What is the best way to revise for Religious Studies?
02 May 2024
Richard Barrow, Religious Studies Subject Advisor
Ultimately the answer is: the way or ways that are most effective for you. However, this begs the question of how you measure what is effective, and this can be surprisingly difficult. Here I share my own reflections from teaching and studying on the principles that underpin effective revision in Religious Studies for both GCSE and A Level.
Overview
There are important things to consider in terms of the practicalities before you even start revising: study spaces, scheduling, how to beat procrastination (my own personal bugbear as a student), the importance of sleep and the role that technology should or should not play. We have lots of general revision advice that’s also worth looking at.
We have produced short videos with specific revision tips for both GCSE and A Level Religious Studies. In this post I will expand on the principles underpinning these tips.
Be clear on what your revision goals are
An analogy is perhaps helpful here. People sometimes wander into gyms with the vague ambition of ‘get fit’ or ‘get strong’ or whatever it is, but no plan about how precisely they are going to achieve it. They might aimlessly use a stepper for a few minutes, or bench-press a weight selected at random. This might be slightly better than doing nothing at all, but it’s not optimal. By the same token, lots of students have a very vague goal of ‘learn stuff!’ or ‘remember stuff!’ They pick up a textbook, open it at a random place and fill a few minutes or hours listlessly re-reading the same page.
So what would be appropriate goals when revising? It might be that a student wants to cover a certain proportion of the specification. Perhaps they want to work on a particular assessment type. Maybe there is a topic that they find really tricky, and they want to improve their understanding. Once you are clear on what you are trying to achieve in a revision session, you can then reverse-engineer the best methodology.
Do active revision
As previously noted, in the end the most effective revision method is what works for the student, and that will vary. In my own experience of studying and teaching though, the single most important principle underpinning successful revision is that it is active. Highlighting – or worse yet, rewriting – your notes, is not revision. It might have some therapeutic value in the same way as mindfulness colouring in, but it should not be confused with revision.
Effective revision is active. Active revision means that you are doing something with the material rather than just passively absorbing it (or attempting to). This could include testing yourself on a topic (rather than just reading a textbook page on it), planning an answer or doing some form of writing (more on that shortly). Although you might well start a revision session by re-reading notes or a textbook, to get the most return from your time you then need to do something with the content.
Be clear on what you’re revising (and why)
The specification
To take the sports science analogy further, it is important that decisions about revision (what, how and when) are rooted in data rather than vague hunches. The most fundamental aspect of that is being absolutely clear about what might be on the assessment.
To do this you need to be clear about what is on the specification. This is an area where there has been a real shift in pedagogy. When I did GCSEs and A Levels I don’t remember looking at a specification once. My planning around what to revise was rooted simply in what I happened to have notes on – and was much less effective for it.
Whether you want to share the whole specifications for full course GCSE, GCSE short course, AS Level or A Level with your students, or give them a simplified version that just lists the content (such as the student revision checklist for GCSE which you will find on the qualification page, under Resources for students), will obviously depend on your context.
Students’ relative strengths and weaknesses
Once students are clear about what is on the specification and therefore potentially on the exam, it’s helpful for them to analyse their relative strengths and weaknesses. The relative is important here – whatever level students are working at there will be some topics and skills they are more secure in, and some that they are less secure on.
To achieve this, revision tips often recommend RAG-rating (RAG = red, amber, green) a specification or revision guide. This can work really well, so long as it’s remembered that ultimately what matters is the student’s actual relative strengths and weaknesses rather than how confident they feel. The two do not always align. From my own teaching experience I found that the topics that students often felt least secure on were (perhaps because they focused on them) often their strongest.
Using a data-driven approach here to inform strengths and weaknesses diagnostics might be as simple as using marks from previous topic assessments, or using low-stakes quizzing to identify gaps in knowledge and understanding.
Practise what you’re assessed on
A general principle of effective preparation, beyond just revision, is that your preparation should reflect what it is that you are preparing for. If you were going on The Great British Bake-Off then effective preparation might include some reading and research, but it would focus mainly on actually doing some baking. You certainly wouldn’t be highlighting books about baking. This truism is so obvious that it’s often overlooked, particularly for revision. For GCSE and A Level Religious Studies students are assessed on their ability to understand exam questions, to recall relevant material, and to compose and write answers.
Recalling relevant material – what tends these days to be called ‘active retrieval’ – is obviously critical to this. Whether you use physical flashcards, electronic counterparts like Quizlet or have someone else test you, the goals should be the same: to practise your recall, to refine your understanding and to identify areas of relative weakness (which can then inform decisions about future revision sessions). Resources like the glossaries for both A Level and GCSE (which you will find on Teach Cambridge) are particularly useful here.
For written subjects like Religious Studies, writing practice is also really important. This does not have to be whole essays. For GCSE of course, students can do short-answer questions. For AS and A Level (and GCSE) deconstructing previous questions (which you will find on Teach Cambridge) and then planning essays is really valuable. Equally, writing single paragraphs (perhaps explaining tricky concepts) or conclusions takes much less time than writing whole essays, but will still develop writing skills. All too often students practise the recall part but not the written element of assessment.
It’s meant to be hard
However students organise their revision (such using a system like the pomodoro technique), it’s important that they build in sufficient time for rest breaks, and that they don’t try to over extend revision sessions. This is because effective revision is intense.
This perhaps speaks to a more general point: effective revision is meant to be difficult. When students find it hard this should be celebrated – they are probably doing something right. As with physical exercise, making progress is hard (but achievable). The emphasis on progress is also critical. There is a tendency for students to conflate it with productivity. Producing endless reams of paper by copying out notes might be superficially satisfying, but it won’t stimulate growth.
Stay connected
Share your thoughts in the comments below. If you have any questions, you can email us at religiousstudies@ocr.org.uk, call us on 01223 553998 or message us on X (formerly Twitter) @OCR_RS. You can also sign up to subject updates and receive email information about resources and support.
About the author
Richard studied philosophy and has a BA, MA and M.Phil from the University of East Anglia. Before joining OCR, he taught religious studies and philosophy for nearly 20 years at sixth form and university level, and has particular research interests in Learning Theory, Retrieval Practice and Flipped Learning. In his free time he enjoys weightlifting, rugby, gardening, nature/conservation and military history and also spends a lot of time looking after his children’s pets.
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