Page 137 - TWO OF A KIND • Erik Renkema

DUTCH COOPERATION SCHOOLS AS DEMOCRATIC COMMUNITIES
respondents – teachers and principals alike – regard their school as a place where
living together and encounter are practiced (Renkema, Mulder and Barnard 2016,
2017, 2018a). However, this perspective, and especially the value of encounter, are
rarely expressed in moments of contemplation and celebrations (Renkema, Mulder
and Barnard 2017, 2018a). Moments of contemplation are daily moments in which
religious themes are presented. In our research we focused on dialogue as a way of
expressing the value of encounter. We concluded that dialogue is limited because
of the segregated nature of contemplation at many cooperation schools, along the
lines of the distinction between public education and confessional denominations.
We see a similar segregation in schools’ collective celebrations: students from
secular formation education present to all other students, as do students from 6 Christian formation education (Renkema, Mulder and Barnard 2018b). Dialogue
is not practiced in the didactics of the moments of contemplation nor in the celebrations (Renkema, Mulder and Barnard 2017, 2018a, 2018b).
We investigated the relation between school identity and the practice of religious education in the context of the plurality that is characteristic for this type of school: students and teachers of secular education come together with students and teachers of confessional education. Confessional education is, in most cases that we have investigated, Christian (Renkema, Mulder and Barnard 2016). The specific kind of diversity in school and classroom could be a strong impulse for the professionals of cooperation schools to reflect on the question of how to match school values and their interpretations with the practice of religious education. Cooperation schools in particular must deal with the challenge to reflect on this match: they have merged, mainly because of external circumstances, and the merging two identities become a new school identity.
Respondents in our research see opportunities for expressing their educational values and those of formal school documents in religious education, which consists of moments of contemplation and celebrations (Renkema, Mulder and Barnard 2017, 2018a). Indeed, religious education theory suggests that educational practices about religious themes can foster a sense of community. Miedema states, for example, that students need to experience, be confronted by, and “should become acquainted with other children’s backgrounds, ideas, experiences, and practices including the ones related to religions and worldview in the embryonic or mini society of the school” (2014, 365).
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