Teachers’ perspectives on ethics education – expressed as opportunities and challenges

ABSTRACT

In Sweden, ethics education occupies a prominent position in the curriculum, both in the general, introductory sections and as a part of the subject religious education. The aim of this article is to investigate teachers’ insights regarding ethics education and to contribute knowledge about opportunities and challenges with ethics education, by analysing interviews with ten teachers. Five of the teachers used a fiction-based ethics education within a research and evaluation project, and five teachers used their ordinary ethics teaching. The analysis shows five different themes, time, the students’ background, safe relations, lesson plans, and fiction, to be crucial for ethics education, in relation to both opportunities and challenges. The analysis shows that ethics is a subject that occupies a special position, giving students an education that points to the world and provides opportunities to encounter and explore important situations, in other words, an education that develops a multidimensional ethical competence.

KEYWORDS:

• Ethics education
• teachers’ perspectives
• multidimensional ethical competence

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The Swedish Institute for Educational Research 2019–2021.

2. Ethics approval for the project was given by the Swedish Ethical Review Agency (Dnr 2019–02726).

3. T = Teacher, I = interview.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the The Swedish Institute for Educational Research [Dnr: 2018-00027].

Notes on contributors

Annika Lilja

Annika Lilja is Associate Professor of Educational Work at the Department of Pedagogical, Curricular and Professional Studies at the University of Gothenburg. Her research is focused on ethics education and students’ existential questions, and on didactical classroom studies in religious education.

Olof Franck

Olof Franck is Professor of Subject Matter Education and Associate Professor of Philosophy of Religion. His publications focus on issues in ethics, religious education and philosophy. He is presently engaged in research on conceptions of ethical competence, as well as on various perspectives on knowledge-based religious education.

Christina Osbeck

Christina Osbeck is Professor at the University of Gothenburg, Department of Pedagogical, Curricular and Professional Studies, of which she is also the head at present. In her research, she focuses especially on religious education, ethics education and young people’s existential questions, life interpretations and life views. She has recently finalized a project funded by the Swedish Research Council [Vetenskapsrådet] taking its point of departure from challenges in assessing knowledge within religious education based on test results from the national tests in religious education. She is also the PI of the research project “Refining the Ethical Eye and Ethical Voice – The Possibilities and Challenges of a Fiction-based Approach to Ethics Education”, funded by the Swedish Institute for Educational Research [Skolforskningsinstitutet], and on which the current article in based.

Karin Sporre

Karin Sporre is Professor of Educational Work at Umeå University, specializing in values, gender and diversity, and is a researcher at IDPP at the University of Gothenburg. Her research focuses on ethics education, and existential questions and ethical concerns of children and young people. Through international comparative curricular studies and in research cooperation with South African colleagues, she has reflected on and addressed contemporary global aspects of education. She is the PI of the research project “The Child and Curriculum. Existential Questions and Educational Responses”, funded by the Swedish Research Council [Vetenskapsrådet].

David Lifmark

David Lifmark is Associate Professor of Educational Work at the Department of Pedagogical, Curricular and Professional Studies at the University of Gothenburg. His research is focused on ethics education and teachers’ engagement in societal issues.

Anna Lyngfelt

Anna Lyngfelt is Professor of Subject Didactics with a focus on Swedish at the Department of Pedagogical, Curricular and Professional Studies at the University of Gothenburg. Her research focuses on didactics of literature, issues of democracy and aesthetic forms of expression in the subject of Swedish. Other research interests are language development work in multilingual classrooms and sustainability issues.