Page 165 - TWO OF A KIND • Erik Renkema
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experience in religious education with the wish of teachers to pay attention to the content of a religious tradition (chapter 5) and to a diversity of traditions (chapter 3). Therefore, we recommend more action research with teachers (and possibly students and parents) to develop practices in which the dialogue about personal experiences of students in relation to traditions is expressed. In such a research also another question that is addressed in the discussion about our action research (chapter 5) can be answered: what can be the role of a supervisor in action research, especially when it comes to discussing a discrepancy between institutional values and educational practices and how can ownership in defining the problem and in the research activities and research process be put in the hands of the professionals?
5. Reflection on our research 7 Looking back on our research, we recognize a few strengths and some limitations.
First, we mention three strengths.
As a strength we note that the choice for the cooperation school as research subject was a good one. The phenomenon is upcoming, has a unique setting of plurality and gets more and more attention of schools, school boards and politicians. Our research was the first academic research that studied the values, as they are formulated and practiced in religious education, of this specific kind of school. Our choice for cooperation schools as research subject adds to theory about religious education in plural settings by incorporating non-affiliated students. It is a unique characteristic of the type of schools that religious education is provided for and encounter can be fostered between students from confessional backgrounds and students who are non-affiliated.
Second, we see it as a strength that we investigated the coherence between values and the practice of religious education. We could place these findings in the context of theory about religious education in a plural setting. Investigating the expression of school values in the concrete practice of religious education has provided insight into this kind of value-based education in the context of a specific kind of diversity. We have been able to explore the organization of religious education in this context and the motives that grounded this organization. Our study of the coherence between school values and religious education has shown
CONCLUSIONS AND DISCUSSION
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