Browsing by Author "Mikkonen, Julia"

The aim of this thesis was to gain data and information regarding students studying the Evangelic Lu-theran religion in high school. Other aspects of the study included examining religious and worldview education as well as visibility of religion in schools. The study was constructed due to a need to change the current model of religious education in Finnish schools and find out pupils’ view about the issue. The theoretical part of this study consists of a literature review, which provides in-depth information present-ed by previous studies on the topic. Additionally, the review examines Finnish people’s religious beliefs in general and different religious education models. The quantitative part of this study is a part of a wid-er EDEN-study in the University of Helsinki. The research problem was: how do high school students belonging to the Evangelic Lutheran church experience the current religious education model and what do they think about the visibility of religion in school? The hypothesis was, that the students from the Helsinki metropolitan area are more open to-wards the visibility of religion in school, because the diversity is higher in the region compared to other counties. An additional hypothesis was formed based on a previous study, which indicated that girls are more positive about religious education in school. The research method of this thesis included a variety of methods. The qualitative data of this research was collected to support the quantitative method. In the quantitative part of the study I used a questionnaire to examine the perspectives of the pupils and the differences in the backgrounds (e.g. sex and city of residence). 176 students took part in Pori, 224 in Helsinki and 175 in Joensuu. Out of the participants, 367 were girls and 207 boys. The data was ana-lysed using the analysis of variance (ANOVA) and the t-test. The qualitative data was collected using interviews. Eight pupils from Helsinki took part in the interviews. Content analysis was also used as a research tool. Based on the results of the quantitative part of the study, it was suggested, that place of residence does not affect students’ perspectives on religion and religious education. Girls were more interested than boys in religion as a school subject and also more open towards different religions. In the qualitative part of the study I compared the results from the interview data to the mean value of pupils from Helsinki in the quantitative questionnaire. Overall, these results were in line together. Based on the interview results, the students belonging to the Evangelic Lutheran church think that the main reason to study religious education is to learn about world religions. Generally, students wish for an integrated model where all participants from different backgrounds could study and interact together.