Page 90 - TWO OF A KIND • Erik Renkema

CHAPTER 4
- teachers’ motives to participate
- appreciation of the process of preparing for the celebration
- appreciation of the composition of the organizing group
- appreciation of diversity in the organizing group
- appreciation of the use of religious sources
- appreciation of attention for students’ life experiences
- appreciation of objectives of religious education
- appreciation of didactics
- students’ appreciation
- points for improvement.
All interviews were recorded, and lasted between 32 and 48 minutes.
4.4. Analysis
Our content analysis of the data is divided into two parts. The first resulted in a (partly quantitative) inventory of facts that emerged from related questions in the questionnaire.
The second part, a thematic analysis by identifying main themes in the rest of the questionnaire and the interviews, was done by using QDA-miner for coding in two steps. In the first step, our three theoretical concepts were used to structure the data: classroom encounter, equality of sources in religious education, and students’ life experiences. In the second step, we coded our data using an inductive approach: multiple codes were identified in the data and categorized. These categories and matching codes for all empirical sources are specified in thematic maps. We conducted Descriptive and Values Coding (Saldaña 2009) in the analysis of three questions in the questionnaires (Values Coding) and of the interviews (Descriptive and Values Coding). Each code was linked to a category. 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. The coding was done by the first author, while a reliability check was performed by the second author. A number of codes were added following the check, linked to the category of encounter.
5. Results
The general characteristics of the four schools, specified in Table 1 (Appendix A), are worth mentioning before presenting the results of our empirical study.
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