| 11. |
- Lilja, Annika, 1963, et al.
(författare)
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Teachers’ perspectives on ethics education – expressed as opportunities and challenges
- 2023
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Ingår i: British Journal of Religious Education. - : Taylor & Francis Group. - 0141-6200 .- 1740-7931. ; 45:3, s. 240-250
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In Sweden, ethics education occupies a prominent position in the curriculum, both in the general, introductory sections and as a part of the subject religious education. The aim of this article is to investigate teachers’ insights regarding ethics education and to contribute knowledge about opportunities and challenges with ethics education, by analysing interviews with ten teachers. Five of the teachers used a fiction-based ethics education within a research and evaluation project, and five teachers used their ordinary ethics teaching. The analysis shows five different themes, time, the students’ background, safe relations, lesson plans, and fiction, to be crucial for ethics education, in relation to both opportunities and challenges. The analysis shows that ethics is a subject that occupies a special position, giving students an education that points to the world and provides opportunities to encounter and explore important situations,in other words, an education that develops a multidimensional ethical competence.
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| 12. |
- Lyngfelt, Anna, et al.
(författare)
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Bridging 'as is' and 'as if' by reading fiction in ethics education
- 2023
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Ingår i: Cambridge Journal of Education. - : Routledge. - 0305-764X .- 1469-3577. ; 53:1, s. 63-77
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The overarching aim is to explore what teachers perceive as theopportunities provided by using literature in ethics education incompulsory school. When being interviewed, in what ways do theteachers express views on the potential of fiction to encouragestudents to accept certain human conditions as imaginable, or tocreate motivation for ethical change, by means of the capacity offiction to evoke feelings? Also, in what ways do the teachers interviewedconsider fiction to be useful for evoking thoughts about howsomething could have turned out, in situations that are morallycomplex? What makes compassion grow within human beings arelinked in this article to the concepts as is and as if in play research (cf).Analytical tools are developed and used to explain how, and why, theuse of literature is suitable for work with ethics in compulsory school.
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| 13. |
- Manni, Annika, 1971-, et al.
(författare)
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Emotions and values : a case study of meaning-making in ESE
- 2017
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Ingår i: Environmental Education Research. - : Informa UK Limited. - 1350-4622 .- 1469-5871. ; 23:4, s. 451-464
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- With an interest in the role of emotions and values in students' meaning-making in Environmental and Sustainability Education a case study was carried out in a Swedish school-class with students, 12 years of age. During a six-week thematic group-work focusing environmental and sustainability issues related to food, the students were observed and interviewed in their daily school practice. The results are presented here through narrative reporting, and analysed with the use of Dewey's theoretical perspectives on experience, distinguishing three phases in a process: a start, an activity phase and a closure. Martha Nussbaum's theory of emotions is used to assist in the understanding of emotions and values. The study reports on active and independent meaning-making processes in students' group work. The results provide examples of students' meaning-making experiences and the role of emotions and values in them, indicating that more of values are formed and expressed in the concluding phase.
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| 14. |
- Manni, Annika, 1971-, et al.
(författare)
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Mapping what young students understand and value regarding sustainable development
- 2013
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Ingår i: International Electronic Journal of Environmental Education. - 2146-0329. ; 3:1, s. 17-35
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper presents the results of a study carried out to investigate how 10-12 year old Swedish students understand and value the issue of sustainable development. The responses from openended questions in a questionnaire have been analyzed through a content analysis based on a phenomenographic approach. The results show that there are considerable variations in the level of understandings and the values related to the three aspects of sustainable development. Understanding within as well as between the aspects is noted, with students having the most difficulty in seeing the relationships between all three aspects, i.e. a holistic understanding. Furthermore, students’ understanding and values are often expressed in an integrated way i.e. expressed in the same sentence. The variations, complex understandings, and expressions of understandings and values are discussed in relation to earlier research with a focus on ethical issues and systems thinking.
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| 15. |
- Osbeck, Christina, 1969, et al.
(författare)
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Abilities, knowledge requirements and national tests in RE : the Swedish case as an example in the outcome-focused school and society of today
- 2018
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Ingår i: Zeitschrift für Pädagogik und Theologie. - : Walter de Gruyter. - 2366-7796 .- 1437-7160. ; 70:4, s. 397-408
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The aim of this article is to present the system that governs Swedish RE in terms of curricular requirements, national tests and their outcomes, and discuss this in light of the current critical debate on an outcome-focused school, as well as the debate on the need for ‘powerful knowledge’. The debate on educational achievements and measurements can be seen from different angles. On the one hand, there are reasons to take the criticisms seriously, for instance concerning how such a focus tends to instrumentalise and superficialise knowledge and education. On the other hand, from a societal perspective, one has to ensure that all students, through their education, have opportunities to develop powerful knowledge that helps to explain the world so that school can contribute to social justice. Against such a background, the Swedish system is described as a rather strongly steering system that regulates schools through curricula but also monitors them through national tests. Through a brief presentation of empirical findings from the EthiCo project, it is shown how this system in practice limits the students’ chances of acquiring a multidimensional ethical competence and instead highlights a one-dimensional argumentative competence. Such a teaching runs the risk of reducing rather than widening students’ ethical competence.
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| 16. |
- Osbeck, Christina, 1969, et al.
(författare)
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Children’s existential questions and worldviews : possible RE responses to performance anxiety and an increasing risk of exclusion
- 2024
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Ingår i: Journal of Religious Education. - : Springer Nature. - 1442-018X .- 2199-4625. ; 72, s. 51-72
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The aim of this article is to examine patterns in Swedish children’s existential questions andworldviews in 2020 in relation to patterns from 1970 and 1987, but also to point towards afurther discussion of importance, about possible RE responses to these findings. The material,children’s texts, comes both from studies conducted by Sven Hartman and colleaguesin the 1970s and 1980s, and from new empirical studies. The children’s responses are collectedaccording to the same method, sentence completion tasks, in both cases. Theoretically,the article is anchored in both the tradition of Swedish worldview studies and thenew international interest in these perspectives for religious education. Existential questionsand worldviews are seen as interdependent in human beings’ life interpretations,which are continuously developing and are both sociocultural and existential in nature. Theempirical findings show a strong and increasing focus on relationships, but also a recurrentfocus on achievements, which relates to school as context and community. In relationto these findings, the article stresses the importance of RE responses, and discusses concretelywhat such responses might advantageously include. Among other things, the importanceis stressed of an RE that offers the student greater awareness of her life interpretations,and encourages her to develop broader repertoires of frameworks, through which thestudent might have a better chance to be the author of her own life, which is inevitably acollectively shared life.
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| 17. |
- Osbeck, Christina, 1969, et al.
(författare)
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Possible competences to be aimed at in ethics education : ethical competences highlighted in educational research journals
- 2018
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Ingår i: Journal of Beliefs and Values. - : Routledge. - 1361-7672 .- 1469-9362. ; 39:2, s. 195-208
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The aim of this article is to present varieties of ethical competence that are highlighted in ethics and moral education research articles, and to discuss them in the light of competences stressed in the Swedish curriculum, understood as an example of ethics education in compulsory school. The material consists of 1,940 educational research articles published between 2000 and 2015, and the method of analysis is inductive, focusing on ethical competence. One finding is the similarity between the study’s tentative formulation of identified ethical competences in four categories, and Rest’s understanding of acting morally, captured in the four components: sensitivity, judgement, motivation and implementation. Based on the analysis of the articles, broader understandings of these focuses are developed, and later discussed in relation to Swedish ethics education, characterised as both a conservative and liberal values education. The analyses and comparison show the importance of the components of moral sensitivity and moral implementation and their relative absence in the Swedish curriculum, but also how moral judgement must include a competence to evaluate moral motivations, where empirically testable reasons are also central. Moreover, the risk of neglecting contextual, situational and knowledge-related aspects of ethical competence is highlighted.
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| 18. |
- Osbeck, Christina, 1969, et al.
(författare)
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Powerful knowledge in ethics and existential questions : which discourses, for which pupils, in which contexts?
- 2023
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Ingår i: Powerful knowledge in religious education. - Cham : Palgrave Macmillan. - 9783031231858 - 9783031231865 ; , s. 21-42
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This chapter emanates from the Swedish context where the RE subject since the 1960s is a confessionally neutral and broad subject that includes not only knowledge of religions but also ethics and 'livsfrågor' [existential questions]. Accepting Michael Young's perspective that there is knowledge that pupils are entitled to and that there is power in knowledge that transcends contextually bound insights and expressions, one must add that the discussion about which these indispensable concepts and discourses are, has been more developed concerning religion than ethics or existential questions/worldviews. There is a need for a qualified discussion about powerful knowledge, and what constitute powerful knowledge, also in these fields. However, such a discussion cannot take as its only point of reference the potential strength in concepts and discourses. There is also a need for a dialectic relationship between 'curriculum' and 'child'. A teaching that does not reach the children that the teaching is to engage cannot be considered meaningful, no matter how powerful the knowledge paid attention to may be. In addition, if knowledge also is contextual, powerful knowledge can only be powerful in the practices that acknowledge this knowledge and allows it to be powerful. Powerful teaching must take into consideration the practices where the pupils have to appear as powerful, even if it cannot stay in these contexts. The purpose of this chapter is to argue for the importance of a dialectical perspective when discussing PK—a perspective that recognizes both child and curriculum—and based on three current empirical projects on ethics and pupils' existential questions, discuss what we know about children's knowledge interest and concrete meanings of powerful knowledge regarding ethics and existential questions.
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| 19. |
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| 20. |
- Osbeck, Christina, 1969, et al.
(författare)
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Varieties of Conceptions of Ethical Competence Displayed in Pupils’ Responses to National Tests in Ethics
- 2016
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Ingår i: ECER Dublin 2016-08-23 - 2016-08-26, Symposium: Varieties of Conceptions of Ethical Competence Displayed in Pupils’ Responses to National Tests in Ethics.
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of the symposium is to present findings from the EthiCo project: “What may be learnt in ethics? Varieties of conceptions of ethical competence to be taught in compulsory school”. The focus of this symposium is varieties of conceptions of ethical competence displayed in pupils’ responses to national tests in ethics. In Sweden, ethics is a part of the subject religious education (RE). The discussion about compulsory schools teaching ethics has regained urgency in Sweden since national tests are given in ethics. Every fourth pupil in grade nine is evaluated every year as having/not having an acceptable knowledge of ethics. It may be questioned whether it is reasonable to be forced to undertake a test assessing your skills in ethics and risk being evaluated as not passing. Additionally, the testing stresses the question of what constitutes relevant knowledge in this field, a question which to a large extent has been absent in research. The purpose of the EthiCo project is to identify and elucidate varieties of conceptions of ethical competence and critically analyse and discuss them, in relation to each other and to ethical theory, as potential educational content in compulsory school. Attention is paid to perspectives from different curricular levels, such as the experiential level (pupils’ perspectives; tests and interviews), the instructional level (interviewed teachers), and the institutional level (samples of supranational policies and national curricula) (e.g. Goodlad & Su, 1992; Bråten, 2009). The four ethical theorists, chosen to shed light upon the conceptions gained through the empirical analyses, are Martha Nussbaum, Knud Ejler Løgstrup, Seyla Benhabib and Peter Singer, representing various ethical traditions. In this symposium, pupils’ responses to four out of seven tasks in the 2013 National Test have been analysed in the light of the ideas of one of the theorists above. Three of the analysed tasks are designed for 12-year-old pupils and one for 15-year-old pupils. The four tasks concern victimization, the use of ethical concepts, the solving of an ethical dilemma and the death penalty. Concerning the pupils’ responses to ethics tasks, the overarching research questions are 1) What conceptions of ethical competence do the answers express? 2) Do they express other conceptions of ethical competence than the ones in the assessment instructions and curriculum? In a previously conducted analysis of 15-year-old pupils’ responses to another task in the test, about forgiveness, an ethical competence tentatively labelled “ethical insight” or “existential understanding” was identified, in addition to the ones mentioned in the Swedish curriculum (Osbeck, in press). In the curriculum, normative, analytical and verbal (conceptual as well as argumentative) competences can be identified (Sporre, in press). Crucial questions concern both qualities in responses of the pupils for which they are not given credit, since the competence seems to be absent from the assessment instructions, and qualities that are not acknowledged since the stated competences are not sufficiently specific. In the latter cases, previous analyses point towards the normative competences as a difficult area because it is unclear whether there are requirements of content-specific kinds in the curriculum while, for example, teachers give altruistic values priority over egocentric values (Osbeck, Franck, Lilja & Lindskog, 2015). In the symposium, the analyses of the four papers differ slightly in relation to each other, but since these kinds of analyses are rare, the approach is deliberately explorative. The fruitfulness of the different kinds of analyses will be discussed in the symposium. In terms of visualised conceptions of ethical competences, an important discussion can be pursued in relation to analyses of curricula in other countries. Particular attention will be paid to perspectives from Iceland, Namibia and South Africa.
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