A Critical Study of Thinking about the Bible’

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Abstract
A critical study was made of Peatling's multiple choice instrument for the study of religious thinking, Thinking About the Bible (TAB). Examination of the readability of the response items showed that they varied in difficulty, the age for which material was suitable becoming higher as one moved from Very Concrete to Very Abstract items. A theological dimension was detected in the items, and it was concluded that TAB probes pupils' way of thinking about religion and their understanding of religion. The items were judged to be generally representative of the levels of thinking for which they had been selected. TAB appears to give a useful measure of the level of religious thinking at which groups are operating, but it does not seem to be a valid indicator of the level of religious thinking revealed by the interview of individual pupils. There seems to be little evidence that the plateaus identified by Peatling are present in the development of individual children, and Goldman's model of the development of religious thinking in adolescence is to be preferred.

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