When social justice education is conducted in religious education (RE) classes, it can take the forms of education about (concepts and facts), into (enhancing commitment), with (negotiating practices) and through (pupil-led action) social justice. The first three approaches were used in seven RE lessons observed in urban Finnish lower secondary…

In recent years, the concept of 'worldview' has resurfaced into the forefront of the international debate among scholars of religious education. With this study, we aim to contribute to the discussion with empirical material having a focus on worldview education in whole school education. The study deals with the Finnish teachers' perceptions of…

This study examines the attitudes of teachers toward the visibility of worldviews in public education as well as how teachers negotiate the boundaries of acceptability based on these attitudes. The question raised several issues: on the one hand, the clashing of increasingly complex, diverse, and secularized worldviews and, on the other hand, the…

In the field of education concerning cultural diversity it has been recognized as vital to address justice in social structures. Although justifications for religious education in non-confessional contexts are heavily based on religious diversity, their advocates have paid little attention to justice and power relations. In this article, I analyse…

This article studies three RE (religious education) student teachers' perceptions about their professional development from the beginning to the end of their initial teacher education. The focus of study was to investigate via an inductive content analysis if there are the same kind of phases in RE teacher education and how those phases are in…

This article aims to identify and compare the characteristics of human agency in liberal and Islamic religious education, comparing Iran as a religious context influenced by Islamic state ideology with Finland as a liberal context and a secular state ideology. This comparison will be accomplished by document analysis of the national curricula for…

In this article we examine the profiling of human rights and children's rights in religious education (RE) and its secular alternative in Finland. We use the term 'worldview education' to describe the combination of these subjects. We analyse what kinds of human rights and ethical issues are raised in Finnish worldview education. One specific…

The purpose of this study was to find out what kind of worldviews Finnish principals identify in their schools and the kind of lived realities of worldviews that are affecting schools from the perspective of school leadership. The issues were considered using a wide worldview framework, which includes religious and non-religious worldviews and…