This book presents a number of fundamentally challenging perspectives that have been brought to
the fore by the national tests on religious education (RE) in Sweden. It particularly focuses
on the content under the heading Ethics. It is common knowledge that many teachers find these
parts difficult to handle within RE. Further ethics is a field that addresses a range of moral
and existential issues that are not easily treated. Many of these issues may be said to belong
to the philosophical context in which eternal questions are gathered and reflected upon.The
first chapters highlight the concepts of ethical competence and critical thinking. In the
following chapters the concept of ethical competence is analyzed with regard to teachers'
objectives and to students' texts respectively. These chapters pursue a more practice-related
approach and highlight specific challenges identified from both teacher and student
perspectives. Next the book raises the issue of global responsibility. What kind of critical
issues arise when handling such matters at school? Further can contemporary moral philosophers
contribute to such a discussion? In turn the book discusses the role of statistical analyses
with regard to national tests while the closing chapters present international perspectives on
the book's main themes and concluding remarks.The book's critical yet constructive approach to
issues regarding assessment in ethics education makes a valuable contribution to an ongoing
debate among researchers as well as to the everyday communication on testing in schools and
classrooms. As such it will appeal to scholars in ethics education and researchers in the
field of assessment as well as educators and teachers interested and engaged in the task of
testing ethics in school contexts where curricular demands for valid and authoritative
evaluation may provide important guidelines but may also pose challenges of their own.
