Research project Existential aspects of teaching – religious studies and psychology
Religious Education and Psychology are life-oriented subjects with existential questions. The project explores how, when, and why students’ encounters with these subjects activate such aspects and whether they broaden subject understanding. Based on this, didactic principles for teaching are developed.
Photo: HAQ.
A prerequisite for upper secondary students to develop a broad, multifaceted, and complex understanding of a school subject is that they are given the opportunity to relate to the subject in a personally meaningful way, including its existential dimensions. Two school subjects in which the encounter between the student and the subject in teaching particularly allows for such opportunities are Religious Education and Psychology. While far from the only subjects that engage with existential notions of life and society, they serve as clear examples.
In the light of this, it is crucial that subject teaching provides a space of opportunity where students can relate to the subject in such ways.
The aim of the project is to create an empirically grounded basis for how upper secondary students can be given increased opportunities to engage with the subject in ways that touch, move, challenge, or bring meaning to their ways of thinking, feeling, and relating to the world, society, and themselves in an existential and subject-specific manner.
Based on the empirical goal of mapping what, when, and how such encounters between students and subjects occur in teaching, didactic principles are identified that should be considered in the planning, implementation, and follow-up of teaching. These principles aim to provide students with increased opportunities for existence-actualizing encounters with the subject and, in the longer term, to support a broadened subject understanding in a way that respects their integrity.
About the study
The project includes an inventory phase in which upper secondary teachers and students are interviewed about the opportunities and challenges associated with existential aspects and existence-actualization in Religious Education and Psychology teaching. The inventory forms the basis for two teaching interventions in each subject, developed collaboratively by researchers and teachers.
Students’ descriptions of existence-actualizing encounters are collected using questionnaires, logbooks, group discussions, reflection and examination tasks, as well as a selection of follow-up student interviews.