Page 84 - TWO OF A KIND • Erik Renkema

CHAPTER 4
contemplated (Renkema, Mulder and Barnard 2017). The focus on these celebrations may offer new strategies for dealing with religious plurality in education and may confirm and/or question previous results from our research on collective religious education.
2. In the way school identity is put into practice with regard to religious diversity, there seems to be a discrepancy between the segregation of students in the moment of contemplation and the collective celebration with all students. Can concurrent segregated and collective practice of religious education do justice to plurality and to school values?
3. Ritual theory states that rituals serve a social function, which may be important for expressing and enhancing the identity as expressed through core values of encounter and equality. The context of plurality at cooperation schools requires an examination of this function: Can we see a ritual like the collective celebration as an example of encounter and equality? Does this perspective provide motives for dealing with plurality in religious education?
We selected four cooperation primary schools, and concentrated on the segregated moment of contemplation and the collective religious celebration. We studied the motives and practices of the teachers by conducting questionnaires and interviews. Our results show what motives teachers present in order to deal with plurality in religious education and how these motives are identifiable in practice. These findings are of utmost importance for teachers and principals of schools who recognize this religious plurality and are searching for practices and perspectives on education that do justice to it. The results reveal a range of practices and motives for dealing with religious plurality in cooperation schools. But how do these practices and motives relate to each other and to the school values? What tensions and challenges do we recognize?
2. Expressing school identity
Our research examines how the identity of cooperation schools is expressed in religious educational practices. We consider the teacher to be an important actor in this process (Renkema, Mulder and Barnard 2017). This article focuses on the expression of key values in segregated moments of contemplation and collective
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