Worldview Didactics Network
We are a network of researchers with the common interest of making worldview education more inclusive by focusing on perspectives that fall between traditional religious and secular positions.
As religious beliefs and practices decline and diversity grows, many people—especially in Sweden—identify as neither strictly religious nor fully secular. Despite this, worldview education often overlooks these inbetweeners, limiting its relevance.
Through research and innovative didactic strategies, we aim to bridge this gap and ensure education reflects the diverse perspectives of today’s society and classrooms.
Our research
The religious landscape in the West has transformed significantly over the past decades. Secularization has led to a decline in traditional religious adherence, while religious diversity has increased through immigration and cultural diffusion. To address these changes Sweden, and many other European countries, have shifted from or complimented religious education with worldview education, aiming for inclusiveness by encompassing both religious and secular perspectives.
However, a large portion of the population in our European countries consists of so-called inbetweeners, holding fuzzy religious or semi-secular views. They might describe themselves as spiritual but not religious, often blending elements from various outlooks or simply claiming to believe in “something” beyond mundane reality. These sorts of views and perspectives are particularly prevalent in Sweden, with 75% of Swedes identifying as neither religious in a traditional sense nor outright atheistic, forming a new religious mainstream. Unfortunately, the Swedish curriculum's binary approach to worldviews as either religious or secular excludes this majority, reducing the education's relevance.
The Worldview Didactics network aims to enhance Swedish worldview education to reflect the curriculum's, in other parts, inclusive spirit by addressing the semi-secular mainstream. This involves developing broad didactic strategies based on empirical research and philosophical re-development of worldview theory.
To achieve this, our research is structured into four connected work packages where each work package addresses a key aspect, aiming to provide comprehensive solutions for enhancing worldview education in a semi-secular context:
How are semi-secular perspectives and attitudes expressed among students in the classroom?
What challenges and opportunities do teachers identify for inclusive worldview education in a semi-secular context?
How can worldview theory be adapted to encompass semi-secular perspectives and attitudes both in society, among teachers, and in the classroom?
Based on results from previous work packages, what didactic strategies can be developed for effective and inclusive worldview education?
By systematically addressing these questions, researchers in the Worldview Didactics Network do not only aim at moving the scholarly debate forward. Through various outreach events and courses, we also seek to equip educators with the necessary concepts, terminology, and pedagogical tools to navigate and teach within a complex and diverse landscape, ensuring that religious education is inclusive and relevant now and for the future.
Researchers
Francis Jonbäck, University of Gävle
Peder Thalén, University of Gävle
Fredrik Jahnke, University of Gävle
Caroline Klintborg, Stockholm University
Stefan Larsson, University of Gävle
Johan Liljestrand, University of Gävle
Carl-Johan Palmqvist, Lund University/University of Gävle
Ingela Visuri, Dalarna University
News & publications
New book release: Semi-Secular Worldviews and the Belief in Something Beyond
Authors: Carl-Johan Palmqvist and Francis Jonbäck
A growing proportion of the Western population identifies as "religious Nones" - many of these individuals reject traditional religion yet engage in spiritual practices and embrace the belief in something supernatural. This new book explores the beliefs of these 'semi-secular' individuals and introduces the concept of Somethingism - the belief in something beyond the mundane or transcendent. The authors critically examine how this belief relates to reason, offers existential comfort, and relates to the possibility of a transcendent reality. A thought-provoking analysis of contemporary spirituality.
Read more here: https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/abs/semisecular-worldviews-and-the-belief-in-something-beyond/24AA626E435F5383BD2F6046EA9A52C4
External link.
New thematic issue on semi-secular perspectives in religious education (ed Johan Liljestrand and Olof Franck)
How can religious education capture young people's experiences of perceiving themselves as both secular, not clearly professing any religion, and at the same time believing in something "greater" or primarily culturally identifying with, for example, Christian traditions? This issue of Religion & Life Issues is devoted to religious education issues concerning the space between secularity and religiosity - what is often referred to as semi-secularity.
As current research has shown, a large majority of Swedes are neither fully religious nor non-religious. If religious education aims to connect with young people's experiences, there is reason to pay attention to this fact.
Jahnke, Fredrik. (2023). "Religious literacy: how do we recognize it when we see it, and then what?" In Educating Religious Education Teachers: perspectives of international Knowledge Transfer. V&R Unipress.
Jahnke, Fredrik (2021). The Altar of Tolerance and the Considerateness of Avoidance: Religion and Meaning Making among Swedish Elementary School Students. Diss. Södertörn University.
Jonbäck, Francis (Forthcoming) "Navigating Controversies in Worldview Education. In Olof Franck and Bodil Liljefors-Persson (eds.) Teaching Controversial Issues in Religious Education on Ethics, Values and Beliefs, Routledge.
Jonbäck, Francis (in press) "Semi-secular beliefs in religious education". In Stenmark; Mikael and Löfstedt, Malin, Science, beliefs and education: A popular science report (CRS Reports).
Jonbäck, Francis (2025) "The feeling of something: about including nåtism in religious education" in Johan Liljestrand & Olof Franck (eds.) Religion och livsfrågor 4 (thematic issue on semi-secular perspectives in religious education).
Jonbäck, Francis et al (ed.) (2025), Agnosticism special issue in Religions 12(1).
Jonbäck, Francis and Palmqvist, Carl-Johan (2024) 'Between belief and disbelief, between religion and secularity: introducing non-doxasticism and semi-secularity in worldview education', British Journal of Religious Education 46(2).
Jonbäck, Francis (ed.) Agnosticism in the 21st Century. Special issue in Philosophies 10(1)
Klintborg, C. & Rothgangel, M. (2023). Leitbegriffe für einen Religionsunterricht in Kooperation. Impulse aus dem internationalen Kontext. In: T. Krobath & A. Taschl-Erber (Eds) Konfessionnell – Kooperativ – Interreligiös. Liegt die Zukunft des Religionsunterruchts im Miteinander?. Wien: LIT Verlag, s.49–69.
Klintborg, C. 2022. Searching for a Renewal of Religious Education Identity. A Swedish Perspective. In: Discourse and Communication for Sustainable Education, vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 57-71.
Klintborg, C., (2020). Will there be space for young people’s own meaning-making processes in the RE classroom? Existential configurations as a concept and an educational tool. N. Montesano Montessori, & G. Lengkeek (eds.) Opening up Spaces for meaningful enagement in Educational praxis. Utrecht: Eburon, pp.73-88. (publicerad i namnet Gustavsson)
Klintborg, Caroline (2018). “Existential configurations: a way to conceptualize people’s meaning-making”. British Journal of Religious Education, 42(1)
Larsson, Stefan (2025) "Buddhism" In Modern Gods: Progressive Religion in Our Time. Johan Adetorp and Stefan Arvidsson (eds.). Lund: Arkiv förlag, 133-146.
Larsson Stefan (2022) "Constructive criticism of religion and Buddhism". In Constructive criticism of religion - philosophical and pedagogical perspectives. Olof Franck and Mikael Stenmark (eds.). Stockholm: Sanoma utbildning, 49-82.
Larsson Stefan (2021) "Swedish Buddhists and Buddhism-influenced Swedes". In Människan i en existentiell kultur: En antologi om Människa-Kultur-Religionsprogrammet vid Högskolan i Gävle. Olov Dahlin, Sara Duppils & Jari Ristiniemi (eds.), Gävle: Gävle University Press, 71-88.
Liljestrand, Johan & Franck, Olof (2024) Introduction: Semi-secular perspectives on religious education. Religion & Life Issues, (4),
Palmqvist, Carl-Johan and Jonbäck, Francis (2025), Semi-Secular Worldviews and the Belief in Something Beyond, Cambridge UP.
Palmqvist, Carl-Johan and Jonbäck, Francis (2023) "On the rationality of semi-secular simultaneity: a non-doxastic interpretation of the seemingly inconsistent worldviews of some Swedish 'nones.'" Religious Studies 59(4).
Palmqvist, Carl-Johan (2023) "The old gods as a live possibility: on the rational feasibility of non-doxastic paganism", Religious Studies 59(4).
Thalén, Peder (2025) "Agnosticism Without Ontology? The Search for New Conceptual Tools to Describe the Semi-Secular Condition in Sweden", in Francis Jonbäck (ed.) Agnosticism in the 21st Century. Special issue in Philosophies 10(1).
Thalén, Peder (2023) "Learning about What? Non-Confessional Religious Education after the Dissolution of the Binary Categories 'Religion' and 'Secular'." Social Science 12(10).
Thalén, Peder (2020) "Teaching Secular Worldviews in a Post-Secular Age". In Religion and Education 47(3).
Visuri, Ingela. Rimondini, Andreas, Brulin, Joel Gruneaun (2023). "What happens after death? : A didactic renegotiation of religion based on young 'secular' Swedes' ambivalence about the supernatural", Acta Didactica Norden 17(2).
Visuri, Ingela. (2021). Death in the classroom: New conditions for the encounter between 'secular' and 'religious' students. In Tomas Axelsson and Torsten Hylén (Ed.), Den nya människan, Möklinta: Gidlunds förlag.
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This page was last updated 2025-04-15