Religion as a Term and Religious Studies : An Interview Study with Religious Studies Teachers in Upper Secondary Education in Sweden

The question of what religion is could very well be asked of religious studies teachers by their students. It is, however, a difficult question to answer since there is a lack of consensus regarding the meaning of the term religion in the scientific field. An overview of research on the topic shows a lack of studies regarding religious studies teachers in Sweden and their view on the term religion in different teaching contexts. The aim of this study is to highlight religion studies teachers´ view on the term religion in relation to their teaching, as well as whether textbooks and/or the Swedish curriculum affects how teachers view and use the term religion in their classrooms. This, in turn, might highlight didactic problems that could arise from the lack of a clear definition of religion in the subject of religious studies. The study is conducted by interviewing four teachers at the upper secondary education level in Sweden. The transcripts from the interviews are then analysed using essentialist perspectives on religion as well as the secularist discourse present in Swedish classrooms as the essay’s theoretical perspectives. The results show that while there is some overlap between how the interviewed teachers view the term religion, they each have a slightly different view of what religion is and how they use the term in their classrooms. Some of the teachers´ views on religion showed signs of essentialism while others tended to see religion as a more open category or that the term should be problematised in classroom exercises. All the interviewed teachers took a non-secularist stance towards religion in their teaching. Textbooks seem to play an important role to a lesser or higher degree depending on which teacher is asked. Textbooks can guide teachers in a certain direction, especially those who recently got their teacher degrees, but the interviewed teachers showed that they were able to use textbooks to their advantage in the classroom while also being aware of problematic content in certain older textbooks. These problematic textbooks tend to take a secularist stance towards religion while newer ones take a more nuanced non-secularist stance. All the interviewed teachers agreed that the Swedish curriculum could be improved regarding how teachers should handle religion as a term, though the exact way in which the curriculum documents should be rewritten varied from teacher to teacher. The curriculum described religion as an open category while also taking a non-secularist stance towards religion. The teachers also discussed whether the subject should even be called religion studies as well as the subject not having enough classroom hours during the school year.