180 Chapter 5 observed that teachers validate diversity within their own Christian group as enriching (p. 379) and new, strange experiences outside their comfort zone as transforming in a positive, strengthening of their own identity sense (p. 264). Comparative research into religious identity and religious tolerance among senior DCU students resulted in the identification of a positive correlation between the two (Broer & de Muynck, 2017). These theoretical and empirical insights are helpful for DCU to embrace subjectification as an important instrument (de Muynck & Kunz, 2022), although the question of how to relate that to the citizenship formation of trainee teachers remains open for empirical study. 5.2 BASELINE SURVEY At the start of the overarching WCD project that DCU joined in 2020, the DCU project team decided to conduct a baseline survey on the curriculum as it was and the possibility of including the WCD approach in the upcoming curriculum renewal (3). As the project was not yet far along, conceptions among students and teachers at the time this survey was designed were still a bit rough and generic, which has to be taken into account when reviewing the results. Questionnaires concerning WCD in the DCU curriculum were prepared in collaboration with DCU’s Research Centre. DCU’s initial acquaintance with WCD and its early participation in the overarching research consortium helped to check the composition of the questionnaires. The survey was subsequently completed by 56 teacher trainers (an 81 percent response rate) and 228 students, who were at the end of their third year or beyond in the programme (a 50 percent response rate). Students who only clicked on the survey or failed to complete the first 10 questions were excluded. Other students were included, although in each case the number of respondents was indicated because, during the course of completing the survey, some students dropped out. Looking at the points where students dropped out, it can be assumed that they did not always feel able to answer the more complex questions. Among the teachers, every respondent completed the entire survey. The 213 students who completed the whole survey indicated at the end the city or town in the Netherlands where they grew up. Apart from one student who answered ‘home’, all of the responses appeared to be serious. It can be noted that almost all of the students came from small to medium3 The results of this survey, and of the focus group interview presented in Section 3, were also presented in a peer-reviewed article published in the International Journal for Christianity and Education (van Olst, 2024).
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