A Double Bypass? Tracing How the Aims of Religious Education Are Negotiated Across Different Dimensions of the Curriculum in Norway

Abstract

Religious education (RE) across Europe is drawn between promoting intercultural education and fostering national community. Examining the national curriculum and three RE textbooks in Norway, I find that the former stresses common identity while the latter emphasize plurality and intercultural education. My observations join extant research on the different dimensions of the curriculum and furthermore show how priorities in national curricula may be circumnavigated in what Oddrun M. H. Bråten calls bypasses. However, classroom studies from Norway find that national identity is important for RE teachers, thereby demonstrating a double bypass, if you will.