What is difficult in ethics teaching for general upper secondary students? Can they achieve as good results in metaethics as in normative ethics? These questions should not be addressed without consideration of the various traditions of ethics teaching. Finnish students complete their studies in general upper secondary school by taking the Matriculation Examination. In recent years, a growing number of students has chosen to take an exam in philosophy but there is no systematic study on how students perform in the (...) philosophy exam. This study is focused on those assignments within philosophy that concern ethics. How do students meet the key goals of ethics education defined in the Finnish National Core Curriculum 2015? The material of the study consists of the curriculum, ethics assignments, grading guidelines and the performance statistics in 2017–2021. The main observation is that the average performance is better in assignments in normative ethics than in metaethics, but in neither area of ethics does the average performance surpass half of the maximum points that is considered the threshold for a satisfactory performance. Implications for ethics teaching? We recommend that normative considerations be combined with metaethical considerations when necessary. However, we issue this recommendation having in mind the teaching of ethics in a philosophy classroom. The question for further research is whether the recommendation can also be reasonably applied to the teaching of ethics in other settings. (shrink)

The article deals with forms of knowledge and types of research interests in scholarly work on Religious Education at the primary and lower secondary levels in Denmark throughout the heyday of the welfare state from the 1960s and up until the 2000s, when the welfare state model not least with regard to education was in transition. The point of departure is the work and oeuvre of K.E. Bugge, for many years – and remaining until now – the last professor of (...) Religious Education in Denmark, namely at the Royal Danish School of Education which reorganized as Danish University of Education in 2000. The article situates his doctoral dissertation "The school for life. Studies concerning the pedagogical ideas of N. F. S. Grundtvig" in its institutional context and compares the forms of knowledge it produced with three PhD dissertations defended during the 2000s and thus in a changed institutional field. Drawing on the conceptual understanding of the field of educational sciences deriving from Hofstetter and Schneuwly, the article analyzes ways of doing research in and related to Religious Education and the scholarly disciplines involved. Focus will be on the relation between the academic disciplines studying religion and the educational sciences in their many disciplinary forms and on the relation between the field of sciences and the field of educational practice. (shrink)

Present changes in religion as a school subject and Religious Education as a research field are generally, and also by most of the authors in this volume, explained by changes in the subject matter of religion, due to increasing religious pluralism. In a functional perspective, the school subject of religion contributes to the legitimizing function of school education for society and its institutions. With religion being a central moral negotiation ground in society, moral debate in society, and its constitutional role (...) for Religious Education as a research field can explain further diversity of approaches to research in Religious Education. This also raises questions about the field's vulnerability to public instrumentalization and about moral negotiation and its place in religious education didactics. (shrink)

The theme of this special issue is the epistemological conditions and significant features for doing research in religious education in the Nordic region. Historical and institutional conditions make up an important part of the background for understanding. The articles in this issue which are introduced here try to grasp and explore the conditions for scholarly knowledge production concerning the teaching of religion in the states in question: Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark.

Norwegian religious education research has produced more than 30 dissertations since late1990’s and has a strong and growing research record in spite of a rather weak and vulnerable position in academic structures. In order to assess the situation and to discuss future possibilities, the article presents the research context and go on to discuss the dissertations of Geir Skeie and Bengt-Ove Andreassen. It is argued that they have many similarities, but also differences in the way they address the field and (...) discuss epistemological issues. Theory, method and effects of the dissertations in the research community are mentioned and this leads to a deliberation about the role of academic disciplines in the construction of religious education research. A final discussion concludes that systematic reviews of religious education research would be helpful in order to develop future research and to avoid less fruitful disciplinary rivalries. (shrink)