The many faces of the Life Philosophy concept  : A Qualitative Study of Problematic Concept-didactics for Teachers in the Swedish Secondary School

The life philosophy concept in Swedish religious education and the variation theory of learning This thesis focuses on life philosophy (livsåskådning) as a hypothetical problematic concept in Swedish secondary school religious education, based on discussions with colleagues in a Swedish secondary school. In those discussions it was clear that the faculty indeed saw the concept as hard to get around and teach. For many years the concept has been talked and taught about in the Swedish school-system. In the 20th century the religious education in Sweden has taken many turns, abandoning the confessional and centralized christian perspective of the subject, to becoming a multicultural and nuanced phenomena in the secularized northern country. This thesis takes off from Falkevalls (2010) initial findings about the questions of life concept (livsfrågor) which shows that the concept is indeed hard to cope with, especially in its core nature of being part of a syllabus. His findings show that the respondents many times mix questions of life with questions of life philosophy (livsåskådningsfrågor) and questions of existentialism (existentiella frågor). These findings played a major part for the further discussions of the thesis in hand. Niemi and Dalevis (2015) problematization regarding the lack of tools given to the Swedish schoolteachers to cope with questions of didactics of religious education, aligned with Falkevalls argument of the question of life concepts lack of distinctness. Especially for the teachers ability to interpret and implement the phenomena in the teaching environment. Methodologically, the thesis sought out to conduct a similar phenomenographical study to that of Hellas (2006), in which she compared different understandings of the word lutheranism amongst Finnish secondary school students. Her empirical findings were presented in a categorical system in which the responding students gradually climbed the ladder, based on their knowledge and understanding of the word. For example, if a student could give an answer on a category three level, the previous categories (one and two) were included in their level of understanding of the concept. In this thesis, a similar approach was taken, with the exception of the climbing ladder. After 20 conducted conversations keywords were noted in a journal and later on placed in five different categories of the students understanding of the life philosophy concept, which were as follows: 1) Life philosophy as religion, 2) life philosophy as questions of life, 3) life philosophy as determined theories, 4) life philosophy as ethic and moral, and, 5) life philosophy as a replacement of religion. The results for instance showed that 95% of students saw life philosophy as religion and 75% as questions of life, which was problematized through Falkevalls and Niemi/Dalevis theories. Keywords - Life philosophy, Questions of life, Religious education, Religious didactic