207 Subjectifying Education and the Art of Living Together 6 teacher training, step out of their comfort zone and into the context of this kind of multi-ethnic school, to engage in a holistic experience that opens windows to new worlds, as a deliberate eye-opening experience. The joint idea to do so in the second year of teacher training was argued, on the one hand, by the notion of not doing it too soon, so that trainee teachers do not have unnecessary negative experience that undermine the trust and confidence they require. On the other hand, this was complemented by the notion of not doing it too late, so that students with this positive holistic experience could still opt for more acquaintance with higher levels of diversity and complexity. The idea that teacher training should offer this third- or fourth-year follow-up to a shorter second-year taster internship in the form of both internships and optional courses, modules or minors was a conclusion that gradually became more clear during the early meetings of the conversational community. 6.1.3 Citizenship formation as personhood formation The conversational community’s eighth and ninth meetings, which were held in spring 2022, were especially helpful in terms of developing a clearer idea about what trainee teachers need to be able to guide students aged eight to 14 years to grow as people. The conversational community worked closely in these two meetings with an ongoing DCU pilot investigation into personhood formation in students. For the conversational community, it was particularly interesting to see how the broad citizenship formation of students was interconnected with their personhood formation and how this affected the formation that they later, as teachers, will provide to students in primary schools, specifically concerning their transition to secondary education. The linchpin proved to be Biesta’s (2013, 2022) view on subjectification in relation to qualification and socialisation—and his plea for subjectifying education. A central role was reserved for a senior student who was conducting her graduation research on personhood formation. To introduce the topic to all of the participants, both from the conversational community and from the pilot project on personhood formation, she related her personal story as a DCU student. As she, in her childhood, did not learn to reflect on herself, she ran aground as a junior during teacher training and had to leave. Only after having learned who she was in practical life was she able to begin her studies again, and she did so with the conviction that the educational materials were too focused on cognition and not sufficiently focused on the children’s personal development. As a senior student finalising her part-time teacher training, she longed for ‘developing children emotionally, socially and cognitively in a simultaneous way, putting love to God and love to the neighbour at the centre, just like resilience in society’. From pedagogical literature, she learned
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