Children’s existential questions and worldviews : possible RE responses to performance anxiety and an increasing risk of exclusion

The aim of this article is to examine patterns in Swedish children’s existential questions andworldviews in 2020 in relation to patterns from 1970 and 1987, but also to point towards afurther discussion of importance, about possible RE responses to these findings. The material,children’s texts, comes both from studies conducted by Sven Hartman and colleaguesin the 1970s and 1980s, and from new empirical studies. The children’s responses are collectedaccording to the same method, sentence completion tasks, in both cases. Theoretically,the article is anchored in both the tradition of Swedish worldview studies and thenew international interest in these perspectives for religious education. Existential questionsand worldviews are seen as interdependent in human beings’ life interpretations,which are continuously developing and are both sociocultural and existential in nature. Theempirical findings show a strong and increasing focus on relationships, but also a recurrentfocus on achievements, which relates to school as context and community. In relationto these findings, the article stresses the importance of RE responses, and discusses concretelywhat such responses might advantageously include. Among other things, the importanceis stressed of an RE that offers the student greater awareness of her life interpretations,and encourages her to develop broader repertoires of frameworks, through which thestudent might have a better chance to be the author of her own life, which is inevitably acollectively shared life.