109 WCD as a (W(H)olistic Response 2 their deep work as taking care of the health of their student’s souls, even as they focus on learning and knowledge’ (Moore, 2019, p. 56). 2.5 TOWARDS A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK In 2024, after four years of joint study into and conversation about WCD, the Dutch research consortium under the leadership of the NIVOZ Foundation, in which DCU participated (with two pedagogues and myself), presented its main findings. It did so in a short paper published in Dutch (de Voogd et al., 2024), which I co-authored. I will briefly summarise the paper here, following the lines of the conceptual framework that it presented and that is featured in this section. An important note to start with is that the research consortium did not ultimately choose to uphold the term WCD, instead opting for a type of umbrella term that is less closely connected to the cultural countermovement and more informative regarding the content of the type of education it wants to endorse. A significant problem is that this name—‘breedvormend onderwijs’— is difficult to translate into English. The most accurate translation I can suggest is ‘broadly formative education’. The paper first discussed intentions. The aim of broadly formative education is that children, when they grow up, are connected—to themselves, to others and to the world. The ideal is that they ‘can and want to be meaningful in society from their own talents and interests’ (de Voogd et al., 2024). To this end, ‘it is important that children can develop to their full potential, in which all dimensions of their humanity (physical, social, emotional, cognitive, creative, spiritual and ethical) are seen, valued and stimulated’ (de Voogd et al., 2024). As basic principles of broadly formative education, the paper distinguished a holistic view of humanity and the world (‘you cannot separate children (and adults) from their environment and isolate the different dimensions of being human’; de Voogd et al., 2024), a pedagogical basic attitude (‘the teacher is constantly looking for what this child, in its context and this moment, needs and assumes the possibilities of each child’) and world-centredness (‘the teacher introduces children to the world, inviting them to relate to it in their own way’). With respect to the latter—world-centredness—the paper mentioned the strengthening of agency in students as one of its central goals. Broadly formative education cannot be achieved without ‘intentional educational practice’ (de Voogd et al., 2024). Therefore, ‘professional selfunderstanding’ on the part of the teacher is needed (de Voogd et al., 2024). For teacher training, this requires a ‘holistic curriculum’, with deliberate attention paid to student agency, pedagogical tact and world-centredness.
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