| 1. |
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| 2. |
- Borg, Farhana, et al.
(author)
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Children's empowered inclusion in early childhood education for sustainability
- 2023. - 1
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In: International perspectives on educating for democracy in early childhood. - New York : Routledge. - 9781032135007 - 9781032135014 - 9781003229568 ; , s. 260-278
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Book chapter (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This chapter discusses the recognition of children as citizens in education for sustainability in an early childhood education context. A crucial question is, how can the space for children's self-empowerment be expanded and their concerns become part of their education? As climate change is one of the current challenges to humanity, the presence of sustainability perspectives in education becomes most urgent – and the voices of children are needed to be included as they are the citizens of the world. Education for sustainability opens the way for emphasis on children's democratic rights, specifically their right to influence their education, their daily lives, and their preschool activities.To facilitate the development of practices where children's self-empowerment is recognized, the authors review the Swedish curriculum for preschool Lpfö 2018 and current international research on educating for sustainability in early childhood. The concept "empowered inclusion" guides the analysis. Empowered inclusion signifies the process whereby children's self-empowerment needs the recognition of others, which may be viewed as a challenge to curricula and teachers. The related concept, "deep interdependency," points to how human beings are globally linked with both one another and Earth.
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| 3. |
-
Challenging life : existential questions as a resource for education
- 2018
-
Editorial collection (peer-reviewed)abstract
- There is increasing recognition today that young people need to have knowledge about religions and world views in order to live and work in diverse societies. What kind of 'maps' are they provided with through religious, values, and ethics education? Does education address the challenging existential questions that children and adolescents ask about life and the world? This volume addresses different aspects of how existential questions have been dealt with in educational research. It especially draws attention to the Swedish research tradition of focusing on life questions and the interpretation of life in education, but with contemporary international research added. It also addresses ethics education and discusses possible options for the future of existential questions as a resource for education.
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| 4. |
-
Changing societies – values, religions, and education : a selection of papers from a conference at Umeå University, June 2009
- 2010
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Editorial proceedings (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Moral education is envisioned change. As such it contains normative claims of the educating person or institution towards the person ‘to be educated’. The paper addresses the question of the legitimacy of moral education by examining the claims articulated in the pedagogical situation. In relation to autonomy as a goal of moral education, dialectic asymmetry and risky direction are suggested as adequate claims. They reflect the inter-subjective relationship between the educating person and the one ‘to be educated’ and they take into account a notion of negativity characterizing learning situations. The argument is developed by using the case of absenteeism SMS. As a pedagogic tool, absenteeism SMS should, according to my argumentation, be regarded as problematic, because of the tight control it creates.
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| 5. |
- DeZutter, Stacy Lee, et al.
(author)
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Collaborative commentary : how do teachers support children as citizens?
- 2023
-
In: International perspectives on educating for democracy in early childhood. - New York : Routledge. - 9781032135007 - 9781032135014 - 9781000865769 - 9781003229568 ; , s. 321-323
-
Book chapter (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This commentary traces shared themes across the six chapters of Part III of this volume. The examples of classroom practice presented in this part highlight the important role of critical dialogue and inclusive practices as foundations of global citizenship education. When classroom conversations engage students with big ideas and interrogate structural privilege and when they recognize and welcome all perspectives, children experience citizenship that works toward justice, sustainability, and democracy. Examples from the chapters also suggest that prevailing societal attitudes about children's competence may work against efforts to help children recognize their agency within classrooms. Implications for teacher preparation and future research are discussed.
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| 6. |
- Franck, Olof, 1958, et al.
(author)
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What may be learnt in ethics? Varieties of conceptions of ethical competence to be taught in compulsory school
- 2015
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In: The 5th NoFa-Conference (Nordisk Fagdidaktisk konferens), Helsinki, Finland, 27-29 May.
-
Conference paper (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The aim of the paper is to present the framework of this newly started project and report some initial findings. Questions about a compulsory school teaching ethics has regained urgency in Sweden since national tests are given in ethics. Every fourth child in grade six and nine are evaluated every year as having/not having approved knowledge of ethics, and one can ask if it is reasonable to be forced to undertake a test assessing your skills in ethics and risk being evaluated as not passing. This raises 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 project is to identify and elucidate varieties of conceptions of ethical competence and critically analyse and discuss them, in relation to each other and in relation to ethical theory, as potential educational content in compulsory school.
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| 7. |
- Lilja, Annika, et al.
(author)
-
Barns existentiella frågor idag - och för 50 år sedan
- 2020
-
In: Existentiella frågor i barns och ungas liv. - Malmö : Föreningen lärare i religionskunskap (FLR). ; , s. 29-39
-
Book chapter (other academic/artistic)abstract
- I texten presenteras forskningsprojektet Barn och läroplan. Existentiella frågor och skolans svar. I projektet besvarar barn i årskurs 5 i 10 skolklasser frågor om vad de funderar över. Samma frågor har riktats till barn från och med sent 1960-tal fram till och med 2000-talets början. I den publicerade texten ges exempel på den forskningsmetodik som använts och några jämförande exempel ges med barns svar idag och för 50 år sedan. Exemplen utgör några första mycket preliminära analyser. I forskningsprojektet ingår tillika läroplansanalyser och lärarintervjuer i ett studium av didaktiska förhållningssätt till barns frågor.
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| 8. |
- Lilja, Annika, 1963, et al.
(author)
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Conditions for development of a multidimensional ethical competence through group discussions in fiction-based ethics education
- 2023
-
In: Education 3-13. - : Routledge. - 0300-4279 .- 1475-7575.
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Based on an analysis of Swedish students’ group discussions while taking part in a fiction-based ethics education, this article presents conditions for the development of a multidimensional ethical competence. Four crucial conditions in students’ group discussions are identified: focus on the task, interest in each other’s contributions, knowledge about the object of the ethical analysis and its context, and explorations of the complexity of the human being. The results show that the fiction stories, and the students who act as more capable others, support the development by modelling in different ways; both procedural and substantial knowledge in ethics are required.
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| 9. |
- Lilja, Annika, 1963, et al.
(author)
-
Ethical competence – a comparison between the Swedish and the Icelandic curricula and some teachers’ views
- 2018
-
In: Education 3-13. - : Informa UK Limited. - 0300-4279 .- 1475-7575. ; 46:5, s. 506-516
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The aim of this article is to highlight some conceptions of ethical competence identified in interviews with teachers in religious education in Sweden, and within analyses of policy documents in a Swedish and an Icelandic educational context. As a starting point we take seven interviewed teachers’ comments about what they view as important ethical competences for their pupils to have. A comparative analysis of Swedish and Icelandic policy documents with regard to the conceptual understandings of ethical competence is made, as well as a comparison between the policy documents and teachers’ comments. The Icelandic curriculum is chosen because it differs from the Swedish one in a sense relevant to an analysis of the teacher interviews. The analyses imply a tension between theoretical and analytical conceptions of ethical competence and an action competence. Finally, some possible threads to consider in developing a broadened and deepened understanding of ethical competence are outlined.
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| 10. |
- Lilja, Annika, et al.
(author)
-
Skolutveckling genom didaktiskt klassrumsarbete i samverkan lärare och forskare
- 2021
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In: Skolutveckling i teori och praktik. - Malmö : Gleerups Utbildning AB. - 9789151102832 ; , s. 283-291
-
Book chapter (other academic/artistic)abstract
- I detta bokkapitel är ambitionen tvådelad – dels vill vi beskriva en skolutvecklingsmodell för samverkan mellan lärare och forskare och dels vill vi beskriva den undervisningsmodell i etik som lärare och forskare tillsammans utvecklat inom ramen för skolutvecklingsmodellen. Vårt sätt att arbeta i forskningsprojektet EthiCo II Att skärpa den etiska blicken och rösten. En skönlitteraturbaseradetikundervisnings möjlighet och svårigheter, ser vi här som en modell för skolutveckling.
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| 11. |
- Lilja, Annika, 1963, et al.
(author)
-
Teachers’ perspectives on ethics education – expressed as opportunities and challenges
- 2023
-
In: British Journal of Religious Education. - : Taylor & Francis Group. - 0141-6200 .- 1740-7931. ; 45:3, s. 240-250
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)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.
(author)
-
Bridging 'as is' and 'as if' by reading fiction in ethics education
- 2023
-
In: Cambridge Journal of Education. - : Routledge. - 0305-764X .- 1469-3577. ; 53:1, s. 63-77
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)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.
(author)
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Emotions and values : a case study of meaning-making in ESE
- 2017
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In: Environmental Education Research. - : Informa UK Limited. - 1350-4622 .- 1469-5871. ; 23:4, s. 451-464
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)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.
(author)
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Mapping what young students understand and value regarding sustainable development
- 2013
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In: International Electronic Journal of Environmental Education. - 2146-0329. ; 3:1, s. 17-35
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)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.
(author)
-
Abilities, knowledge requirements and national tests in RE : the Swedish case as an example in the outcome-focused school and society of today
- 2018
-
In: Zeitschrift für Pädagogik und Theologie. - : Walter de Gruyter. - 2366-7796 .- 1437-7160. ; 70:4, s. 397-408
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)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.
(author)
-
Children’s existential questions and worldviews : possible RE responses to performance anxiety and an increasing risk of exclusion
- 2024
-
In: Journal of Religious Education. - : Springer Nature. - 1442-018X .- 2199-4625. ; 72, s. 51-72
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)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.
(author)
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Possible competences to be aimed at in ethics education : ethical competences highlighted in educational research journals
- 2018
-
In: Journal of Beliefs and Values. - : Routledge. - 1361-7672 .- 1469-9362. ; 39:2, s. 195-208
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)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.
(author)
-
Powerful knowledge in ethics and existential questions : which discourses, for which pupils, in which contexts?
- 2023
-
In: Powerful knowledge in religious education. - Cham : Palgrave Macmillan. - 9783031231858 - 9783031231865 ; , s. 21-42
-
Book chapter (peer-reviewed)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.
(author)
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Varieties of Conceptions of Ethical Competence Displayed in Pupils’ Responses to National Tests in Ethics
- 2016
-
In: ECER Dublin 2016-08-23 - 2016-08-26, Symposium: Varieties of Conceptions of Ethical Competence Displayed in Pupils’ Responses to National Tests in Ethics.
-
Conference paper (other academic/artistic)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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| 21. |
- Osbeck, Christina, 1969, et al.
(author)
-
What may be learnt in ethics? Varieties of conceptions of ethical competence to be taught in compulsory school
- 2016
-
In: The 44th NERA Conference, 9-11 Mars, Helsinki..
-
Conference paper (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The aim of the symposium is to present some initial findings from this project on ethics education in Sweden. Questions about a compulsory school 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 approved knowledge of ethics, and one can ask if it is reasonable to be forced to undertake a test assessing your skills in ethics and risk being evaluated as not passing. This testing raises 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 project is to identify and elucidate varieties of conceptions of ethical competence and critically analyse and discuss them, in relation to each other and in relation to ethical theory, as potential educational content in compulsory school. In this symposium findings from tests, policy documents, teacher interviews and pupils’ texts are presented.
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| 22. |
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| 23. |
- Ristiniemi, Jari, et al.
(author)
-
Introduction
- 2018
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In: Challenging life. - Münster : Waxmann Verlag. - 9783830938866 - 9783830988861 ; , s. 13-18
-
Book chapter (other academic/artistic)abstract
- In this introduction to the book questions are raised as to what space there actually is for children's and adolescent's existential questions in education, when emphasis rather is given to outcomes, performativity and employability. A brief overview over the content of the book is also given.
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| 24. |
- Schihalejev, Olga, 1969-, et al.
(author)
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Shifting Borders in Religious Education
- 2016
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In: Theological Journal. - Tartu, Estonia : Usuteaduslik Ajakiri, Akadeemiline Teoloogia Selts. ; 69:1, s. 3-8
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Journal article (other academic/artistic)
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| 25. |
- Sporre, Karin, 1952-
(author)
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Assessing ethical competence through national tests : an advantage or not?
- 2019
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In: Journal of Curriculum Studies. - : Routledge. - 0022-0272 .- 1366-5839. ; 51:2, s. 262-278
-
Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The purpose of this study is to describe, critically analyse and discuss the Swedish system of assessing ethics education in compulsory school through national tests. The publicly available tests from 2013 for grades six and nine have been studied as have the assessment instructions for teachers. Staff responsible for the test construction have been interviewed.The aims, core content and knowledge requirements of the curriculum were also studied. The concept ‘ethical competence’ was used as an analytical tool in the qualitative content analyses. Through the design of this study, the actual test, its process of construction and the curriculum were examined. The results suggest that ethics education, given (a) the curricular construction of what ability to assess, (b) complexities of test construction in ethics and (c) possible teach-to-the-test effects, runs the risk of being limited to an argumentative, conceptual competence, with ethics education being emptied of crucial content. However, being included in national testing can strengthen the position of a school subject. Is it then an advantage for ethics education to be tested in this way? The critical problems the study raises make the author conclude it to be a disadvantage for ethics education to be tested through national tests.
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