178 What alumni and teacher educators mentioned is largely consistent with what is described in the literature about developing diversity competences among future teachers, although themain difference is that alumni and teacher educators aremainly concernedwith internal rather than external religious diversity. The aspect of ‘critical consciousness’ in the sense of focusing on social change as found in the literature is not reflected. Also, deepening one’s own faith is mentioned as a significant aspect by alumni and teacher educators, but did not emerge so strongly from the literature. Moreover, what has been said is more from the perspective of how the teachers deal with diversity among pupils, rather than how they can prepare pupils to effectively deal with religious others. So this might be an area for improvement in the orthodox Protestant teacher education programme. It would be worthwhile to enrich the perspectives on religious diversity within teacher education programmes by paying more attention to the perspective of citizenship education. Two elements of the conclusion have been elaborated on since these have important theoretical implications for the thus-far limited body of knowledge around teachers positioned within mono-religious education, especially within OPPSs (see Section 1.4). These elements are teachers’ own role in the religious socialisation of children and the significance of internal religious diversity within the professionalism of teachers in OPPSs-issues that are also interrelated. The practical implications of current research are discussed below. First, with regard to the teachers’ own role, it is a new empirical insight that teachers clearly distinguish their role from that of other pedagogical agents in religious socialisation. This insight is crucial because the similarity between school, church and family tends to be strongly emphasised when it is about OPPSs. It is proposed to denote the distinction between the roles of the religious nurturer and the religious educators on a continuum, because this allows for a richer description of professional responsibilities and practices instead of highlighting the mutual exclusiveness of these roles. Second, the current study shows that even in strong religious communities and in OPPSs there is ample diversity. The impact of this internal religious diversity for teachers and pupils can be similar to that of external religious diversity in other situations. Dealing with internal religious diversity does not appear to come naturally to either teachers or students: it is seen as something that must be learned. In this regard, Islamic education might be a forerunner to other strong religious schools in terms of experiences around dealing with internal religious diversity. In line with the theoretical relevance, there are also a number of issues to note when it comes to the practical relevance of this research for OPPSs and their position in society. The answer to the central research question has already indicated the practical relevance for teacher education programmes. First, it is recommended to explicitly look from the
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