13 Preface P data that render this research valid. I am also grateful for the companionship of the representatives of the NIVOZ Foundation and the three other teacher training institutes with which we collaborated during the overarching research project on whole child development (WCD). Without them, it would not have been possible to reflect so deeply on WCD and its significance in today’s educational context. With them, I thank the Porticus Foundation, which made the overarching project possible and made room in it for this PhD study. What I learned from all of the above-mentioned participants is to never forget to include students in educational research, which brings me to express my gratitude to all of the students who participated in the study, especially the six who dedicated their theses to the investigation of WCD and took part in the preliminary research. I also think gratefully of my fellow PhD students from the tightly knit international group of ‘Professor Bram’ we formed for some years. I thank my supervisors, Bram de Muynck and Roel Kuiper, for their close reading of my texts and the vivid discussions that reading prompted, in which Bram scrutinised matters from the pedagogical perspective, while Roel did so from the political-philosophical perspective. I also thank and praise my colleague Martijn Boer and my son Thomas van Olst for the artistic expressions they made for all of the chapters of this dissertation. Last but not least, I want to express my profound gratitude to my wife, Sofieke. The illness she suffered for a large part of the years of my PhD study led to the neither sought nor desired homeboundness, which nevertheless provided for the kind of stability that made it possible for this project to be finished within the indicated four years. It is my hope and prayer that we may together enjoy the new phase we enter with my completing this project.
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