The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the new Swedish curriculum, GY11 brought with it changes to how non-religious world-views are presented in five different books in religious education, RE. The method used to analyze the material was a qualitative content analysis as well as counting the pages that dealt with secular world-views. This was later analyzed using philosopher Charles Taylors description and theory on secularization. This was used to identify secular processes as well as to define wether the books definition and description of secular world-views using Taylors concept of ”exclusive humanism”.
The research questions are:
• What are the authors writing about when describing the secular world- views?
• What differences and similarities are there between the different editions prior and after the implementation of the new curriculum, GY11?
• Are the secular world-views presented in a way that is compatible with Taylors concept of ”exclusive humanism”?
The results that are being presented are, first of all that the change between the different editions are not big. Nor are secular world-views given much space in the books to begin with. On a quantitative level the amount of pages given to secular world-views is actually decreasing with the new curriculum.
Different non-religious world-views are presented in different ways, for instance humanism is often as a movement with a certain focus on the Swedish secular humanism organization, Humanisterna. This can be contrasted to existentialism which is potrayed almost entirely as a result of certain individuals and their ideas.
When it comes to Taylors concept of exclusive humanism this study shows that this corresponds with the defentions of non-religoius world-views in some of the cases. Two of the books are not defining non-religious world-views in a way that is coherent with Taylors term exclusive humanism.