I detta paper presenteras mitt avhandlingsprojekt som syftar till att undersöka hurreligionslärarkunskap konstrueras i det trepartsmöte som sker då högskolans lärarutbildare besöker en lärarstudent under den verksamhetsförlagda utbildningen. Vad konstrueras som väsentlig kunskap för en religionskunskapslärare i gymnasieskolan? De övergripande frågeställningarna antyds i titeln: Vad är ”religionslärarkunskap”/religionsdidaktisk kunskap? Vad behöver en gymnasielärare i religionskunskap veta och kunna? De frågeställningar som utvecklar projektets syfte är: a) Hur konstrueras religionslärarkunskap i mötet mellan lärarstudenter och lärarutbildare? b) Vilken religionslärarkunskap konstrueras i mötet mellan lärarstudenter och lärarutbildare? De metoder som används för att generera det empiriska materialet är observationer och intervjuer. Genom observation undersöks vilken kunskap som synliggörs och hur mötet genom samtalet konstruerar kunskap (Watt Boolsen, 2007). Den kvalitativa halv-eller semistrukturerade intervjun (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009) används som kompletterande metod för att generera empiri som möjliggör en djupare förståelse av hur forskningsfrågorna kan besvaras och hur mötet kan förstås. Den genererade empirin analyseras enligt Hjerm & Lindgrens modell för kategorisering, kodning och tematisering. (Hjerm & Lindgren, 2010). Valet av trepartsmötet som det huvudsakliga studieobjektet grundas i att lärarutbildningen å ena sidan är en sammanhållen utbildning, men å andra sidan bedrivs i två skilda sociala praktiker (Afdal, 2010), den högskoleförlagda-och den verksamhetsförlagda utbildningen, vilket kan skapa spänningar. Trepartsmötet är kanske enda gången som lärarstudenten utbildas i en gemensam kontext, tillsammans med både läraren från högskolan och handledaren från praktikskolan. Frågan är vilken religionsdidaktisk kunskap, vilken ”religionslärarkunskap”, som konstrueras i dessa förhandlingar?

I bidraget diskuteras ämneslärarutbildningens trepartssamtal ur ett religionsdidaktiskt perspektiv. Syftet är att belysa frågan om vilken lärarkunskap som görs central i trepartssamtalet samt att bidra med perspektiv på hur förhandlingen kan gå till. Baserat på två observationer av religionsdidaktiskt inriktade trepartssamtal under verksamhetsförlagd utbildning (VFU) mellan student, lokal lärarutbildare (handledare) och lärarutbildare från högskola/universitet görs en prövande analys för att visa på tendenser i materialet. De centrala frågor som diskuteras rör dels process; hur trepartssamtal konstruerar religionslärarkunskap, och innehåll; vad som i samtalen kan förstås som religionslärarkunskap. Därmed prövas i bidraget begreppet religionslärarkunskap som en lärares religionsdidaktiska kunskap, i betydelsen viktiga kunskaper, förmågor och färdigheter som är nödvändiga för en lärare i religionskunskap att behärska. Vidare prövas i bidraget huruvida det i professionsteoretisk forskningstradition förekommande begreppet gränsarbete kan användas för att förstå och förklara hur gränser mellan akademi och yrke upprätthålls och omförhandlas i trepartssamtalet.

The aim of the study is to explore what is constructed as key knowledge, essential for an Upper Secondary school RE teacher, in Swedish RE teacher education and to analyze how this knowledge is constructed. This paper sets out to give an overview of the project and discuss some initial results from a pilot study based on one observation of a three-way meeting and interviews with the participants both before and after the trialogue.Swedish Upper Secondary school teacher education is conducted in what can be considered as two different social practices, one being the academic courses at university and the other the in-school training at the partner schools. Accordingly, the teacher students are educated in two educational contexts -the “theoretical” social practice of university and the “practical” social practice of school. The outline sketched above is why this research project sets out not to investigate the regular education in RE teacher education through lectures, seminars etc., the dialogue between teacher student and their teachers respectively, but instead the trialogue between RE teacher student, RE Upper Secondary school teacher and mentor, and the RE university professor. The three-way meeting described is beingundertaken when the teacher student carries out in-school training and the academic professor, the student and the mentor meet for a trialogue concerning the development of the teacher student. In conclusion, the main aim of this paper is to present my PhD student research project, with a focus on initial results from a pilot study.

Belief in spirits and the paranormal has become more visible in the western society, and surveys show that about half of the populations in Europe report some form of belief in spirits and the paranormal. Contemporary belief in spirits is here regarded as part of a multifaceted personal worldview, which I have chosen to cal l neospiritism . Expressions of neospiritism are reflected, among other things, in various TV ‐ shows about ghosts and haunting, communities and forums on the internet, ghost hunting, courses, magazines and books focusing on the supernatural and the belief in spirits.

The beliefs incorporated in neospiritism span across a wi de spectrum. They range from a strong faith in spirits and other worlds, to an openness to the possibility that spirits may exist. Contemporary belief in spirits is often assumed to be related to the pre ‐ industrial folklore belief in ghosts and specters. However, I do not consider neospiritism to be prim arily related to folklore beliefs so much as being a modernized and adapted version of nineteenth century spiritualism. The concept neospiritism can be used to unify the contemporary individual belief in spirits, which can also be understood as a more or less normalized western ancestor belief. In my presentation, I w ill discuss some of the phenomena which seem to characterize this contemporary belief system.

I denna handbok beskrivs dagens mångreligiösa samhälle där antalet kyrkor och alternativtolkningar blir allt fler och där religiositeten förändrats från att ha varit kollektiv till att bli privat. Författarna tar oss med från den första kristna kyrkans framväxt, över reformationen, fram till vår tid.

Avsnitt om amerikansk och anglikansk kristendomstolkning samt de kristna kyrkotraditioner och religioner som invandrare bidragit med ger ännu en infallsvinkel för förståelsen av den komplexa religiösa situationen i Sverige. Både äldre och nyare former av alternativa tolkningar, New Age och nyandlighet med rötter inom kristendomen och andra religioner beskrivs.

Bokens sista del handlar om wellbeing. Författarna har här sökt definiera detta område genom att beskriva wellbeing som sökandet efter välbefinnande, mening och hälsa, där andligheten är grundläggande. Väckelsekristendom och själavård förenas här med alternativa terapier.

Från kyrka till wellbeing har en lättöverskådlig uppläggning. Illustrationerna är funktionella och pedagogiska. Boken innehåller statistik och litteraturtips för vidare läsning. Boken är främst avsedd för grundläggande universitets- och högskolekurser i religionsvetenskap, men fungerar även som referensverk för den allmänt intresserade.

The article brings up the crucial question why some students on the web-based courses in the science of religion at the University of Gävle sometimes remain invisible for both the teacher and the other students. What can the reasons be to take the role of being the “invisible student”? Furthermore the article discusses the specific demands placed on teachers encountering these “invisible students”.  The method is qualitative, based on three interviews, made with two female students and one male student. A specific focus is placed on role-taking, gender, and the significance of the rite in role-taking. The discussion argues that the informants in general had low self-confidence. This low self-confidence might be the main cause in taking the position of invisible student. The female students conducted studies from their homes and this might also be a contributing obstacle in not taking the “traditional” student role. The article states that teachers and also the other students need to become more involved in the invisible students; studying is co-responsibility. Sometimes the teachers need to make these students visible through another form of communication than the one seen in actual encounters: new working methods must be introduced, including more written assignments. The working methods in the distance courses are different from traditional pedagogical demands placed on the university teacher, and they are also more time consuming. Thus the invisible students are a challenge for universities applying web-based courses

In Schelling there is an interaction between thinking (activity) and feeling or sensing(receptivity), making up the elements of differential thinking. Tillich’s aesthetics and essentialization might be understood in the light of the differential view. The first part of the paper discusses Tillich’sessentialization in the light of the differential thinking and in relation to Schelling’s potentialization. The second part of the paper discusses the conception of the synthesis ofpersonality in Tillich and in Kierkegaard and its expressions in recent new aesthetics.The synthesis of personality is central in essentialization: the synthesis is formed in the interplay between positive and negative elements; synthesis is truth done. The paper also discusses art as "truth done" and it lifts up examples in contemporary art in which the synthesis of personality and the expressiveness of ethics and truth are explicated.

The article discusses both Tillich and Kierkegaard in the perspective of differential thinking. Differential thinking, initiated by Schelling, is not build on the binary opposition between sensing and thinking, but sensing belongs to thinking and vice versa. The development of subjectivity in Kierkegaard is expressed in that how the individual senses his or her existence (how-truth). The how-truths are differentiated from the what-truths of modern scientific knowledge. What-truths are objective representations; how-truths express the sensed. The paper discusses also the difference between negative and positive philosophy in religious knowledge. Both Tillich and Kierkegaard seem to follow Schelling in differentiating between the two. The negative philosophy, based on radical doubt, takes the possibility of objective knowledge of God away. The positive philosophy both in Tillich and in Kierkegaard opens up for the metaphorical and the symbolic. The metaphorical expresses the sensed; religious knowledge speaks the language of how-truths.

The essay “The art of learning and art in learning; difference between informative and integral learning” makes a difference between the level of representations and the dimension of structural possibilities. Informative learning, he claims, moves on the level of representations, whereas integral learning focuses on those structures and drives that shape the representations; the dimension of structural possibilities precedes the level of representations and structures it. Traditionally teaching and learning have made use of informative learning or, to use Freirer’s words, the banking education. The integral learning deals with the structural capacities of the mind, as they come to expression in the shaping of one’s world-view. Art, it is argued, expresses the first-forms of the mind-world or the self-world interaction; art is essential to learning.

Background: Self-Rated Health (SRH) correlates with risk of illness and death. But how are different questions of SRH to be interpreted? Does it matter whether one asks: "How would you assess your general state of health?"(General SRH) or "How would you assess your general state of health compared to persons of your own age?"(Comparative SRH)? Does the context in a questionnaire affect the answers? The aim of this paper is to examine the meaning of two questions on self-rated health, the statistical distribution of the answers, and whether the context of the question in a questionnaire affects the answers. Methods: Statistical and semantic methodologies were used to analyse the answers of two different SRH questions in a cross-sectional survey, the MONICA-project of northern Sweden. Results: The answers from 3504 persons were analysed. The statistical distributions of answers differed. The most common answer to the General SRH was "good", while the most common answer to the Comparative SRH was "similar". The semantic analysis showed that what is assessed in SRH is not health in a medical and lexical sense but fields of association connected to health, for example health behaviour, functional ability, youth, looks, way of life. The meaning and function of the two questions differ - mainly due to the comparing reference in Comparative SRH. The context in the questionnaire may have affected the statistics. Conclusions: Health is primarily assessed in terms of its sense-relations (associations) and Comparative SRH and General SRH contain different information on SRH. Comparative SRH is semantically more distinct. The context of the questions in a questionnaire may affect the way self-rated health questions are answered. Comparative SRH should not be eliminated from use in questionnaires. Its usefulness in clinical encounters should be investigated.