Several studies have argued that there exists a hegemonic, secularist discourse within Swedish classrooms, which implies a way of talking about religion as something irrational, outdated and restrictive in concern for individual freedom. Within this discourse, a non-religious or atheistic position is seen as neutral and unbiased, whereas a religious position is considered the opposite. This, I mean, is problematic against the background of the Swedish curriculum, where it is stated that some of the main goals with religious education (RE) is to help students develop tolerance and understanding for other people, with other beliefs than one’s own. Thus, the aim with this paper is to investigate if and how, a teaching material that is being used within the Swedish RE education, can express a secularist discourse and what implications the results may have for a neutral RE. By using a modified version of discourse analysis together with theoretical contributions from Karin Kittelmann Flensner, I have analyzed four episodes of the audiovisual teaching material/reportage series Från Sverige till himlen to try to answer how one, from a critical perspective on a secularist discourse, can interpret representations of religion in the reportage series. The conclusion is that the series portrays religion in accordance with especially four themes within the secularist discourse, namely; Criticism of Religion, Prime Time of History, Individualism and a Neutral Position. These results indicate that students need to be trained to critically examine not only religion, but also, and maybe in particular, what is taken for granted as the normal and neutral in a secular culture.

The question of what religion is could very well be asked of religious studies teachers by their students. It is, however, a difficult question to answer since there is a lack of consensus regarding the meaning of the term religion in the scientific field. An overview of research on the topic shows a lack of studies regarding religious studies teachers in Sweden and their view on the term religion in different teaching contexts. The aim of this study is to highlight religion studies teachers´ view on the term religion in relation to their teaching, as well as whether textbooks and/or the Swedish curriculum affects how teachers view and use the term religion in their classrooms. This, in turn, might highlight didactic problems that could arise from the lack of a clear definition of religion in the subject of religious studies. The study is conducted by interviewing four teachers at the upper secondary education level in Sweden. The transcripts from the interviews are then analysed using essentialist perspectives on religion as well as the secularist discourse present in Swedish classrooms as the essay’s theoretical perspectives.  The results show that while there is some overlap between how the interviewed teachers view the term religion, they each have a slightly different view of what religion is and how they use the term in their classrooms. Some of the teachers´ views on religion showed signs of essentialism while others tended to see religion as a more open category or that the term should be problematised in classroom exercises. All the interviewed teachers took a non-secularist stance towards religion in their teaching. Textbooks seem to play an important role to a lesser or higher degree depending on which teacher is asked. Textbooks can guide teachers in a certain direction, especially those who recently got their teacher degrees, but the interviewed teachers showed that they were able to use textbooks to their advantage in the classroom while also being aware of problematic content in certain older textbooks. These problematic textbooks tend to take a secularist stance towards religion while newer ones take a more nuanced non-secularist stance. All the interviewed teachers agreed that the Swedish curriculum could be improved regarding how teachers should handle religion as a term, though the exact way in which the curriculum documents should be rewritten varied from teacher to teacher. The curriculum described religion as an open category while also taking a non-secularist stance towards religion. The teachers also discussed whether the subject should even be called religion studies as well as the subject not having enough classroom hours during the school year.

Religious education teachers in modern secular countries like Sweden are faced with many challenges. For example: how do the teachers encourage students to talk about religion when religion is largely understood as a private matter? Kittelmann Flensner found in her 2015 study that Swedish schools operate under what she calls a secularist discourse. This paper aims to examine that claim by analysing interviews with active Swedish religious education teachers. By applying Systematic text condensation to four transcribed interviews and analysing the results, this paper looks at what traces of a secularist discourse that can be found. Furthermore, the paper aims to answer how teachers relate to a secularist discourse and what didactic choices they make to encourage their students to talk about religion.To analyse these questions Kittelmann Flensner’s term secularist discourse is used along with Shiner and Casanova’s views on secularism. In terms of the didactic perspective, Hartman’s presentation of the didactic questions is used to analyse some of the methods teachers describe in the material. In short, my results show that Kittelmann Flensner might have generalized her results when it comes to viewing religion as a private matter in the classroom. Additionally, Casanova’s view on secularisation can explain only a few instances of public religion in the classroom. My conclusion is that the secularist discourse may be present in many classrooms but with exceptions in some multi-religious classes. My conclusion regarding the didactic analysis is that religious education teachers who want their students to talk more about religion need to do mainly three things; get to know their students well, spark interest among the students and bridge the gap between talking about religion in private and in public.

The purpose of this study is to determine to which extent discourses identified within Swedish religious education also exists within the journal Religion & Livsfrågor [eng: Religion & Life Questions]. To what extent does the journal confirm their existence, are they problematized, and is there any way to avoid them? Previous research include mainly doctoral theses about discourses within the religious education in Sweden, as well as some research regarding the formation of the academic discipline didactics of religion. This study also relies on one particular study in didactics when choosing the material. The theoretical approach is based on previous research by Karin Kittelmann Flensner. She finds that there exist three discourses within religious education in contemporary Sweden: one secularist discourse, one spiritual discourse and one Swedishness discourse. A total of 28 numbers of Religion & Livsfrågor has been analyzed by applying the previously mentioned discourses onto the material. Findings indicate that these discourses also exist within the journal. Sometimes the discourses are problematized, but there are seldom any advices on how to avoid them. It also seems that these discourses existed both before and after Kittelmann Flensner’s study, which seem to indicate that the progress made in academic research aren’t always applied in schools. One way to give the teachers the opportunity to avoid these discourses would be to raise awareness regarding them.