The purpose of this study is to determine the students’ perceptions regarding the teacher's religious positioning and what the students prefer. Another purpose is to show what the students say the result could be if the teacher gives away his or her religious positioning. Previous research include several doctoral theses and student papers regarding how students perceive the teachers’ religious position and the religious education classroom as a whole, but research regarding how students say it should be is not found. The 91 surveys primarily used in this study contain both qualitative and quantitative questions. The methodology is a thematic analysis of the central themes that occur in the answered surveys. Furthermore, this study uses a two-part definition of freedom of religion: positive freedom of religion (the right to be religious and be a part of religious manifestations) and negative freedom of religion (the right to be non-religious and to not be exposed to other people’s religious manifestations). Several central themes are found, including: the teachers' own experience, more knowledge about (at least) one religion, objectivity, negativity towards religion, the professional teacher and many more. Among the identified themes one of the most important ones according to the students is objectivity – the teachers’ own opinions shouldn’t be visible in the classroom, though there are exceptions. The study finds that a majority of the students means that the teacher’s religious positioning doesn’t matter, as long as the teacher is professional enough. However, a teacher who is a non-believer is generally preferred over a teacher who is a believer. Furthermore, the term “objectivity” is mostly associated with a non-believer. In accordance with previous research there seems to exist a secular discourse within religious education that the students don’t notice. Within this discourse the students value the negative freedom of religion higher than they do the positive freedom of religion.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:hj-36371 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Vackmyr, Jesper |
| Publisher | Högskolan för lärande och kommunikation, Högskolan i Jönköping, HLK, Ämnesforskning |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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