Page 16 - TWO OF A KIND • Erik Renkema

CHAPTER 1
We answer the research question by describing the practice of religious education and the values in which the teachers’ organization of this education is grounded. We investigate both the values and the practices of religious education and shed light on the coherence between values and education. This investigation leads to conclusions and recommendations regarding coherence; we relate the conclusions and recommendations to theory about encounter and equality in religious education and to requirements of a democratic, plural society. After the description of the research phases and our theoretical concepts, we will formulate our sub-questions in section 5.2.
Answering the question contributes to the academic debate about religious diversity in classrooms (Hermans 2004). Theory indicates religious diversity both as a challenge and an opportunity for teachers (Ipgrave 2004). Religious and intercultural education plays an especially important role in this plural setting (Schreiner 2006a). Our research relies on an empirical focus on a specific type of school with students from secular and confessional backgrounds. We explore how the diversity described above is addressed in religious education at cooperation schools and what motives and challenges are attached to dealing with diversity in this way. Our research also develops a perspective on the coherence between school values and the practice of religious education, or lack thereof (Keast and Leganger- Krogstadt 2004). Many schools face the challenge of creating a commonality between the school values as interpreted by teachers, students, parents and formal documents on the one hand and the practice of education on the other. Therefore, it is necessary to reflect on these values and on the relationship between these values and the educational practice. Both in public schools as well as in nongovernment schools, teachers “are hardly aware of the formal identity of the school” (Bakker and Ter Avest 2014, 411) or “of how their pedagogical strategies relate to the school’s identity” (Bakker and Ter Avest 2014, 411). The coherence between school values on the one hand and the practice of (religious) education on the other hand is a main challenge of every school, but especially of the cooperation school. Especially in classrooms where diversity is apparent, there is “discrepancy between the official identity of the school as it is formulated in official documents, and everyday practice” (Ter Avest et al. 2007, 250). Our research contributes to the current academic discourse on school identity, diversity and religious education (e.g. Faber 2012; Rautionmaa and Kallioniemi 2017; Ipgrave 2004) by elaborating on the values that the teachers of cooperation schools hold dear, how they motivate
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