The implicit knowledge structure preferred by questions in English Religious Studies public exams

This chapter is not so much a critique of an exam, as an analysis of religious education (RE) through a study of the principle question structure used in exams, and the kind of answer responses that can become norms. This reveals implicit knowledge structures that implicitly prefer binary argumentation rather than nuanced and contextual discussion, literalism and proof texting with sacred texts rather than polyphonic multidimensionality and contextual readings, and contradictory rather than compatible differences. The question structures in exams assert a kind of knowledge in RE constructed by and for examinations. For the most part they do not test disciplinary knowledge and forms of religious knowing have no recognized place.

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