Page 68 - TWO OF A KIND • Erik Renkema

CHAPTER 3
were primarily interested in the following three topics: the vision on religious diversity in key values (social perspective), the vision on possible religious content in these values and the vision on possible religious content in religious education (substantive perspective). To verify that our analysis was up-to-date, we invited the principal to check our outcomes; he confirmed our conclusions.
3.3.2. Videos of the Moment of Contemplation
We recorded the moments of contemplation on video. For the analysis, we constructed an observation format. In this format, several aspects are specified under the following categories: time, physical space, participants, activities, sources, religious content. Before this formal analysis, we attended the moment of contemplation in three groups as an initial orientation. The aim was twofold: firstly, the teachers could familiarise themselves with the presence of a researcher in the classroom (and both students and teachers had the opportunity to ask questions). Secondly, attending this moment could provide us with information that might be significant for our research question, observations and interviews. Due to our findings during this orientation, we added the set-up of the classroom to our observation form: Do the participants sit in a circle, in groups or in rows? This item would provide us with information about the teacher’s organisational choices, and whether the chosen set-up might stimulate dialogue.
We recorded the moment of contemplation in as ordinary a setting as possible in order to receive video data that illustrated the valid practice (Tuma, Schnettler, and Knoblauch 2013). To receive a reliable representation of the practice of the entire school, all classes were recorded during two days. We received a total of thirteen recordings from the seven classes. The camera was positioned in such a way that the actions of the teacher and the students were visible. In the subsequent interviews (§ 4.3), the teachers confirmed that the recorded moments of contemplation represent common quotidian practice.
In our analysis, we honoured the two perspectives: the social perspective was operationalised as ‘the way the organisation of the classroom and didactics stimulate the dialogue between the participants’; the substantive perspective was operationalised as ‘the content of religious sources and themes’.
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