Page 112 - TWO OF A KIND • Erik Renkema

CHAPTER 5
3. Research question
In our previous research, the teachers involved recognized the limitations in the practice of dialogue as an expression of the school value of encounter (Renkema, Mulder and Barnard 2018). Their challenge is to shape a new practice of religious education that offers a direction for resolving the discrepancy between school values and the lived practice. In this new practice, the characteristics of dialogue mentioned in the previous section should play an important role.
We designed a research context in which a new way of dealing with the discrepancy could be created in the form of an experiment. The resulting educational practice could tell us more about the motivation for and content of religious activities involving plurality and dialogue. In a participatory action research process that was intended to lead to the experiment, we intentionally and repeatedly introduced the concept of dialogue to reflect on. By doing so, we clearly showed how this concept is interpreted and developed by the teachers. The main question of the participatory action research was:
What are the teachers’ motives for pursuing an experimental celebration at a cooperation school, what concepts and design requirements are involved, and how can this celebration be evaluated from a theory of dialogue and from the teachers’ perspective?
4. Research group: The school
To conduct our research, we needed a “typical case” (Gray 2013, 217/218) that could meet three criteria, as follows:
1. The school is the result of a merger between a confessional school and a
public school;
2. The school organizes segregated moments of contemplation, thus creating a
discrepancy between this practice and our objective of a collective practice
for all students;
3. Teachers are motivated to participate in an action research process that
seeks to improve the alignment between school values and educational practice.
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