BREE – seeking to empower teachers to build pupil resilience to extremism

These conversations are difficult to have in the classroom, but many children are trying to comprehend or understand their own fear, anger, sorrow and sympathy around issues that matter to them and in many cases they turn to educators to help them.

It is scary and risky to do this work. But if we can’t create the conditions for productive dialogue in schools, how will it ever happen in wider society?

This is what we do at SAPERE. We give teachers the skills and confidence to be able to tackle challenging and difficult subjects in their own classrooms. We need to give all children the opportunity to talk through these issues, to listen to different perspectives and give them the abilities to critically evaluate their own, as well as other people’s opinions (including social media influencers).

We fully endorse the statement within recommendation 7 of Sara Khan’s review that it is critical that there are, “training materials and resources to support schools in teaching what it means to live in a diverse democracy, how to manage opposing and different opinions, how to debate well and the importance of critical thinking.”

We are currently working with SAPERE trainer Richard Gore on expanding his Building Resilience to Extremism through Enquiry (BREE) Project, which has been running for 4 years in London supported by partner organisation DialogueWorks and the London Mayor’s Shared Endeavour Fund.

If you want to be part of this project, read more below and register to be included in fully funded training and resources.

Building Resilience to Extremism through Enquiry

“The resources were outstanding: balanced, well thought out and age-appropriate. They gave teachers the confidence to explicitly tackle and discuss issues relating to extremism and showed them a sensitive teaching sequence that we will embed into our curriculum for years to come”. (Deputy Head)

As co-director of the Society for the Advancement of Philosophical Enquiry and Reflection in Education, I am delighted to be able to offer schools an opportunity to take part in training on using enquiry to build resilience to extremism in your classroom at no cost to participating schools and money towards support costs. We are putting in funding for London schools now, but will be seeking funds for schools across the UK shortly.

This training and project is suitable for those who have already done Level 1 as well as those who are new to SAPERE P4C. If there are new members of your team who have not experienced P4C training then this two-day course will be suitable for them. The training in dialogue and enquiry using the philosophy for children pedagogy will be focused for this project on building resilience to extremism.

This course is specifically aimed at teachers and pupils in years 5 to 9, including SEND and alternative provision schools and comes with resources that have been specifically developed for tackling these difficult issues through enquiry-based learning.

This projects also includes a one-day per school coaching support day with classroom implementation from a SAPERE trainer. Participating schools will also have full access to P4C.com SAPERE’s resource library which offers a large range of high-quality relevant resources developed by some of the leading trainers and practitioners in the field. By offering this resource to schools who take part in the project it will substantially improve their ability to continue to practise P4C after the project, as well as try P4C across a wide range of topic and subject areas. This will also allow teachers to further develop their pupils’ critical and collaborative thinking skills which are fundamental to building resilience to extremism.

I attended a celebration event last week at Manorfield Primary School where primary and secondary schools from across London came together to share their experiences and further resources that had been developed within the project. The project has been running for 4 years and I was hugely impressed with the teachers and pupils involved. Two year 6 pupils from Manorfield shared what they thought they had developed from the project, how it had challenged their ideas of extremism and given them a greater understanding of different perspectives.

The teachers all talked about how engaging the project was for their pupils as they were able to relate to events they heard in the news, and how other forms of extremism – such as misogyny with social media influences like Andrew Tate – can be tackled through using enquiry.

We are currently seeking schools to join the fifth round of this well-reviewed Mayor of London Shared Endeavor Fund which will run from September 2024 until March 2025.

Please follow the links below for London or National to register your interest. Both projects would start in the Autumn Term.

Evaluative comments from project schools

“Through the BREE project, I’ve gained valuable insights into promoting inclusivity and understanding in the classroom. Learning effective strategies to address sensitive topics empowers me to create a safe environment for pupils to explore diverse perspectives. This experience strengthens my ability to foster empathy, critical thinking, and resilience against extremism among my pupils.”  Y6 teacher

“I enjoyed hearing other people’s opinion and their explanations so I could understand better.”  Project Pupil

“The project gave us access to expert teaching resources, providing staff with the reassurance that the materials they were delivering had been researched and trialled beforehand. They gave teachers the confidence to explicitly tackle and discuss issues relating to extremism and showed them a sensitive teaching sequence that we have now embedded into our curriculum.” Deputy head