Jon Magne Vestøl

Text interpretation and educational design in Norwegian textbooks of religious education

Drawing on sociocultural perspectives on educational design, this article presents a qualitative study investigating how religious texts emerge as educational objects and mediating artefacts in Norwegian textbooks of religious and moral education. The article describes how the distribution of text references in textbooks influences the formation of religious traditions as objects. It also describes how religious texts are given various roles and how textbook assignments use various means to facilitate the interpretation of religious texts in a response to the demands posed by Norwegian syllabuses of religious and moral education.

Moral Education and the Role of Cultural Tools.

Presenting results from a Norwegian empirical study of student texts and moral education textbooks, this article contributes to the evaluation and development of contextual approaches to moral education. Theoretical perspectives from Seyla Benhabib and Mark Tappan are discussed in the light of empirical data. In particular, while textbooks focus primarily on norm aspects of morality, student texts display interactions between relation‐oriented and norm‐oriented cultural tools, indicating a possible synthesis of care and justice aspects of morality, as suggested by Benhabib. A hegemony of a ‘language of justice’ over a ‘language of care’, as suggested by Benhabib and Tappan, is possibly reflected in the uneven distribution of ethical perspectives in textbooks. Student texts, however, show close interactions between relation‐oriented and norm‐oriented aspects of morality, and also indicate a female superiority in the mastery of both norm‐oriented and relation‐oriented language.

Textbook Religion and Lived Religion: A Comparison of the Christian Faith as Expressed in Textbooks and by Young Church Members.

Abstract Drawing on perspectives from sociocultural theory, this article investigates how Christian denominations are represented in Norwegian textbooks of religious education and by young believers. The main finding is that textbooks and young adherents present religion in substantially different ways. While textbooks relate religion to global and national space using rational and general descriptions, young informants relate religion to local and personal space through emotional and relational descriptions. Based on these findings, this article discusses how textbooks and religious education can present religion in a way that includes both etic and emic perspectives.

Didaktiske modeller i lærerutdanningen. En analyse av lærerstudenters praksisrefleksjon

Denne artikkelen ser naermere pa hvordan laererstudenter bruker didaktiske modeller i sin refleksjon over egen praksis. Empirien er tekster fra studenter ved praktisk-pedagogisk utdanning ved Universitetet i Oslo. Artikkelen undersoker hvordan studenter anvender didaktiske modeller og hvilken forstaelse de har av disse. Jeg er saerlig opptatt av om modeller inngar i en konserverende forstaelse av praksis eller om de kan innga i refleksjon som utfordrer praksis. Diskusjonen i artikkelen bygger pa synspunkter fra pedagogisk og aktivitetsteoretisk teori. Artikkelen konkluderer med at forholdet mellom praksisopplevelser og modellbruk har mulig konvensjonsforsterkende trekk, men ogsa rommer ansatser til praksisproblematisering og konvensjonsoverskridelse.