Course topics.

Try this with Religion and Society

1. Compare the topic list with the current course outline from your school.
2. Pick a topic you can partly explain and identify the exact part you want to work through.
3. Bring one example of the kind of question or task your school uses.

View Religion and Society resources on ATARMAXXING ↗

Topics in the resource inventory

• The nine aspects of religion: what each one is, what it does and how they interrelate
• The nature and purpose of religion in the search for meaning: the big questions of life and religion's answers
• Religious beliefs in general: what they are, what they are meant to do and how to write a precise belief statement
• Beliefs about ultimate reality, the nature and purpose of human life, suffering, and death and the afterlife in one tradition
• Relational beliefs (ultimate reality and humanity, between humans, humans and the natural world) and analysing connections between beliefs
• The role of ethics, rituals, sacred stories and social structures in expressing meaning and responding to the search for meaning
• The role of spaces, places, times and artefacts, spiritual experiences, symbols and texts, and the relationship of the aspects to each other
• Demonstrating how a belief is expressed through texts, sacred stories and symbols in the tradition studied
• Expressing a belief through rituals, ethics, social structures, sacred spaces and times and spiritual experiences, and how the expressions support meaning
• Types of significant life experience and the two-way relationship between experiences and religious beliefs in general
• Preparing the significant life experience case study: adherence, understanding, faith and engagement before, during and after
• How a person's beliefs shape their interpretation of a significant life experience: what is happening and why
• Significant challenges over time: theology, ethics and continued existence, their sources and what makes a challenge significant
• Stances for, against and of indifference: the sources that determine them and the reasons religions take them
• Supporting responses and the aspects of religion involved in three challenges to one tradition
• Writing precise challenge statements and comparing three challenges by source, significance, category and response
• The interaction of religion and society and the broader context, timing and sources of one detailed challenge
• Reasons and intended outcomes of stances and supporting responses: integrity, authenticity, authority, adherents and identity
• Evaluating the influence of stances and responses on the challenge itself, the tradition and wider society
• Exam technique: general versus tradition-specific questions, source material, command words, stimulus and timing