NCSR 2008 - Urban Diversity and Religious Traditions
13-15 August 2008, Åbo Akademi University

What is the content and objective in the Church of Sweden’s confirmation training? – Results from a survey among the teachers

Per Pettersson

45 000 Swedish young people take part each year in the Church of Sweden’s confirmation training. The participation rate is presently 35 % of all 15-year olds. There is however no more detailed curriculum or guideline stated by the church telling what should be included in the 60 hour confirmation course. And the nationally formulated aim and objective for the confirmation training are very broadly and generally formulated. In practice it is to a large extent up to each individual confirmation teacher or team of teachers to form their own curriculum for their course. Thereby it is of great interest to find out the content of their curriculum what they themselves regard as the aim. In this survey 843 church employees from seven dioceses, active as confirmation teachers, have participated. They have answered questions on what they regard as the main objectives, what issues are most important to focus on, what kind of teaching material they use, how much and what the confirmands ought to learn by heart, how many times they are obliged to visit church services during the confirmation time, etc. Results from the study show great variation, but also consensus. They reveal the major change of focus in Swedish confirmation training that has taken place during the last decades.