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The aim of this article is to present varieties of ethical competence that are highlighted in ethics and moral education research articles, and to discuss them in the light of competences stressed in the Swedish curriculum, understood as an example of ethics education in compulsory school. The material consists of 1,940 educational research articles published between 2000 and 2015, and the method of analysis is inductive, focusing on ethical competence. One finding is the similarity between the study's tentative formulation of identified ethical competences in four categories, and Rest's understanding of acting morally, captured in the four components: sensitivity, judgement, motivation and implementation. Based on the analysis of the articles, broader understandings of these focuses are developed, and later discussed in relation to Swedish ethics education, characterised as both a conservative and liberal values education. The analyses and comparison show the importance of the components of moral sensitivity and moral implementation and their relative absence in the Swedish curriculum, but also how moral judgement must include a competence to evaluate moral motivations, where empirically testable reasons are also central. Moreover, the risk of neglecting contextual, situational and knowledge-related aspects of ethical competence is highlighted.

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The aim of this article is to highlight some conceptions of ethical competence identified in interviews with teachers in religious education in Sweden, and within analyses of policy documents in a Swedish and an Icelandic educational context. As a starting point we take seven interviewed teachers' comments about what they view as important ethical competences for their pupils to have. A comparative analysis of Swedish and Icelandic policy documents with regard to the conceptual understandings of ethical competence is made, as well as a comparison between the policy documents and teachers' comments. The Icelandic curriculum is chosen because it differs from the Swedish one in a sense relevant to an analysis of the teacher interviews. The analyses imply a tension between theoretical and analytical conceptions of ethical competence and an action competence. Finally, some possible threads to consider in developing a broadened and deepened understanding of ethical competence are outlined.