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How to teach young adults life orientation today? New approaches from Taiwan and Hong Kong

Guggenmos, Esther-Maria LU orcid and Lu, Yulin LU orcid (2025) In Föreningen Lärare i religionskunskap. Årsbok 56. p.139-152
Abstract
Since the late 1990s, a new school subject has emerged in Taiwan and Hong Kong, called “Life Education” (shengming jiaoyu 生命教育) that resembles Swedish forms of livskundskap. Inspired by the desire to assist students in their search for orientation in life and to counteract the alarmingly high suicide rate among young people in a success-driven society, Taiwan’s Ministry of Education has worked continuously over the past 30 years to create space for reflection and self-development in schools. In secondary high schools, Life Education has become a credit-bearing course informed by philosophical and religious thought. While religion has been considered a private matter for decades, with this school subject, reflections about religious thought... (More)
Since the late 1990s, a new school subject has emerged in Taiwan and Hong Kong, called “Life Education” (shengming jiaoyu 生命教育) that resembles Swedish forms of livskundskap. Inspired by the desire to assist students in their search for orientation in life and to counteract the alarmingly high suicide rate among young people in a success-driven society, Taiwan’s Ministry of Education has worked continuously over the past 30 years to create space for reflection and self-development in schools. In secondary high schools, Life Education has become a credit-bearing course informed by philosophical and religious thought. While religion has been considered a private matter for decades, with this school subject, reflections about religious thought and practice, as well as religious organisations, are becoming present at schools. How can we contextualise this development? To what extent is “religion” present in Life Education schoolbooks? And can this development be instructive for other religiously plural and hybrid contexts? We trace this development through a historical overview of the emergence of this initiative in Taiwan and Hong Kong and illustrate its characteristics by analysing the representation of Buddhism in schoolbooks from Taiwan and Hong Kong, drawing on our ongoing research at Lund University on Life
Education. The contribution concludes with a reflection on the relevance of Life Education for teaching religion in religiously superdiverse contexts. (Less)
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author
and
organization
publishing date
type
Contribution to specialist publication or newspaper
publication status
published
subject
in
Föreningen Lärare i religionskunskap. Årsbok
volume
56
pages
14 pages
publisher
Föreningen lärare i religionskunskap
ISSN
0348-8918
language
English
LU publication?
yes
additional info
Year book 2025: Asiens religioner i rörelse – mellan tradition, samtid och lärande Editors: Emma Hall & Bodil Liljefors Persson
id
8bceca3d-4b32-4d9e-a275-86e302eddeba
date added to LUP
2026-02-04 21:18:01
date last changed
2026-02-17 08:49:22
@misc{8bceca3d-4b32-4d9e-a275-86e302eddeba,
  abstract     = {{Since the late 1990s, a new school subject has emerged in Taiwan and Hong Kong, called “Life Education” (shengming jiaoyu 生命教育) that resembles Swedish forms of livskundskap. Inspired by the desire to assist students in their search for orientation in life and to counteract the alarmingly high suicide rate among young people in a success-driven society, Taiwan’s Ministry of Education has worked continuously over the past 30 years to create space for reflection and self-development in schools. In secondary high schools, Life Education has become a credit-bearing course informed by philosophical and religious thought. While religion has been considered a private matter for decades, with this school subject, reflections about religious thought and practice, as well as religious organisations, are becoming present at schools. How can we contextualise this development? To what extent is “religion” present in Life Education schoolbooks? And can this development be instructive for other religiously plural and hybrid contexts? We trace this development through a historical overview of the emergence of this initiative in Taiwan and Hong Kong and illustrate its characteristics by analysing the representation of Buddhism in schoolbooks from Taiwan and Hong Kong, drawing on our ongoing research at Lund University on Life<br/>Education. The contribution concludes with a reflection on the relevance of Life Education for teaching religion in religiously superdiverse contexts.}},
  author       = {{Guggenmos, Esther-Maria and Lu, Yulin}},
  issn         = {{0348-8918}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  pages        = {{139--152}},
  publisher    = {{Föreningen lärare i religionskunskap}},
  series       = {{Föreningen Lärare i religionskunskap. Årsbok}},
  title        = {{How to teach young adults life orientation today? New approaches from Taiwan and Hong Kong}},
  volume       = {{56}},
  year         = {{2025}},
}