256 Chapter 8 After having analysed the conversational community’s deliberations on both subjectifying education and epistemological formation, it is now necessary to shift the focus to the basic attitude that trainee teachers need to adopt in order to function well within a modern, fragmented society. This represents the third main topic identified by the conversational community during its 14th meeting. The question it formulated during the same meeting with regard to attitude formation is as follows: ‘What attitude fits shalom-seeking citizenship formation for a modern, fragmented society?’ This question related to the keyword character, similar to how subjectifying education was tied to the more practical keyword ability and epistemological formation to the keyword knowledge. These three keywords were supposed, by the conversational community, to accord with the triad heart, hands and head. More attention will be given to these keywords, the triad heart, hands and head, and, specifically, the connection between character and basic attitude formation in the first section of this chapter. This section explains how basic attitude formation appeared on the conversational community’s radar and how it is tied to, but also separated from, subjectifying education (Section 1). To accomplish this, the section focuses, first, on the need for character formation (8.1.1). Second, it explains the importance of a pedagogy of longing to enable students to resist the tendency for the renunciation of their ideals and prevent them from uncritical insertion in the existing system (8.1.2). The next section seeks to answer this chapter’s central question on what attitude should be pursued in teacher training (Section 2). It does so by analysing the four theological voices on attitude formation: the normative (8.2.1), the formal (8.2.2), the operant (8.2.3) and the espoused voice (8.2.4). As in the preceding chapters, the third part of this chapter is dedicated to the practical elaborations the conversational community made in relation to DCU’s curriculum renewal process (Section 3). Each section leads to some concluding remarks that will be brought together in a final conclusion at the end of this chapter. 8.1 CHARACTER AND LONGING TO PURSUE What kind of attitude towards a modern, fragmented society should Christian trainee teachers learn to adopt? The conversational community addressed this question throughout its meetings as an important and inalienable part of the bigger whole of teacher training. Special attention, however, was dedicated to this topic in its 11th and 15th meetings. In the 11th meeting, it spoke extensively about ‘which attitude fits a Christian teacher in a multi-ethnic context the most, accords with the shalom idea and does justice to the broad formation
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