Epistemologies of Religious Education – Examples from Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden

• “Epistemologies of Religious Education – Examples from Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden” General subject didactics in the Nordic countries has developed in relation to teacher education and the need to bring questions about teaching and learning closer to specific subject‐content areas. The discussions started at slightly different times in the different countries, for instance in the 1970s in Norway and in the 1980s in Sweden (Kroksmark, 1989; Ongstad, 2006). However, at that time religious education was already an academic field in the faculties of theology in many of the Nordic countries, namely as religionspedagogik[k](e.g. Osbeck & Lied, 2012). Since then the development of RE and its current position have been rather different in the separate countries, but also the conditions within the same country have varied largely. The aim of this symposium is to examine different conditions for knowledge re/production concerning Religious Education in the Nordic countries and discuss how disciplines work as frames for ongoing developments of knowledge, primarily research contributions. There are several academic disciplines related to RE, and an interesting question is of course how these scholarly communities influence RE. What consequences does it have for the contribution of knowledge – e.g. for research questions asked, examined and answered – if the study is done in history of religion, comparative religion, sociology of religion, theology, pedagogy of religion in a faculty of theology, sociology, communication studies, or psychology or in the educational sciences, and thus in e.g. sociology, history, psychology or philosophy of education? What does it mean for the discussion of quality in the field and the direction of the development that the research area is that varied? And how does that affect the applied didactics of religion? The presentation will draw on current examples from Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden and be discussed in relation to different theories of re/construction of knowledge.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap -- Didaktik (hsv//swe)

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

Publication and Content Type

vet (subject category)

kon (subject category)