Field visits to churches, mosques, temples or other buildings used by religious groups, are often valued by students of religious education as an opportunity to engage with the 'reality' of the subject: religions as they exist in the world. The Council of Europe text "Signposts" specifies field visits as an important contributor to the…

The purpose of this paper is to empirically explore and theoretically discuss Swedish religious studies (RE) teachers' understanding of religions as similar and different. In Sweden, RE is a mandatory subject and presents all the world's major religions to students. Teachers of RE therefore need to relate to the various relations between the…

This article is a contribution to the discussion of learning processes in religious education (RE) classrooms. Sociocultural theories of learning, understood here as tool-mediated processes, are used in an analysis of three RE classroom conversations. The analysis focuses on the language tools that are used in conversations; how the tools mediate;…

This article illuminates how religious education worked when students posed questions to believing guests in a Swedish upper secondary classroom, which was homogeneous concerning ethnic origin. The guests invited to school represented four religious traditions but they also represented themselves. Their messages, as well as the questions posed by…

Intercultural dialogue is a concept and discourse that dates back to the 1980s. It is the major means for managing diversity and strengthening democracy within Europe and beyond. It has been adopted by the United Nations, UNESCO and the Council of Europe as the basis for interreligious and interfaith initiatives and has become increasingly…

This article presents some major research themes and findings of the leading Swedish research group in the field of literacy in history. The informal and encouraging leadership of Professor Egil Johansson was of vital importance to the creativity and productivity of the group. Prior to 1985, a few large projects on Swedish alphabetization were…