Norwegian Religious Education Workbooks after World War II: Exploring Teachers’ Workbook Constructions by Interpreting Traces of Textbooks and National Curricula

Abstract

Twenty religious education (RE) workbooks covering half a century were examined in a search for RE teachers’ typical patterns of workbook construction. Three chronological main types were distinguished: “the biblical workbook,” “the workbook of Christian cultural nurture,” and “the RE workbook of diversity.” Of greater interest, however, were the particularities found in a few workbooks produced in the two interims between the chronological types. This article discusses—in the light of collective memory theory, social semiotics, and Norwegian RE history—the meaning of the teachers’ implicit contributions to the typical as well as the untypical workbook constructions. The concept of an “irreducible tension” between active agents and mediating means is found analytically fruitful. Religious education teachers are seen as cultural reproducers, interplaying with the central contextual curricular factors. In times of interlude and change, teachers have had other sets of contextual conditions and contingencies than in times of stability. The relatively quick implementation of a non‐confessional RE after the 1997 school reform is interpreted in line with economic priorities and with a curricular adjustment to the changed “spirit of the times.”

Keywords:

• post‐war religious education in Norway
• teachers’ constructions of pupils’ workbooks
• central contextual factors in Norwegian religious education

Notes

¹ The second collection has been done within a research project called Multimodality, literacy and learning (MULL), funded by the Norwegian Research Council 2007–2010.

² In the wider research project I will to a lesser degree include other types of source material, such as interviews with informants who provided several workbooks in the 2006–2007 collection, classroom observation of RE lessons (2007–2009, cf. the second collection), and interviews with the observed teachers. These other types of source material and the workbooks from the second collection will not be included in this article, but will be touched upon in the brief discussion, below, of the methodology and the theoretical basis of the wider research project compared with the issues, methods, and theory of this first contextual overview.

³ See, e.g., G. Skeie’s (2004) overview of Norwegian RE research. My favourite introduction to general curriculum studies is written by Arfwedson and Arfwedson (1991). See also Engelsen (2003, p. 31) for a simplified presentation of Arfwedson’s model of frame factors for school practice. With regard to “sociocultural theory of learning,” see the next section (methodology and theory).

⁴ By “pedagogy” I (like most British colleagues) mean classroom methods, i.e. the practical approaches of teachers. The double phrase “education and pedagogy” thus indicates interaction between theoretical and practical perspectives.

⁵ See Haakedal (2008), where I have applied a phenomenological approach to the interpretation of a couple of pupils’ RE workbook expressions from the early 2000s. The concept of “lived religion” in a phenomenological context is “compatible” with important concerns in both collective memory research and social semiotic methodology. See Discussion, below.

⁶ I have visited primary school classrooms relatively regularly as a teacher educator and in connection with classroom research since the end of the 1980s. Often work has been started at school (and in some workbooks there are quite a few unfinished expressions), sometimes to be finished at home. Some teachers observed during the 1990s seemed to be reluctant to give homework (Haakedal, 2004).

⁷ I have observed RE lessons in primary and lower secondary schools as part of research projects during the early‐ and late‐1990s (Haakedal, 2004, pp. 287–292) as well as after the implementation of the 2006 school reform. The pattern described (see also Klette, 1994, pp. 86f) was frequently observed, also during 2007–2009 when I observed RE lessons for 10‐year‐olds.

⁸ “Means” and “approaches” are fairly everyday concepts. They are, however, closely related to the more theoretical concepts discussed below (e.g. “mediated action” and “modality”).

⁹ The Education Act of 1998 (“Opplæringsloven”) was altered in June 2008 causing the name of RE in the compulsory school (age 6–15) to be changed from KRL (Nor.: Kristendoms‐, religions‐ og livssynskunnskap) to RLE (Nor.: Religion, livssyn og etikk). The Nor. concept of “livssyn” may be translated as “philosophy of life,” or “life view.” A new syllabus for RLE was approved later the same month.

¹⁰ Some of the 18 are included here. Interviews with some informants who provided many workbooks are being conducted but the information gathered so far has been of little relevance to the issues of this article.

¹¹ Because of the qualitative, exploratory design of the study, I find that the bias of the selected workbooks does not represent a major methodological problem.

¹² The map is borrowed from Gabriel Øidne’s “classical” article from 1957, reprinted nearly three decades later (see Øidne, 1986, p. 45). The basis for constructing this map is the income of the missionary organizations within the Lutheran state church in rural municipalities (i.e. municipalities without town status) in 1955. To a high degree these organizations represented Lutheran pietism. In the map, the colour black represents the highest support, i.e. 7.50–10.00 Nkr (Norwegian crowns) per inhabitant. Grey means 5.00–7.50 Nkr per inhabitant, diagonal lines mean 2.50–5.00 Nkr per inhabitant, and white means less than 2.50 Nkr per inhabitant.

¹³ This combined concept represents a main theme in my doctoral thesis (Haakedal, 2004) where I studied both central institutional influence and hidden local cultural influence on teachers’ work in RE as well as influence from the teachers’ more or less reflected philosophies of life. I generally supported the thesis of modern schools as institutions of cultural and social reproduction (cf. Bourdieu & Passeron, 2006 [1970]), emphasizing teachers’ tendency to react slowly to top‐down organizational changes.

¹⁴ The choice of social semiotic theory is also due to research collaboration in the project called MULL.

¹⁵ van Leeuwen defines “genres” as semiotic resources or “ways of achieving communicative goals” (pp. 128, 277). Mainly for space reasons I reserve a theoretical discussion of “genre” for later, more detailed analyses.

¹⁶ The relevant syllabuses are found in the national curricula from 1939 (N39), 1960 (F60), 1974 (M74), 1987 (M87) and 1997 (L97), see KUD (1954, 1965a, 1965b, 1974, 1987) and KUF (1996).

¹⁷ I have included an extra informant, though (Cecilie). See below.

¹⁸ This was also the case with regard to the whole 2006–2007 collection. A search through all the workbooks from the 1980s and onwards resulted in only four books each containing an expression of a national hymn and/or a Norwegian flag.

¹⁹ It was hard to find a sequenced line of meaning (or an RE teacher’s possible historical or thematic construction) through Alf’s expressions. His book contained much work connected with Christmas and Easter.

²⁰ The line in the workbooks of the 10‐year‐olds started with a short repetition of Josef and the descendants of Jacob in Egypt, dealt in depth with Moses and the Exodus, including the reception of the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai and sometimes also showed a few leaders (like David) after the conquering of “the promised land.” The Jesus‐story during the spring term most often covered his birth (Christmas), his public appearance, his miracles and parables, and his suffering, resurrection (Easter), and ascension. A few books ended with the story of the first Christian Pentecost.

²¹ The text on the left page of Figure 2: “The blood of the lamb saved the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt. Jesus was our sacrificial lamb who died so that we would be saved. The people of Israel later celebrated Passover in memory of the exodus from Egypt. We celebrate Easter in memory of the death and resurrection of Jesus.” The text on the right page: “[Take] care, thou, dear Father, I will not care, Not with a worried mind Ask about my future. Care, thou, for me all my time, Care for me and mine, Almighty God, merciful and mild, Care for all (who are) thine!”

²² The most typical biblical workbooks (those with the highest rate of biblical narratives and clearest biblical chronology) were not found among the 20 workbooks of the 10‐year‐olds. They were the two books from Cecilie’s lower primary stage in the 1970s.

²³ The RE syllabus in N39/ F60 for each school year first listed the New Testament stories to be covered, then the Old Testament stories. The lists were followed by shorter lists of catechetical texts, Bible “words” and hymns. In the RE syllabus of M74 the Old Testament lists were put before those from the New Testament. The many lesser headings in these lists seem an easy call to simple linear historical representation. Two of these headings for the 10‐year‐olds (the Ten Commandments; Our Father) indicate an implicit catechetical discourse connected to certain biblical texts.

²⁴ The same alternative RE syllabus was very much traceable in Cecilie’s two lower primary workbooks.

²⁵ In the textbook used (Bakken, Bakken, & Haug, 1991), the Ten Commandments appeared twice, first in a biblical narrative context, finally in a catechetical context including a slightly adjusted version of the “explanations” from Luther’s Small Catechism.

²⁶ The most traditional (high modality) Christian nurturing profile was found in Dagrun’s book. A more contemporary (medium to low modality) profile of Christian cultural nurture was found in Erna’s two workbooks from north‐western Norway.

²⁷ See Alfsen (1991). Aschehoug published this series of RE textbooks as a result of M87.

²⁸ “Summary” was a heading traceable in the textbook. Egil had copied the text in some summary boxes from his textbook (see e.g. Alfsen, 1991, pp. 13, 28).

²⁹ Approximately the same pattern was produced by (the RE teacher of) a class of 10‐year‐olds at a primary school I observed near Kristiansand in December and March/April in 2007/2008. Workbooks were used regularly according to the curricular plan for the school year. In this plan (and the workbooks) Islam was the final theme, something that represented a slight deviation from the textbook (Aarflot, Aarflot, & Opsal, 1997) progression.

³⁰ All three informants used textbooks produced for Reform 97. Even Frode used the book by Aarflot, Aarflot, and Opsal (1997), and Ernst Filip and Frida the book by Skeie, Gjefsen, and Omland (1997).

³¹ Even Frode quoted the words of the Muslim call to prayer (Aarflot, Aarflot, & Opsal, 1997, p. 100), he gave factual answers to questions about eight persons’ family relationship to Muhammad (p. 107), and he quoted the five main statements of faith in Islam (p. 108) as well as Islam’s five pillars (p. 120). The three remaining expressions (not found in the teacher’s resource book accompanying the text book) consisted of photocopies showing a prayer compass, a map of “Islam in the world,” and Muslim ornamentation.

³² This summary cannot do justice to the pupils’ expressions covering Islam. They deserve a detailed study (e.g. of modality) interpreting the complex relationship between the many voices “behind” them. Ernst Filip preferred to work with one particular text type (i.e. sentences presented after an exclamation mark), which was but one of the types used in the margins of his textbook to highlight discourses and modalities.

³³ None of the three workbooks covered any Christmas discourse but Frida additionally provided a booklet of loose leaves, containing discourses on both Christmas and Easter. Her teacher probably used more experiential pedagogies, like singing, on a more voluntary basis.

³⁴ Dagrun’s workbook from the mid‐1980s and Erna’s workbook from the early‐1990s could also have been interpreted as interim books. The borders between the typical books and the interim books are blurred.

³⁵ Such pedagogies might fail to represent the biblical stories in a Christian interpretive context of faith and thus fail to convey “what Christianity is all about,” an early curricular phrase that Winsnes supported. Emphazising that biblical texts are always interpreted, Winsnes was particularly concerned about two extremes: “legalism” and “lawlessness.” This “professional interest” of Winsnes should be understood in the light of the “open‐ended” Lutheran RE at the time. Analyzing RE textbooks from the 1980s and early‐1990s, Sidsel Lied has backed up Winsnes’ theory of harmonized biblical history (Lied, 1996b).

³⁶ A couple of the younger informants (Dagrun and Erna) strongly indicated that their RE teachers were “not Christians,” though they were loyal to the “normal” discourses and pedagogies of the subject. Such memories may be colored by the informants’ later interpretations, but they may also tell about a dominant school culture.

³⁷ The worksheet (published in teacher’s handbooks accompanying textbooks) became a text type of increasing importance after the “spirit duplicators” had been replaced by photocopy machines, which made it far easier to multiply handouts.

³⁸ The style included simple melodies and lyrics of biblical narrative, particularly about Jesus.

³⁹ Aschehoug publishing company probably had a major share of the RE textbook market in the 1970s and 1980s. The textbook Verden (Bakken, 1975/1983) was used in some schools as late as the early‐1990s (Haakedal, 2004, p. 315). In this and in subsequent RE textbook series (e.g. Bakken, Bakken, & Haug, 1991) Christianity is portrayed through contemporary discourses and perspectives.

⁴⁰ This view of integrative socialization was and is maintained by the Norwegian philosopher of religion, Peder Gravem and backed up empirically by Lied (2004).

⁴¹ This is a guess based on just a few facts from RE workbooks (Even Frode, Ernst Filip, and Frida all used new KRL textbooks) and observations (in 1998/1999 I observed a little more than ten teachers during RE lessons, in two to three classes all the pupils had received new textbooks). In the final years of the 1990s schools could choose between four RE textbook series, from the publishing companies of Universitetsforlaget, Aschehoug, Gyldendal, and Cappelen. The school I observed in the autumn of 2008 still used the textbook Fortell meg mer 5, Aschehoug, 1997.