Peter van Olst

211 Subjectifying Education and the Art of Living Together 6 This profound relationality, together with personal subjectness, shaped the threefold ideal Visser-Vogel and de Muynck (2019) perceived in personhood formation. This threefold ideal was subsequently embraced by the conversational community, albeit without specifically taking into account a context of diversity or Biesta’s (2022) central idea that real responsibility requires freedom: • The person experiences in thought and action that he or she is part of a greater whole. • The person forms an integral unity: A person with a stable identity. • The person develops into someone who takes responsibility actively and with discernment. 6.2 FOUR THEOLOGICAL VOICES ON SHALOM-SEEKING CITIZENSHIP How can a strong moral ideal, as attached to one’s idea of the person and of responding with responsibility, align with the freedom that enables a person to be a person with agency and liberty? This is the central question that needs to be answered with regard to subjectifying education, especially when education takes place based on a strongly religious conception in a diverse and, therefore, complex environment. This discussion repeatedly presented itself at the table of the conversational community, where the voices of operant, espoused, formal and normative theology were brought in, both in the moral ideal and in concepts of good citizenship. One emerging question was how to foster subjectifying education while respecting a variety of individual conceptions, preferences and attitudes, as informed in very different ethnic, cultural and religious backgrounds. The central question identified by the conversational community was as follows: What and how do trainee teachers need to learn to be prepared to handle both the moral ideal and the necessary respect for diversity? As explained above (6.1.1), the conversational community chose two separate lines of reasoning as dynamics to hold together throughout the process: faithfulness and openness. Both can be termed critical—that is, of fundamental importance: Faithfulness with regard to the Biblically informed moral ideals and openness with regard to the context of diversity, but also informed by the Biblical notion of being present in the world. The reason why the conversational community also found openness critical was the focus of its members on the missional aspect of Christian teaching in general and on Christian teaching in a context of high diversity more specifically. Apart

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