Browsing by Author "Zakik, Aida"

The aim of this study was to examine the experiences and perceptions of teachers who teach secular ethics of secular ethics as a subject at school and of teaching it in primary school. In this study I’m interested in the history of secular ethics as a school subject and the status and nature of it as part of Finnish worldview education. Also, I’m interested in the national core curriculum regarding secular ethics and the skills required in teaching secular ethics in primary school. Secular ethics is an alternative to religious education. Primarily it was directed at students who are non-affiliated. Nowadays secular ethics teaching groups consist of not only non-affiliated pupils but also of pupils of minority religions. Secular ethics has been around for almost four decades, but study shows that it is still widely perceived as a vague or scattered school subject. Unlike religious education secular ethics has scarcely been researched. In this study the research questions are: What experiences do the teachers have of teaching secular ethics in primary school and of the teaching groups? What experiences do the teachers have of their own teacherhood as a secular ethics teacher and of the national core curriculum regarding secular ethics? What experiences and perceptions do the teachers have of secular ethics as a school subject in primary school? The study is qualitative, and the data was gathered by theme interviews with seven teachers. The interviews were conducted as remote interviews in the autumn of 2021. The study does not aim to achieve generalizability. The aim is to deeply understand the experiences depicted by the interviewed teachers. The data was analyzed using content analysis. The results show that the teachers have witnessed the growth of the number of pupils in secular ethics education and that the teaching groups are in many respects heterogeneous. The teachers experience challenges with respect to, among other things, educational material, and their own insecurity regarding subject matter knowledge. The teachers have somewhat conflicting views of the national core curriculum regarding secular ethics. They find secular ethics to be an important but undervalued school subject. They enjoy teaching it and hope that all pupils would have access to secular ethics education. A possible common subject for all students in worldview education is something the teachers are curious about, but it also raises concerns about a possible over-representation of religious content.