RS Skills: Using Sources and Reaching Judgements

Every source speaks from somewhere

An enquiry in Religious Studies rests on sources, and the first thing to understand about a source is that it comes from a point of view. A sacred text comes from inside a tradition. A news report comes from outside one. A charity comes from a purpose. A person comes from a life. That is not a fault to be corrected, and it is not a reason to distrust anything. It is simply what a source IS, and pretending otherwise produces worse work rather than better. What follows from it is the whole of this topic. If every source speaks from somewhere, then no single source can carry an enquiry on its own, and the skill is not finding the one true source but assembling a SET whose members speak from different places. Three things sit inside that skill, and this module covers all three. Choosing a set that between them cover the perspectives, religious and non-religious alike. Producing a source of your own by talking to somebody, and understanding exactly what that kind of source can and cannot show. And finally being able to say where you stand yourself, and to give reasons for it that somebody who disagreed with you could still recognise as reasons. Two related skills live in other modules: how to judge whether one particular source is trustworthy, and how to build the evaluation paragraph that reaches a judgement.

Five words for enquiry work

These are the words the skills part of this unit is written in.

What is wrong with each set?

Which source would you add?

An enquiry asks how far religious communities in Wales still shape daily life in their local areas. So far the sources are a national survey, a report by a religious charity, and an article from a news website. Which source would strengthen the set most?

• An interview with somebody who takes part in a local religious community
• A second national survey, to check the figures in the first one
• A textbook chapter summarising what the major religions teach
• A strongly worded opinion piece arguing that religion no longer matters

What each kind of source can show

Sources are not better and worse. They answer different questions, and choosing well means matching the kind of source to the kind of question.

Assemble a set in this order

Five moves for choosing the sources an enquiry will rest on. Put them into the order that avoids wasted work.

• Write the enquiry question down in the form it will be answered in
• List the perspectives that would need to be heard for the answer to be fair
• Decide what kind of source could speak from each of those perspectives
• Find or produce those sources, including any you have to gather yourself
• Look at the finished set and name the perspective it is still missing

Producing your own source

You are going to gather lived experience by talking to somebody about their beliefs. Which THREE of these make that a sound source?

• They agreed in advance to take part and know how what they say will be used
• Their answers are recorded in their own words rather than summarised into yours
• It is written up as the view of one person, not as the view of a religion
• They hold roughly the view you expected to find
• The conversation lasted a long time

One person is not a tradition

This is the mistake that costs most marks in this part of the course, and it is worth understanding rather than just avoiding. Somebody interviews a member of a religious community, hears a thoughtful answer, and writes that this is what the religion believes. It is not, and the error runs in both directions. It flattens a tradition that contains disagreement, change and enormous variety into a single voice. And it puts an unfair weight on the person who agreed to help, who was speaking about their own life and has now been made to answer for millions of people they have never met. The fix is a single sentence and it upgrades the work rather than weakening it: say plainly that this source shows how one person understands and lives their faith, and set it alongside a written source that shows what the tradition itself sets out. Now the two sources are doing different jobs and neither is being stretched. Where the two disagree, that is not a problem with your evidence. That gap between what a tradition teaches and how people actually live is one of the most interesting things Religious Studies has to look at, and an enquiry that notices it is doing better work than one that tidies it away.

Complete the enquiry words

The position a source speaks from is its _____. Evidence of how somebody actually lives, gathered from that person, is _____. A set of sources chosen so that no one perspective decides the answer by itself is _____. Working out where you stand yourself, and what your reasons actually are, is _____.

One question, four sources

Take an enquiry question that can be answered rather than argued about forever: how far do the festivals of a religious community shape the year for the people who take part in them. Now build the set. A written source from inside the tradition shows what the festivals are for and what the tradition sets out about them, which is something no other kind of source can supply. A survey or a report shows how many people take part and whether that has been changing, which no individual could tell you. An interview with somebody who takes part shows what taking part actually involves across a year, in detail that a survey cannot reach. And a non-religious perspective, from somebody who does not take part, shows how the same festivals appear from outside the community. Four sources, four different places to speak from, and notice that no two of them could be swapped for each other. Now the honest last step. Look at the set and name what is still missing. There is no voice here from somebody who used to take part and stopped, and that person would see something none of the other four can. Naming the gap does not weaken the enquiry. It is one of the things a top answer does.

Find the sentence that stretches too far

Five sentences from a write-up. Tap the ONE that makes a source carry more than it can.

• The written source sets out what the tradition teaches about the festival and why it is kept.
• The survey suggests that the number of people taking part has fallen over the last twenty years.
• In the interview, one participant described how the festival shapes the whole of her autumn.
• This shows that followers of this religion all find the festival to be the most important part of their year.
• A non-religious neighbour said the festival was the only time he saw the street busy.

Say where you stand

Reflection is not announcing an opinion. Choose the option in each gap to turn a statement into a justified position.

The enquiry run

Five quick questions on sources and judgement. Three lives.

Planning the enquiry

You are planning an enquiry into how far a local religious community shapes the area around it. You have one written source from inside the tradition and one news article. You have three weeks. Work through three decisions.

• What is the most useful thing to do first?
• You arrange to talk to somebody who takes part in the community. How do you set it up?
• What they describe does not match what the written source sets out. What do you do with that?

Plan the sources

An enquiry asks how far a religious community shapes the area around it. Explain how you would choose the sources for it and how you would reach a justified answer. Write about the METHOD. You are not being asked what you personally believe.

• Explain why no single source could answer this question on its own
• Name at least three different kinds of source and say what each one could show that the others could not
• Explain what an interview can show and what it cannot, and how you would write it up honestly
• Say how you would check the finished set for a perspective it was missing
• Finish by explaining what would turn your answer from an opinion into a justified position