Paper short abstract:

This presentation will focus on how various teacher training programs in Sweden prepare future teachers for teaching about Judaism both as a world religion and as a national minority in Sweden.

Paper long abstract:

Two recent studies have pointed to interesting traits in the teaching of Judaism in Swedish schools.

1. Jewish students do not recognize the Judaism they are familiar with, since the teaching tends to focus on forms of Judaism that are perceived as distant by Swedish students: ultra-orthodoxy in Israel and the Holocaust.

2. While teachers are required to also teach about Judaism in Sweden as a national minority, most teachers confess to not having the required knowledge to do this.

In this presentation I will focus on how various teacher training programs in Sweden prepare future teachers for the task of teaching about Judaism both as a world religion with a lot of variety and as a national minority.

Paper short abstract:

This study analyzes the contents of moral education in Finnish primary school Lutheran Religious Education textbooks from the Foucauldian perspective of ethical subjectivation through practices of the self. The aim was to discover what kind of persons the textbooks guide pupils to become and how.

Paper long abstract:

In Finland, Religious Education has historically played an important role in moral and citizenship education, and objectives of Religious Education have reflected the moral and civic virtues of the time. The aim of contemporary Religious Education is to educate globally responsible citizens who construct their values, identities, and worldviews in reflection with different religious and secular worldviews. Previous research has documented the historical change in objectives for Religious Education, but how these ideals translate into teaching practices has not been researched.

This study analyzed the contents of moral education in Finnish primary school Lutheran Religious Education textbooks. As curricular media, textbooks reflect curricular ideals, and their role is to mediate the curriculum into practice. Textbooks have traditionally been influential in Finnish schools and despite digitalization have maintained their status as the dominant learning material.

The method of the study was qualitative content analysis and the data consisted of the two series of contemporary Lutheran Religious Education textbooks. The textbooks were analyzed from the perspective of Foucauldian tradition of anthropological research on ethics. From this perspective, ethics is understood as a reflective process of constructing ethical subjectivity through cultural “practices of the self”.

The textbooks provide pupils a framework of religious and secular perspectives for constructing their ethics, identity, worldview, and character. Pupils are guided to construct their subjectivity primarily through evaluative self-reflection, conceptual reflection, and perspective-taking. The objective is to become good friends, conscientious students, and responsible citizens. Christian moral principles of neighbourly love, Golden Rule, and stewardship ethics are provided as guidelines for ethical reflection alongside with human rights and virtue ethics.

However, significant differences were discovered between the two series of textbooks. This illustrates the lack of established pedagogies for moral education and underlines the need for further research on textbook production and how textbooks influence classroom practices.

Paper short abstract:

The paper presents some outcomes of the bigger project on religion and gender, related to general education and how religion and gender are dealt with in non-confessional Estonian Civics and Citizenship Education, and in Lithuanian confessional textbooks of Religious Education and Secular Ethics.

Paper long abstract:

Several countries, including Baltic countries, have policies protecting gender equality. As education is one of the most influential tools for social change, general education could be expected to promote gender equality and one would expect to find promotion of gender equality in textbooks as well. This may be challenging when teaching religion, which has traditionally been male-dominated. My presentation will examine how study materials in general education in Estonia and Lithuania present an intersection of religion and gender.

In Estonia, where only a few schools offer religious education, textbooks and workbooks for civics and citizenship education were analysed. In Lithuania, textbooks for religious education and moral education were analysed. In both countries, abductive content analysis was applied, with predetermined categories but with some flexibility in relation to the analysed textbooks.

The details of the textbook analysis varied in their details, but in all of them male characters outnumber females, and texts and pictures about religious tradition are masculine. In addition, male characters are depicted as powerful, and capable of changing public life, spirituality, and religiosity. The females are typically relegated to the background or depicted as mothers or wives. These textbooks reflect the male-dominated nature of religion(s) and their history, as also identified by western feminism. In my presentation, I discuss also possible solutions for this problem.

Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses how digital learning platforms for RE in Denmark represents and didactical approach religion(s). It discusses the different treatment of Christianity vs. other religions, the lack of study-of-religions knowledge and skills, and the use of ready-to-use digital material in RE.

Paper long abstract:

This paper presents results from research projects on the design and use of digital learning material in religoius education (RE). Digital learning platforms, designed as ‘ready-to-use’ by the pupils, have to some extend replaced the traditional paper textbooks in Danish schools. Several factors have led to this development. Digital learning materials are typically bought on municipality level (supported by the state), limiting the freedom of choice of teachers. The development and use of digital ‘ready-to-use’ material are also a consequence of a 2013-reform, which heavily reduced the preparation time of teachers. Using a study-of-religions perspective, this paper critically analyses how digital learning platforms for RE in Danish elementary school represents and didactical approach religion(s). This includes analyses on what kind of general-, content- and conceptual knowledge and skills the pupils are supposed to learn about religion(s) and how to study religion(s) according to the digital ressources, pupil’s tasks/activities, evaluation and user guides (if any). The paper discusses implications of the different treatment of Christianity vs. other religions, the low priority of study-of-religions conceptual knowledge and analytical-critical skills, the ‘ready-to-use’ design and the lack of teachers’ guides supporting the teachers with background knowledge and subject-related didactical reflections. These aspects, together with the abovementioned factors, bring (new) challenges for RE-teachers and teaching. Also enhanced by the fact, that half of the RE-teachers in the elementary school do not have formal competences to teach the subject. Many RE-teachers, thus, do not have the time, knowledge or support for making informed choices about how to use the digital learning material in RE.

Paper short abstract:

This paper analyzes how resources on East Asian Religions are utilized by Italian Catholic RE teachers. It aims at highlighting issues such as the concept of religion, oriental representations and the role of contemporary techno-cultural context.

Paper long abstract:

East Asian religions (hereafter: EAR) provides interesting case-studies for examining conceptualizations and representations of religion/s, especially if we consider that they are often positioned in contrastive terms with the euro-centric, Christian-centric ideas about religion.

In the last decades scholars examined EAR in order to criticize the concept of religion. Meanwhile popular representations vary, depicting EAR as the quintessential expression of religion, or as its contrary, classifying them as "philosophies", "way of life", "spiritualities" and the like.

In relation to the Conference theme, the latter popular representations are especially growing in number through the Internet, the entertainment and the advertisement industry. Also, many contemporary holistic 'technologies' aimed at obtaining health, wellbeing and self-improvement are inspired by images and concepts from EAR, which in turn influence their representations.

This paper analyzes how multimedia resources (text, sound, images, videos etc.) concerning EAR are selected and utilized in classroom by Italian teachers of Catholic Religious Education, especially materials not purposively created for teaching and/or available through Web. What are their contents and nature? Why and how they have been adopted? With which educational perspective?

The data for research are obtained through interview from teachers and the examination of resources. The analysis is carried over considering these issues:

- The role of the Eurocentric concept of religion

- The colonial, orientalist and self-orientalist dynamics.

- The contemporary technological-cultural context.

- The teachers' role and identity as Catholic educators.

Reflections from the point of view of the study of religion-didactics are also proposed in order to clarify areas of possibile accordance or of disagreement concerning actual practices of confessional RE.

Paper short abstract:

Given that it is taught at public schools, Buddhism has a unique position in Austria. Alongside an analysis of the contribution of meditation apps to Buddhist education, this paper's main research question is how urban, diasporic teenagers respond to Buddhist-inspired environments for contemplation.

Paper long abstract:

In view of the fact that it can be taught at public schools as a compulsory subject for its adherents, Buddhism has a unique position in Austria compared to most other European countries. This paper seeks to demonstrate how meditation apps can contribute to Buddhist education: as their semester project, a group of 10 Buddhist teenagers were asked to use and review different meditation apps. First, the students needed to distinguish (although not necessarily choose) between religious and secular meditation apps, thereby reflecting on the role of meditation for a Buddhist lifestyle. The paper discusses the criteria which were set up by the students in order to evaluate the apps, which also raises questions about the spiritual background of the apps, how Buddhism is represented, and in how far it is instrumentalized. After using the apps regularly, the students presented their results and facilitated guided meditations.

Alongside an analysis of the contribution of apps to Buddhist education, the main research question of this paper is whether the students find meditation apps useful or prefer traditional meditation. How do urban, diasporic teenagers respond to the developers’ efforts to create an attractive, Buddhist-inspired environment for contemplation?

Paper short abstract:

The paper discusses reception of an apocalyptic film in the framework of cultural learning of religion. The social practices of watching film 2012 (Emmerich 2009) were studied among training students who interpreted the moral narrative in the frame of global equality and human rights.

Paper long abstract:

Popular film as a social technology and the representations are intertwined to the historical and cultural contexts of its creation and the narratives of the end-of-the-world. In this paper, I discuss the visual popular culture and the practices of learning religion in the contexts of socializing institutions, school and the mainstream Evangelical Lutheran church.

In Finland, as in the similar societies, the memberships in two mainstream Christian Churches have declined since 2010´s and the transmission among children and young has changed. However, the compulsory religious education and the Confirmation ritual among young members of the Church persists. One of the thesis claims that the media spaces and the meaning making of popular culture participate in learning and unlearning religion in contemporary secular societies.

The reception of the apocalyptic film is studied in the framework of cultural learning of religion. The social practices of watching and interpreting film "2012" (Emmerich 2009) were studied among secondary upper school and Evangelical Lutheran Confirmation training students. The qualitative attitude approach was applied in the analysis of the interviews after film screening discussing the end-of-the-world film representations. It shows the construction of attitudes opposing the representations of the Deluge adaption by framing the interpretation with global equality and human rights.