Face to Faith educational programme

1 March 2015 - 31 August 2016

PI/s in Exeter: Professor Rupert Wegerif

CI/s in Exeter: Dr Shirley Larkin Dr Nasser Mansour

Funding awarded: £ 47,888

Sponsor(s): Tony Blair Foundation

About the research

The Face to Faith educational programme of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation is being used in many countries around the world with the aim of increasing open-mindedness. The Centre for Teaching Thinking and Dialogue at Exeter University will undertake a rigorous evaluation of the impact of the programme. The main audience for this research will be educational policy decision makers.

The main aim of the proposed project is to evaluate the impact of the Face to Faith programme on promoting increased open-mindedness. In order to achieve this aim we also aim to:

  • develop an effective instrument and methodology for measuring changes in open-mindedness
  • investigate the teaching and learning processes which lead to increased open-mindedness
  • develop quantitative discourse analysis techniques for investigating changes in online dialogues that are indicative of increased open-mindedness in action

This is a very exciting project for us as it is about exploring if and how Internet mediated communication can promote education into dialogue and also to develop effective ways to measure the direction of development into dialogue or into becoming more dialogic.

Project Team: Rupert Wegerif, Richard Andrews, Nasser Mansour, Jonathan Doney and Shirley Larkin