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"Life questions" (livsfrågor) was inserted in religious education in the Swedish curriculum for comprehensive school in 1969. This was in line with the democratisation aspirations of one school for all, in which both modernisation and secularisation were important aspects. In relation to this, the National Board of Education commissioned a large experimental research project on teaching methodology in religious education that was later followed by a series of projects focusing on children’s life questions. This article explores the history of three of these projects and their knowledge production and discusses how the recontextualisation of religious education and the pedagogic interest in life questions related to school reforms during 1960–1990s. Life questions as a student-centred pedagogical model had its peak in the 1980s but lost its central role in the new prescriptive model of knowledge that was launched in the curriculum of 1994. Life questions aspired to the ambitions of democratisation through individualisation and can be seen as a continuation of earlier school reforms aiming at the individualisation of religious practice.

Swedish vocational education and training programmes have become increasingly aligned with labour market demands and employability, with consequent risks of marginalisation of citizenship education and formation. Four subjects that have traditionally played important roles in this, history, religious education, science, and social studies, are now only taught in short courses that are minor elements of the programmes. To obtain insights into the teaching and learning conditions in these key subjects for citizenship formation in Swedish VET programmes, school leaders and teachers were interviewed. The analysis, informed by frame factory theory and Biesta’s conceptualisations of three functions of education, revealed clear differences in the school leaders’ and teachers’ views of the conditions. School leaders articulated problems related to internal frame factors, such as the teachers’ engagement and students’ attitudes to the subjects, while teachers referred to external frame factors, such as the organisation of teaching. However, when talking about the VET students and their learning, both school leaders and teachers expressed notions of the students as in need of qualification and socialisation, thereby focusing on preparation of the students for their future professional and civic roles, with little room for substantial subjectification.

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.

During the twentieth century, an increasing amount of data was collected in connection with engineering of the modern states including their education systems. In the Nordic welfare states post WW2, such data were also generated in experimental projects aiming at reforming curriculum and education, and the data were accumulated either as documentation of the pedagogical experi-ments that took place or as a knowledge base paving the way for designing pedagogical experiments, or both. The article addresses the methodological challenges when analysing the archived data collected as part of experimental projects concerning children’s expressions of their “life questions” in Sweden following the big school reforms in the 1960s and continued in altogether six projects conducted from the late 1960s and up until the late 1990s. Based on the case of the UMRe (1969-1973), the first archived experimental project that was closely related to the 1960s education politics and education reforms, the article sheds light on the following ques-tions: how should one understand such classroom data historically? How should one understand the archived data in their political and institutional contexts? Whose voices are possibly speaking in the data about “children’s life questions?”

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.

In the 1960s, existential questions [sw. livsfrågor] were introduced as a theme of the Swedish subject “Knowledge of Religion” to make space for students’ own questions. However, studies on the recent curriculum changes show that teachers experience that there is a stronger emphasis on knowledge about a predetermined content than before. Based on interviews with eleven upper primary school RE teachers, this article investigates what the teachers consider today when planning their teaching, and highlights the discourses that teachers construct, engage in or sustain when talking about their professional and pedagogical actions. The aim of the study is to contribute to a deeper understanding of the enacted curriculum when it comes to students’ existential questions, and to discuss some implications of how the teachers view RE - as a transmission of knowledge or as a transformative practice for the learners. The results indicate that Teaching for the syllabus is a dominant discourse in the teachers’ talk, at the cost of Teaching for understanding democratic values and Teaching for engagement. The dominant discourse stems from perceived systemic constraints, and constructs the students as objects of teaching, which leaves little regard for the students’ own questions.