Page 115 - TWO OF A KIND • Erik Renkema

For the encounter between students, the school organizes religious education
according to a specific pattern: the teachers choose themes derived from a
lesson guide for Christian education. The teachers mention the theme daily in
the moment of contemplation, which takes 10-15 minutes. Specific Christian or
general religious education is offered twice a week, also connected to this central
theme and provided by teachers who are qualified. This takes 1.5 hours a week at
most. After this segregated moment, the students return to their regular classes
and inform each other briefly about the content they discussed. In a weekly closing 5 ceremony, all students give a presentation to students from other classes about
what came up in the segregated moments. Religious celebrations are organized at Christmas and Easter. There are two Christmas celebrations: a secular event for all students in the village hall and a Christian celebration organized for and by students of Christian education in the church. Students of general religious education and their parents are welcome, but they do not participate actively.
In order to design a new and dialogical practice, the school composed a taskforce of four teachers. The principal of the school provided contact information for the teachers participating in the study, one of whom is the principal himself. Three teachers were present during all the design meetings. A fourth teacher dropped out after the first session for time management reasons. In the third and fourth, she was replaced by a colleague who also organizes general religious education. All meetings were attended by teachers from both Christian and non-affiliated backgrounds.
5. Method, data and analysis
The school wanted to improve the practice of celebration, focusing on encounter, and facilitated the teachers in scheduling time to improve this practice by themselves. To retrieve knowledge about the implementation of encounter in the shape of dialogue at a cooperation school, the process of developing an experimental form of celebration was designed as a participatory action research cycle, guided and monitored by one of the researchers: the first author. On the continuum of positionality in participatory action research, this researcher can be seen as an outsider, collaborating with insiders (Herr and Anderson 2005). The mode of participation of the insiders can be labeled as consultation; this means that insiders work together with the researchers to create a new practice,
A PILOT STUDY
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