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summary177Sthe fact that teachers in Waldorf schools are committed to the school from a double conviction: they share both the philosophical and the pedagogical vision. This could explain why even in the midlife phase, when some teachers experience being ‘stuck’ in the profession, they continue to share the school vision more than teachers from other schools.The perception of shared values and beliefs is also greater in schools with an explicit school vision. This was found in the exploratory study in chapter 2 of this dissertation, in which Waldorf teachers were more likely than mainstream school teachers to have the same values and beliefs towards learning and teaching as their peers (Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2017), and was confirmed in chapter 4. Looking specifically at teachers in different career stages, the analyses in chapter 4 show that starting teachers in all schools with an explicit vision perceive more shared values and beliefs than teachers from mainstream schools without an explicit vision. In later career stages (i.e., from the fifth year), too, teachers at Waldorf schools and Reformed schools experience significantly more shared values and beliefs than teachers at mainstream schools, while the difference between mainstream schools and traditional educational renewal schools disappears after the fifth year of experience. We can explain this by the fact that teachers at Waldorf and Reformed schools also share values and beliefs about life in general, not just about learning and teaching. Waldorf teachers and teachers at Reformed schools can form more of a ‘value community’, a social network with more or less shared values (Coleman & Hoffer, 1987), while teachers at Montessori, Dalton and Jenaplan schools share views on education, but have more diverse values and beliefs about life in general.Finally, mutual trust at schools with an explicit school vision also turned out to be greater than at mainstream schools without an explicit vision. In the exploratory study in chapter 2, Waldorf teachers reported more mutual trust than mainstream school teachers did. This is consistent with the findings of Bryk and Schneider (2002), who argue that mutual trust in professional learning communities is based on shared beliefs of individuals regarding the school vision. They describe this as ‘organic’ trust. The mutual trust between teachers in mainstream education in chapter 2 is not based on shared views and is ‘contractual’ rather than ‘organic’ (Bryk & Schneider, 2002). Differences in mutual trust between schools with and those without an explicit school vision were also confirmed in the quantitative follow-up study, where the main effect of an explicit school vision on mutual trust was significant. From the analyses specific to the different career phases, only the group of starting teachers (0-4 years of work experience) at Reformed schools with an explicit school vision appeared to Ester Moraal.indd 177 22-09-2023 16:13