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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.

This study draws on a research project where a model of fiction- based ethics education was developed and put into practice during a school year in five classes in compulsory school, two in grade 5 and three in grade 8. A test was constructed with the purpose of evaluating a multi-dimensional ethical competence. The test was given at the beginning and the end of the school year to the students in the five classes, but also to students in five other classes who received the ordinary form of ethics education. The test was constructed by using tasks from earlier Swedish national tests on ethics education, but in this study new assessment instructions were developed. According to this test, almost no significant differences were found between the classes with fiction-based ethics education and the other classes. However, this contrasts with the fruitfulness of the fiction-based model, as identified through other forms of evaluation. The findings raise questions about whether and how ethics education can be meaningfully tested, which in this article is self-critically reflected on. A concluding discussion on target competence, teaching intervention and ways of evaluation – in relation to each other – ends the article.

Today, issues of genders and sexualities are contested, in the Global South as well as the Global North.Being inextricably interwoven with cultural practices, social attitudes, political ideologies andreligious convictions, in education issues of genders and sexualities, needs clarification, critical examination and considered debates. Evidently, matters of genders and sexualities have strong repercussions on the perceived possibilities available for human beings’ identity formation, as well as other life opportunities. The issues at stake for work, education, community and love require our serious consideration as Religious Education researchers and educators. In many socio-cultural settings in which Religious Education is offered as a school subject, human sexuality and identifications of gender have become matters of human rights too with wider implications for schooling andsociety.Gender, sexuality, identity, and faith are words with varied and often highly disputed meanings connected to them. This is especially more so today, when digital technologies increasingly float meanings across cultures.

In the call for papers for this Special Issue, entitled Genders, Sexualities and Religious Education: Theory, Policy and Practice, we deliberately chose to put the concepts ‘genders’and ‘sexualities’ in the plural. Our intention in doing this was to give researchers freedom to address the issues in multifaceted ways. We wanted to allow for a richness of perspectives for researchers to demonstrate variations in terms of local conditions, culturally, politically, and religiously, for what can and is being done in Religious Education on these contested issues.The seven articles presented in this Special Issue do provide variations regarding theoretical perspectives, policy directions, practices, and geographical socio-cultural contexts, as well as raisingseveral matters of principle.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I kapitlet presenteras etiska teorier som varit i bruk under 1900-talet samt teorier som senare växt fram. Utifrån tre samtida utmaningar: natrionalism, klimatförändringar och religiös mångfald exemplifierar jag hur olika teoretiska perspektiv kan anläggas på diskussioner om dem. Extra utrymme ges åt frågor som rör skönlitteratur och etik - sett utifrån etikundervisningens perspektiv och insatt i bokens sammanhang som  helhet. Kapitlet är uttryck för en strävan att kortfattat ge översikt och introduktion till etisk teori användbart för dem som vill arbeta, eller redan gör så, i förskola och skola.      

In the chapter ethical theories in use during the 20th century including more recent developments are introduced. Thereafter, in relation to three ethical challenges of today: nationalism, climate change and religious plurality, various ethical perspectives are given as examples of ways to discuss these challenges. Didactical questions related to ethics education and fiction reading have an extra space in the chapter - given the focus of the book as a whole. The chapter is an effort to give an overview and an introduction to ethical theory for those planning to work in preschool or school, as well as for those already working there. 

The chapter is written in Swedish.   

Vad funderar unga på? Krig, fred, klimat, kärlek, eller vänner? Vilka frågor är viktiga för dem? Och, hur kan deras frågor ges plats i skolan?

Begreppet livsfråga introducerades 1969 genom grundskolans läroplan, Lgr 69. Det markerade ett intresse för de frågor barn och tonåringar kunde tänkas ställa och skapade en plats för frågorna i skolans nya religionskunskapsämne som lanserades i och med läroplanen från 1962.

För att få en god bild av vilka frågor som var centrala att uppmärksamma och ta sin utgångspunkt i blev forskning kring barns och ungas livsfrågor efterfrågad under 1970 talet och har fortsatt att vara det.  Begreppet livsfrågor har som ämnesinnehåll följt religionskunskapsämnet genom de fyra revideringar av grundskolans läroplaner som skett efter Lgr 69, i Lgr 80, Lpo 94, Lgr 11 och i Lgr 22. Frågor inför livet och tillvaron kan tydas och besvaras på skilda sätt, något som kommer till uttryck i de olika tros-och livsåskådningar som uppmärksammas i religionskunskapsämnet. Livsfrågor ges också plats i andra skolämnen och sammanhang.

Bokkapitlet ger överblick över kursplaneutvecklingen, pekar på vilka frågor som är viktiga för barn och unga, exemplifierar teoretiska möjliga perspektiv och ger didaktiska impulser. 

What do young people ponder about? War, peace, climate, love or friends? What questions are important to them? And, how can space open up for such questions in school?

The concept 'livsfråga' [existential question] was introduced in 1969 in the Swedish national curriculum for compulsory school, Lgr 69. The insertion of the concept indicated an interest in the questions children and teenagers could be thinking of and posing. 

To identify which questions that were of importance to raise in school, research about the existential questions of children and young people was initiated in Sweden during the 1970s and has since continued. As a curricular concept 'livsfråga' has followed through the four curricular revisions following since 1969. It is particularly treated in the school subject Religion Education but has also had a place in other school subjects. 

The book chapter gives an overview over the curricular development, indicates questions of importance for children and young people, exemplifies theoretical perspectives and gives didactical impuleses.