Det livstolkingsplurale norske klasserommet
Original version
Lied, S. (2009). Det livstolkingsplurale norske klasserommet. I B.-K. Ringen & O. K. Kjørven (Red.); A. Gagné (Hon. ed.), Teacher diversity in diverse schools: Challenges and opportunities for teacher education (s. 289-307). Vallset: Oplandske bokforlag.Abstract
This article aims to contribute to the discussion about how teacher
education may approach the challenges from an increasingly culturally
diverse society. Lied’s field of interest and research is the culturally
diverse classroom populated by children and students with
a plurality of beliefs and religious and philosophical backgrounds.
She therefore places the paper’s main research question in this frame
of context and asks: how can teacher education deal with challenges
and opportunities from the religiously and philosophically pluralistic
Norwegian classroom? Lied pursues the question by asking
the following subsidiary ones: How does religious and philosophical
pluralism manifest itself in elementary school and in teacher education?
How may students’ participation in research contribute to increasing
their understanding the demands the pluralistic classroom
puts on its teachers?
Lied develops answers to the preceding questions by, at first, giving
a short outline of the diverse situation in the field of religion and
beliefs in elementary school for which teacher education prepares its
students. She does this briefly by presenting how plurality manifests
itself in the teaching of religion and philosophy in Norwegian
public elementary schools as well as in pupils’ utterances made
during lessons on these topics. She then sketches the presence of
plurality in the national curriculum of this subject in teacher education
and in texts written by teacher students. After a short presentation
of two projects in which teacher students (with different cultural
and national backgrounds) took part as co-researchers, Lied
discusses how students’ participation in research may be one part of
the answer to how teacher education may approach challenges and
opportunities from the pluralistic Norwegian classroom.