Teaching and learning Ethics at intermediate stage in Sweden

Author(s):

Olof Franck(presenting / submitting)Christina Osbeck(presenting)

Conference:

ECER 2014

Network:

27. Didactics - Learning and Teaching

Format:

Paper

Session Information

27 SES 03 C, Textbooks in Teaching and Learning Social Sciences

Paper Session

Time:

2014-09-02

17:15-18:45

Room:

B018 Anfiteatro

Chair:

Gérard Sensevy

Contribution

This paper reports findings from two research projects in Religious Education (RE), one ethnographic study in three Swedish school classes in grade six and one textbook study focussing on intermediate stage. Previous research indicates that ethics is one of the areas that attend least attention in RE. The reasons for this we do not know. The character of teaching, teaching tools and pupil responses in ethics at intermediate stage is almost not researched.

The paper starts by discussing important ethical competences of tweens. The Swedish syllabus of RE is here related to other European syllabuses and to ethical perspectives and theories. On this base we report findings from the ethnographical study, and its questionnaire with one larger ethical task given to the pupils in the beginning of the academic year as well as in the end of the second term. Skills which seem to be present to lesser and larger degree are accounted. Perspectives that seem to be more present in the end of the academic year – and which could have been developed during this year – are emphasised.

In relation to these findings we pay attention to available and absent perspectives in some textbooks and some lessons in ethics. The paper is ended with an overarching discussion about to which degree the current perspectives of the pupils can be related to offered and absent perspectives of the textbooks and the lessons. What kind of offer of meaning, in the field of ethics, would the pupils need in order to develop such an ethical competence that the questionnaires indicate as present in a lesser degree? This question may also be seen as relevant to research concerning challenges related to an education for sustainable development.

Method

This paper partly belongs to a larger project about teaching and learning in Religious Education (RE) and Social Studies for 12-year-old children in Sweden with the heading “To appropriate language of ‘Being in the World’ “. Partly it refers to a research project funded by the Swedish Association of Educational Writers (SLFF), exploring a study of ethics in Swedish textbooks in RE for compulsory school in relation to the new curriculum which was introduced and implemented in 2011. In the first project three Swedish school classes in grade 6 have been followed for one academic year, autumn 2011until spring 2012. The three classes have been located in different schools and housing areas and the focus of the observations has been “social studies” – a knowledge area which includes history, geography, civics, and religious education. The main interest has been RE, however. Besides observations the field work has included interviews with teachers and pupils as well as collection of material used and produced in the classroom practices. The study has also included a sort of “pre test-post test design” where the same questionnaires focusing central themes in the curriculum of RE in Sweden have been used. The overarching aim of the project is to describe changes and developments in expressed perspectives of the pupils in relation to teaching and potential learning during lessons, i.e. collectively constructed meaning. In the second project, textbooks in RE for grades 4 – 6 and 7 – 9, respectively, is analyzed with a focus on how the wordings in the new curriculum, falling under the heads of core content and knowledge requirements, are treated and highlighted within relevant parts. Here especially the section ethics is paid attention to. This section includes teaching about ethical concepts and theoretically founded perspectives as well as specific questions concerning normative arguments and virtue ethical reasoning. The overarching aim of this project is to map some details and, perhaps, patterns regarding how ethical issues, anchored in the new curriculum and its syllabus for RE, are presented and elucidated in textbooks used within RE. Both projects may give important contributions to common research regarding ethics education for grades 4 – 6 in Swedish RE. The ethnographic study and the intertextual study both highlight important dimensions with possible relevance also in relation to a discussion concerning ethics education in general and how ethics education relates to religious education.

Expected Outcomes

Expected conclusions are, among other things, that ethics education is rare in the classes studied. Furthermore, longwhile strategies of education in order to developing competence in various relevant areas were not identified, and ethics were seldom highlighted when subject content i RE were considered in teacher interviews. Expected conclusions from the second project is, among other things, that textbooks in RE used in grades 4 – 6 rarely highlight the ethical core content in the syllabus in ways that reveal the moral and existential challenges that are raised in relation to this content. Questions regarding the pluralism of identities, the moral spectra in the pluralistic society and the existential and sexual variations expressed in life views and life styles, seem to play a relatively modest role in the presentation of textbooks, which rather focusses on specific problems related to principal questions concerning for example friendship, tolerance and equality. Needless to say, ethics education in grades 4 – 6 will generate challenges since ethical questions often are complicated and require a great deal of carefulness. Both the projects in question actualize and elaborate dimensions of ethics education that seem to be undeveloped or even hidden in RE, both in the classroom practice and in the textbooks used, in spite of the fact that such an education is prescribed in the syllabus that will be examined and revisited.

References

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Author Information

Olof Franck (presenting / submitting)

University of Gothenburg

Department of Pedagogical, Curricular and Professional Studies

Gothenburg

Christina Osbeck (presenting)