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.