A view from the Watchtower : A qualitative study of Jehovah's witnesses discourses on the swedish upper secondary school's

The following study examines the conflicting discourses between the swedish school system andthe Christian denomination of Jehovah’s witnesses on the swedish upper secondary schoolcurriculum and its subject content. The purpose has been to identify if the discourses present avalue conflict with school interests and discuss both how these are different and why they constitutea conflict. This has been achieved by examining the religious body’s recent publications on thesubject through a discourse analysis method.The study shows that there are several themes in the swedish upper secondary schoolcurriculum and subject content in which Jehovah’s witnesses have discourses conflicting with theschool’s own, possibly constituting practical issues in the day to day education of students. Themain conflicts lies within the areas of social integration of students, the non-denominationalcharacter of the school system, sex education, the stance of religious pluralism taken in the subjectof religious studies, historical method and the subject content of natural science primarilyconcerning evolutionary biology. The study also concludes that there is a wide gap and lack ofinformation surrounding these conflicts and how teachers and other school staff should approach oravoid them. This ultimately derives from a lack of research around the subject and deficientguidelines from the Swedish National Agency for Education surrounding not only how to approachstudents that are Jehovah’s witnesses but religious discourses surrounding the curriculum andschool subjects in general