On how RE Teachers Address the Sometimes-Conflicting Tasks of Conveying Basic Values and Tools for Critical Thinking

• A recurring idea, among practitioners and researchers, is that “teaching is a moral endeavour” where any act can convey “moral meaning” and “influence students” (Hansen, 2001, 826; Bulloughs, 2010; Campbell, 2013). Some have even stated that “all that can be seen and heard in classrooms” can be of moral significance, including “events, actions and even aspects of the physical environment” (Jackson, Boostrom & Hansen, 1998). Yet, they seem to be divided on how teachers ought to treat ideals, norms and values in their pedagogical practices.Hence, a division is often made between character-based and reason-based approaches to moral or ethics education. The difference can, somewhat simplified, be described schematically by their respective emphasis on group or individual, emotion or reason, habituation or critical assessment of universal ethical principles (for a more elaborated account see: Kohlberg, 1966, 2; Carr, 1983, 39; Graham, Haidt & Rimm-Kaufman, 2008, 271, 275). Even if the approaches are often described as mutually exclusive alternatives teachers are, nevertheless, often expected to perform these tasks in their everyday practices (see SNAE 2011).Against this background, we have conducted qualitative research interviews, with religious education (RE) teachers, who are considered to have a particular responsibility for moral and ethics education in the Swedish school system (Almén, 2000; Hartman, 2008; Larsson, 2009; Franck & Löfstedt, 2015). Our overall aim of this paper is to investigate how they relate to the sometimes conflicting responsibilities to convey a set of basic values and contribute to the pupils’ abilities to critically examine ideals, norms and values. Our analysis of the results shows that RE teachers use different strategies to describe and motivate their pedagogical choices (Yin, 1994; Bryman, 2008). We will, for instance, distinguish between a casuist-, a rights-, and an existentialist oriented approach to moral and ethics education and perform a critical discussion of the results. 

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Filosofi, etik och religion (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Philosophy, Ethics and Religion (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Moral education

Ethics education

RE teachers

Controversial ethical issues

etik

Ethics

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)