In this groundbreaking study in the methodology of comparative religious education Oddrun Bråten Set out to utilise and test her methodology for comparative religious education. This synthesises three Sets of ideas. The first includes supranational, national and subnational processes. The second Set of ideas concerns the societal, institutional, instructional and experiential levels of curriculum. They are affected by supranational, national and subnational processes. The third Set of ideas includes Bråten’s use of Schiffauer and collaborators’ concepts of social/national imaginary and civil enculturation.

There is an increasing recognition today that young people need to have knowledge about religions and world views in order to live and work in diverse societies. What kind of ‘maps’ are they provided with through religious, values and ethics education? Does education address the challenging existential questions that children and adolescents ask about life and the world? This volume addresses different aspects of how existential questions have been dealt with in educational research. It especially draws attention to the Swedish research tradition of focusing on life questions and the interpretation of life in education, but with contemporary international research added.