187 Preliminary WCD Reception at Driestar Christian University 5 • DCU has the luxury of being able to train teachers for Reformed Christian education. Only, I am afraid there is too much focus on that and not on the world outside, so that students are not fully competent for encounters with children from outside the so-called bubble. There should be more focus on that, as far as I am concerned, in the form of practical assignments (internships) in public education. • Students in non-Christian schools, in disadvantaged neighbourhoods, challenge you much more as a teacher; I have so little experience with that myself, but that’s how I can imagine it. I don’t feel competent to deal with those children correctly. For that, I am too spoiled in my safe little world, too shaky in my shoes. This has to do with experience, of course, but also with the minimal preparation for the teaching profession. • Where has the Christian teacher at DCU gone? Propagating Reformed values and norms occupies a smaller place than pluralistic society. This completely overshoots the purpose of DCU, especially when you consider what its founders had in mind. 5.3 EXPLORATORY STUDENT RESEARCH Before DCU joined the WCD research project, the project team questioned whether this type of holistic approach would or would not (completely, partly or completely not) fit with its Reformed Christian identity, principles and educational aims. The initial feeling before the start of the WCD project in 2020 was that it could be both a well-fitting model and, at the same time, a challenge to keep in touch with the development of society towards greater levels of pluralism. This feeling was corroborated by the work of six fourth-year (senior) teacher training students who dedicated their graduation research to WCD. The research track they opted for was designed as exploratory research into WCD and its compatibility with and usefulness for Christian teachers and Christian citizenship formation in (relatively new) contexts of high diversity and complexity. Like the baseline survey, the results served as input for the deliberations within the conversational community that applied TAR. Nine students voluntarily chose to join the track, six of whom concluded their personal projects well and in time to be interviewed in an evaluative focus group interview about WCD, which was designed as a qualitative follow-up for the survey presented in Section 2. During the focus group interview, the six students were asked to define WCD (for the outline of the interview, see Appendix 3). They all worked towards a better understanding of the idea and concept through the study of literature and documents, on the one hand, and
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