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Barns existentiella och etiska funderingar kan dyka upp i alla skolsituationer och årskurser – livsfrågorna är ständigt närvarande. Trots det är det väldigt olika vilket utrymme dessa frågor faktiskt får i skolan samt hur de bemöts och bearbetas. Livsfrågor har funnits med i svensk läroplan sedan 1969, främst inom religions- och etikundervisning, samtidigt som detta allmänmänskliga tema passar och är viktigt för flera skolämnen. Vilken funktion har då frågorna i barnens bearbetning av sin tillvaro och världen? Hur kan man konkret arbeta med frågorna i klassrummet och vad händer om de inte hinns med? I "Barns livsfrågor och skolans svar" presenteras forskning kring ämnet. Genom barns texter, lärarintervjuer och internationella jämförelser framträder en bild av läget i dagens skola. Som fond till de nya forskningsresultaten finns såväl tidigare studier som aktuell utbildningsteori och utbildningsfilosofi. Tillsammans ger bokens kapitel en god grund för en fördjupad didaktisk diskussion om livsfrågornas plats i skolan.

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.

During the 1960s, the Swedish Religious Education subject underwent a complete transformation. The former Lutheran Christian education was criticised and something new was demanded. In the syllabus for compulsory school (nine school years for all Swedish children) launched in 1969, ‘livsfrågor’, existential issues, were introduced to open the subject to students’ own questions. ‘Livsfrågor’ has had a place in Swedish RE syllabi ever since.

This chapter provides a background to the changes of the 1960s and traces the concept of ‘livsfrågor’ through the curricular transformations for compulsory school of 1980, 1994, 2011 and 2022. The concepts of ‘small’ and ‘grand narratives’ by Jean Francois Lyotard are used for analysis. In 1980, the narrative of ‘livsfrågor’ became the ‘grand narrative’ with considerable space for students’ questions and ‘livsfrågor’assuming the integrating pedagogical role of the RE subject. However, this role was lost in the next curricular transformation to become a ‘smaller narrative’.

The authors discuss the concept of ‘livsfrågor’ in relation to challenges such as the plurality of worldviews, the changing views on children and youth giving more authority to them, and secularism. Although the curricular changes of the last decades have not been favourable to ‘livsfrågor’ the authors note how Lyotard emphasises that change can open up for small narratives to replace dominating ones.