Page 166 - TWO OF A KIND • Erik Renkema

CHAPTER 7
discrepancies and possibilities to construct a more balanced correlation. This way we provide teachers and principals of cooperation schools with concrete suggestions for their educational practice in dealing with the correlation. Our third strength is a methodical one. We used a variety of empirical instruments by which we could not only identify the values of respondents by interviewing them but also the implementation of the values in religious education by observing concrete practices. And next to the analysis of the current practices and ideas, we also contributed to these by organizing participatory action research.
We mention three limitations of our research. We see the unique kind of diversity of cooperation schools also as a limitation. As mentioned before, cooperation schools mainly exist in rural areas of the Netherlands. Theory about religious education in the context of diversity and about plural western societies mostly discusses a diversity of multiple religious traditions. This diversity is put forward as most challenging and necessary. However, this kind of diversity is not applicable to most cooperation schools because of demographic reasons. We therefore need to underline this reservation when we describe the diversity of cooperation schools. Our subject of the cooperation school has its own unique plural setting. A second limitation is the number of participating schools. In phase 1, 17 schools filled in the questionnaire and they were almost all the result of a merger between a Protestant and a public school. A small minority of Roman Catholic- public cooperation schools participated. Due to practical reasons in phase 2 and phase 4 only one school was included in the case studies, which of course makes comparison impossible.
We intended to compare two schools in the participative action research for organizing an experiment with dialogue in religious education. We tried to select a school that organizes moments of contemplation in a segregated way and one that offers collective religious education. However, none of the schools with collective religious education that we contacted felt the need or had time to participate. Therefore, we had no opportunity to investigate how these two distinct types of cooperation school relate when they were challenged to express dialogue in a new practice. The third limitation concerns the participative action research and the role of the researcher in phase 4. For organizing the experiment of the new celebration the researcher emphasized the concept of dialogue. This influenced the final script of the celebration. Although the participants valued the process of organizing the
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