"50 poäng är inte mycket" : En intervjustudie om religionslärares kritiska perspektiv på styrdokumentens innehåll för Religionskunskap 1

Sammanfattning: Upper secondary education has a clear purpose within the Swedish school system: to prepare young adults for their lives as active, democratic citizens in Swedish society. There is a vast amount of information an upper secondary student should be privy to by the end of their pre-college education, and teachers have had to take enormous strides to interpret and implement these guidelines when teaching. This essay’s purpose is to critically discuss the documents which form the guidelines for the subject Religion Studies 1 in upper secondary school in Sweden with the help of teachers’ vast pool of practical experience. Additionally, this study searches for a common denominator amongst the critical feedback. This feedback was collected during interviews. Using the sociocultural perspective, the results of this study were analyzed and fenomenographically presented for ease of the reader’s understanding. The results of this study were that students struggled by far the most with the ability to reason and relate to the course material, within the respective areas “religion and science”, and “individuals’ religious views in relation to their socioeconomic status, gender, and sexuality”. The teachers who took part in this study actively sought out solutions to their criticisms, not specifically deeming the educational plan as flawed but rather larger systems, such as the transference of knowledge from year to year or the diffuse nature of the subject Religion Studies.