220 Chapter 6 to DCU’s curriculum renewal, alongside an overall concept intended to achieve a good combination of the two in an approach aimed at the whole teacher— namely, head, heart and hands; the person in all his or her dimensions (cognitive, emotional, physical, social, creative, moral and spiritual). The strong identification of the conversational community with Wolterstorff’s (2004) shalom idea made it possible to use this idea as the leading principle or concept. As trainee teachers, DCU students have to be familiarised with this concept, which should not just be momentaneous in one or two modules, nor just cognitive through studying the concept. The shalom idea has to be integrated into the whole of DCU’s personhood formation. This finding was helpful in supporting the idea that, in the new professional profile of the Christian teacher, which DCU adopted as a basis for shaping its new curriculum, the inner (blue) circle—concerning personhood formation—should be filled with relationality. The personhood formation circle relates to who the teacher is, while the surrounding circle, which covers the subject knowledge base that teachers need, relates to what the teacher thinks and knows—and the widest circle is about what teachers do (professional skills and competences). Having the three circles rotating towards each other gives the professional profile a holistic nature, as everything has to do with everything else. Due to giving words to relationality in the blue circle as the teacher ‘connected to the Christian faith, those around him, himself, the world and the past, present and future’, the profile can basically be termed subjectifying. The question that the profile raises for the curriculum and the student is the central question of personhood formation as considered earlier in this chapter (Section 1.3): How am I in my connections? When approaching this question with the shalom idea and the reality of a fragmented society, it becomes clear that both the student and the curriculum have a problem—namely, the destruction of all kinds of connections. Due to sin, the relations with God, faith, the neighbour, the self, nature, the world, tradition and the wider community are fractured. Through grace, however, restoration is possible. Regarding this restoration, the shalom idea refers to Biblical justice as its ground floor. First and foremost, the justification of the fragmented sinner is necessary through the work of Jesus Christ. Based on that, a healing of relations is necessary and should be worked on daily. This is what the conversational community meant when it spoke of living and practicing the gospel (Section 6.2.3). The conversational community strongly supported the adoption of the shalom idea as the leading principle for an ongoing line of learning regarding citizenship formation, covering all four years of the curriculum in a broad and well-integrated manner. In this way, over the years, a series of different elements
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