Page 130 - TWO OF A KIND • Erik Renkema

CHAPTER 5
classed the new design as a celebration, it only has some of the characteristics of a celebration. It could also be called a religious education lesson for a large group of students. Therefore, we ask what the elements are of a celebration that fits the general description and that implements dialogue as an expression of the school value of encounter.
8.2. Questions for further research
A study of one school provided us with answers to our main question. This particular cooperation school offers lessons in religious education divided along the lines of the original denominations: public and Christian. It also organizes religious education where students from the two types of religious education meet. This school has hardly any experience with collective religious education in which religious content is introduced into dialogue among all the students. The newly developed practice is the start of a new experience for these teachers. However, other cooperation schools have other practices of religious education (Renkema, Mulder and Barnard 2016). Therefore, we suggest conducting action research with teachers of cooperation schools that offer collective religious lessons: could this lead to a practice that answers the questions we discussed in 8.1? Our second question relates to the perspective on objectives and values of education in general. Can we provide a specific perspective that sheds light on possible ways to deal with these discrepancies and with the implementation of this view in religious education? This perspective may help teachers and principals of cooperation schools to reflect on the educational values in their unique setting and on the coherent correlation between these values and the practice of religious education.
8.3. Beyond a single case study
Our research is based on a single case study that we defined as a pilot study. The answers to our research question cannot be transposed onto all cooperation schools. This is an important restriction of our analysis and our conclusions. However, this pilot study does add to our previous research by putting forward a new perspective on the discrepancy we detected. It was the discrepancy between the school values of encounter and the limited practices of religious education. In our previous research, we saw in particular that dialogue, as an expression of encounter, was hardly fostered in daily practice. In this participatory action research, teachers tried to handle this discrepancy by designing a new and experimental celebration in which dialogue was organized. However, in this process of designing, and
128