Every subtopic of DP World Religions, ready to teach.

These 2 lessons across 2 topics establish the epistemological and definitional foundations of the course. Students examine why 'religion' is a contested, constructed category shaped by cultural location and scholarly framework, and explore how different theories of religious knowledge — empirical, experiential, and doctrinal — make competing claims about ultimate reality.

Skills & assessment. Lessons develop the critical vocabulary students need throughout the course: insider/outsider perspectives, the nature of religious claims, and the interpretive stances that shape how traditions are studied and evaluated.

This unit spans 33 lessons across 11 topics, introducing the Baha'i Faith, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, Sikhism, Taoism, and the fundamental cross-religious questions that connect them. Each religion is approached through its core doctrines of the human condition, paths to liberation or salvation, and eschatological understanding — enabling genuine comparative analysis from the outset.

Skills & assessment. Students develop the ability to describe and explain doctrinal concepts accurately (drawing on AO1–AO2 skills), to compare belief and practice across traditions, and to engage with insider perspectives through the key concepts of belief, practice, and the nature of the human condition — laying the groundwork for the more evaluative demands of Part 2.

This theme spans 10 lessons across 5 topics: worship, festivals, lifetime rituals and rites of passage, gender and ritual, and society and ritual. Lessons examine the forms, functions, and meanings of ritual practice across selected traditions, attending to both continuity and the ways in which practice adapts under the pressures of migration, conversion, and denominational diversity.

Skills & assessment. Students practise analysing ritual through multiple frameworks — social, theological, and gender-critical — and develop the evaluative skills needed to assess how ritual both reflects and constructs religious identity and community belonging.

This theme spans 6 lessons across 3 topics: the nature and authority of sacred texts, their interpretation, and their use in practice. Lessons address concepts of revelation, inspiration, and canonisation; the role of literal, allegorical, and scholarly approaches; and the diversity of textual use across denominations and schools of thought in worship, ritual, and daily life.

Skills & assessment. Students develop the ability to analyse competing claims to textual authority and to evaluate how commentaries, oral traditions, and religious leadership shape what a text means and how it is applied — skills directly relevant to the analytical demands of Part 2 assessment.

This theme spans 6 lessons across 3 topics: core theological and philosophical beliefs, diversity of belief within religions, and ethics and moral values. Lessons examine concepts of God, ultimate reality, human nature, free will, and the soul across selected traditions; trace how sectarian and denominational differences produce doctrinal diversity; and analyse how religious ethical frameworks are applied to contemporary moral issues.

Skills & assessment. Students practise constructing and evaluating theological arguments, comparing belief across and within traditions, and engaging with the interplay between religious authority, interpretation, and lived moral conduct — all of which are central to the evaluative tasks of Part 2.

This theme spans 6 lessons across 3 topics: the nature and types of religious experience, expressions of religious experience, and the interpretation and authority of experience. Lessons address mystical, visionary, and conversion experiences; the individual and communal dimensions of encounter with the sacred; art, music, architecture, meditation, and prayer as expressive forms; and the roles of religious leaders in mediating and validating experience.

Skills & assessment. Students develop the capacity to analyse how religious communities construct criteria for authentic experience, to evaluate the tension between individual encounter and institutional authority, and to discuss diverse expressive forms as evidence of the scope and character of religious experience.

This theme spans 6 lessons across 3 topics: formation and expression of religious identity, religious community structures and leadership, and religion's engagement with society and contemporary issues. Lessons examine initiation, membership, and belonging; the relationship between religious identity, ethnicity, and nationality; organisational structures and leadership roles; and how religious communities respond to migration, diaspora, globalisation, social justice, and human rights.

Skills & assessment. Students practise evaluating how authority is constructed and contested within religious institutions, and analysing how traditions negotiate between inherited identity and the demands of a changing social world — an evaluative skill central to Part 2 written tasks.

This theme spans 6 lessons across 3 topics: personal religious practice and spirituality, conversion and commitment and doubt, and religion and life-cycle experiences. Lessons address individual prayer, meditation, fasting, and devotional practice; the processes and motivations behind conversion and commitment; religious responses to doubt, apostasy, and spiritual crisis; and the role of rites of passage in meaning-making across the life cycle.

Skills & assessment. Students develop the ability to analyse how personal religious experience both reflects and diverges from communal norms, and to evaluate how traditions provide frameworks of meaning at moments of transition — skills that prepare students for the reflective and analytical demands of the investigative study.

This unit spans 12 lessons across 6 topics, each providing an in-depth study of one religion: the Four Noble Truths and diversity of Buddhist schools; Trinitarian theology and Christian denominational difference; dharma, moksha, and Hindu philosophical schools; the Five Pillars, Sharia, and Sunni/Shi'a/Sufi diversity; Torah, Talmud, and Jewish movements; and Sikh identity, the Guru Granth Sahib, and the ten Gurus.

Skills & assessment. Students practise the close doctrinal analysis and evaluative comparison required for Part 2 written work — engaging with the tension between unity and diversity within each tradition, and building the depth of tradition-specific knowledge needed to support extended analytical responses.

These 6 lessons across 3 topics guide students through every stage of the World Religions internal assessment. Lessons address how to identify a specific aspect of religious belief, experience, or practice; how to formulate a clear research question and rationale; how to use and critically evaluate both primary sources (fieldwork, interviews, sacred texts) and secondary sources; and how to synthesise research material into a critical analysis that supports defensible conclusions.

Skills & assessment. Lessons develop the inquiry, research, and interpretive skills the IA demands — helping students understand how primary sources construct knowledge about lived religious experience, how to apply scholarly rigour to secondary material, and how to present findings that demonstrate genuine critical engagement with a religious group or individual adherent.