The use of teaching materials in religious education in Sweden: a quantitative analysis of Swedish religious education teachers’ reported use of teaching materials in RE classrooms

Abstract

Recent studies show that religious education (RE) and various media outlets serve as increasingly important arenas for religious socialisation among Swedish youths. At the same time, it has been shown that media material, for example in the form of various news media, often make their way into RE classrooms to be used as materials alongside the more traditional textbooks. However, little quantitative research has been conducted in order to map RE teachers’ selection and use of materials in their classrooms, and what factors are involved in this selection. A nationally representative survey among 1292 RE teachers was conducted, and the results clearly show that textbooks are the most popular form of material, followed by pictures, sacred texts, documentaries, television news and news articles. Out of the relevant background variables, it was primarily school form, age, gender and religiosity that seemed to influence the teachers’ choices of material. The author concludes that familiarity with a certain form of material through personal experiences is a likely explanation for many of the correlations found and that further research is needed in order to explore the potential complexities that arise in the juxtaposition of classroom and media logics.

Keywords:

• Religious education
• religious socialisation
• teachers
• teaching materials

Notes

1. Knott, Poole and Taira (2013) make this argument when discussing the role media has in relation to religion, and it is reasonable to assume that the same holds for the school system.

2. Note that researching various ‘before’-aspects does not mean that the research lacks empirical evidence and that I in no way indicate that the research exemplified here is deficit in any way.

3. ‘Information and communication technology’ encompasses all kinds of web resources including, but not limited to, news sites, video broadcasting services, lesson-sharing portals, social media materials and so on.

4. Note that ‘added complexity’ and the presence of ‘non-academic media material’ in the classrooms are not seen here as inherently positive or negative. The purpose of this article is to explore what kinds of materials teachers use, not whether teachers are doing the ‘right’ thing or not.

5. 0.68 is close to the acceptable limit of 0.7 (Field 2009). However, with only two items in the index, the fact that the coefficient is not higher is hardly surprising.

6. The question includes the alternatives ‘religious’, ‘believer’, ‘spiritual’, ‘seeker’ and ‘atheist’. For the index, however, only the alternatives ‘religious’ and ‘believer’ were used. Agreeing ‘completely’ or ‘to a large extent’ was considered as ‘high’ on self-identification.

7. The question was ‘during the last 12 months, how often have you visited a place of worship (Church, Synagogue, Mosque or equivalent) in order to participate in prayer or services?’ Reporting to having done so at least once every 3 months was considered ‘high’ on religious activity.

8. This is admittedly a rather crude form of measuring religiosity. A person is not per definition ‘more religious’ just because she attends religious services frequently. The index does, however, give some sort of indication of the centrality of religion in a person’s life.

9. A linear regression analysis with ‘school form’ and ‘level of education’ as independent variables and ‘use of textbooks’ as the dependent variable was used in order to establish the impact of the respective variables. Adjusted R ² = .084.