be dropped, with the more accessible names shown in the brackets used.

Applying 6BQs to a curriculum

The 6BQs give us numerous ways to help build an RE curriculum. The questions are ones that can be engaged with from children in EYFS to A Level. They are all questions that children ask about the world, usually at bedtime.

Firstly, there are 6 BQs which rather helps planning a years worth of teaching over six half terms! The Qs equally group into natural pairings: reality and origins; knowledge and situation; goal and path.