Page 32 - TWO OF A KIND • Erik Renkema

CHAPTER 1
theory: classroom encounter, equality of sources, and attention for students’ life experiences. Descriptive Coding was used for pointing out what basic topics were characteristic for the data. Values Coding was used for determining how the practice of religious education and celebrations was valued by the teachers. Together, the coding strategies answered the question of how school values relate to the practice of religious education, and the extent to which teacher appreciate how they relate.
After the first three phases, the data showed a discrepancy between the values of school documents and the opinions of respondents on the one hand, and the content and organization of religious education on the other hand. In particular, the practice and facilitation of encounter between students was limited. Therefore, we designed a research context in which a new way of dealing with the discrepancy could be created in the form of an experiment: a pilot study.
5.2.4. Phase 4
The pilot study was designed as participatory action research in order to detect what motivations and challenges the teachers face when they are asked to create such an experiment. In this phase, we selected one school that faced an explicit discrepancy as detected in phases 2 and 3. Teachers and the principal of the school underlined this discrepancy in phase 3 and expressed their willingness to participate by trying to design a new practice in which the discrepancy was dealt with. We answered the question of what the teachers’ motives are for pursuing an experimental celebration at a cooperation school, what concepts and design requirements are involved, and how this celebration can be evaluated from a theory of dialogue and from the teachers’ perspective. We used various kinds of data. School documents and website entries were subjected to a content analysis to create a picture of the schools’ vision on education and on religious education and to get acquainted with the key values of the schools. The results were inserted in the discussions in group sessions. To monitor the design and evaluation process, which took place in four group sessions, all sessions were audio recorded. Moreover, we retrieved participant reports from each session. The recordings, written artefacts (products from the sessions, like values for educating and design requirements for a celebration, written on paper) and the participants’ reports were subjected to content analysis by various coding techniques. The content analysis was structured by topics related to our research question (concepts, motives, values, design requirements,
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