Today has been a massive improvement compared to last week’s lecture, tutorial and independent task. I think that this was impacted by my increase in enthusiasm this week. I enjoyed today’s lecture a lot more because I understood the majority of what I was being taught straight away. I also believe the lecturer used very good examples and short video clips in explaining certain points. For example, when learning about the impacts that religion and culture has, we looked at the impact that it has on health. The lecturer then proceeded to give an example of a Jehovah’s witness, who would not accept a blood transfusion on religious grounds because it is in conflict with their religious beliefs. The lecturer also showed us a video clip on this to put this into perspective which is very useful to look back on for future reference.

We also learned about Max Weber and Karl Marx who were and still are very famous sociologists. Their views are the complete opposite of one another which I found very interesting. In the tutorial I was asked a question about Weber, how he appraised religion as culture and the importance in society. I really struggled with this question because I didn’t understand what major impacts there were in the world. I think this was because I personally believe that Marx’s view is something I would believe over Weber’s view. Although I struggled, I was able to answer because we were in groups and I could ask people questions. I will have to work on this particular topic to become less hazy on the subject.

In the independent study task I picked to write about secularization, a secular society and determining what the term ‘de-christianisation’ meant. I thought that it was a good idea to look at questions that may be similar to exam questions. I thought that the independent task could possibly have been whittled down to half an hour because I felt after a while  I was repeating myself. I also think this task could  have been done at home so we could have the choice, whether to do the independent task straight away or have a break to rest.

Overall, I can definitely say that I enjoyed this weeks input a lot more than last week’s and I am really looking forward to learning about the new topic Inclusion next week.

Today has been a very interesting but difficult day for me. This particular module contains a lot of new information for me to retain, therefore I am finding it a little hard to grasp. I hope in the upcoming weeks I will have better knowledge and understanding of what this module is fully about.

In general, I have enjoyed my first lecture, tutorial and tutor based task for Society and Lifestyles. Today’s topic on Religion, Society and Diversity has been interesting for me to learn because it is something I have never looked into before. Although I am reflecting as a learner rather than a teacher, I believe this module will be very helpful in the years to come because it will give me more knowledge on a subject I know little about.

I thought that the lecture was very intense this morning. There was a lot of information to grasp, but I think it was beneficial in the tutorial because it gave me more to think and write about. I was very interested to learn about the insider’s (believer’s) and outsider’s (scholarly) approach to religion. I was unaware of these approaches and believe that this will be useful for me in teaching. As a teacher, it will be very important for me to keep to the outsider’s approach so that my views are not influencing the pupils in the class. This can also be linked to Ninian Smart’s multi-dimensional approach called phenomenology. This allows teachers to teach the ‘essence’ of religion and not influence a child’s view on religion.

I thought it was also very useful to learn about famous functionalists of religion. I think that it was a good idea to link this to the individual task, although today we had a limited amount of time unfortunately. I feel that this allowed us to look further into one of the functionalists and gave us more information on the background of the person. I chose to look into  Broinslaw Malinowski and found out that he was mainly focused on religion as  an institution because he believed that culture functioned to meet the needs of individuals rather than society itself.

I thought that the tutorial was very useful because we got to work in groups rather than individually. This allowed us to come together and answer the question as a group. In hindsight, I think that it would have been better to be split up into smaller groups. My group focused on the opportunities of religious diversity in society. One of the points my group came up with was that the religious institutions could be linked to social integration. We knew this because Durkheim believed tat religion serves to bind a group together, therefore allowing social harmony in religion.

Reflecting on the lessons today, I can definitely say that I have learned a lot of new information. To understand today’s lecture/ tutorial more, I will look over my notes from today to become more secure in my learning. If I am still struggling to comprehend some of the concepts/ issues discussed today I will research the area further to become more confident in Religion, Society and Diversity.