278 Chapter 8 gospel content but also the approach of the broad formation of the whole child, with a sincere interest in his or her social and cultural background) with others. 8.3 CONCRETE ELABORATIONS FOR DCU’S CURRICULUM If the attitude that best fits the goal of shalom-seeking citizenship for a modern, fragmented society is a Christ-centred and community-based attitude that focuses more on ‘being with’ than on ‘working for’ and aims to see the whole child, as determined from the analysis of the conversational community’s deliberations on basic attitude formation, then the question that immediately follows is how to shape such an attitude in the teacher training curriculum. This question prompted the conversational community, over the course of its existence and meetings, to engage in several actions with regard to DCU’s ongoing curriculum renewal process. In two cases, the previously chosen directions for DCU’s curriculum were endorsed, whereas in another two cases new elements were successfully brought into the curriculum renewal process. First, a brief overview of these four interventions will be presented, which will be followed by a more thorough description and explanation of them. The conversational community chose the following: 1. To endorse the choice DCU made, based on its new professional profile, to work on its personhood formation not primarily with measurable outcomes but with ideals. 2. To strongly endorse DCU’s decision to work on its personhood formation with small learning communities, splitting classes with 20–25 students into groups of a maximum of 12 students. 3. To include in the new curriculum’s third year a social internship that enables students to practice an attitude of presence and service towards society, which will be called a civic internship. 4. To include WCD in the new curriculum as both a concept (in the personhood formation process) and a practice for educational design (as one of the professional duties to be learned). The professional profile referred to in the first point was presented in Chapter 6.3. Its blue inner circle contains five connections or relationships, which explain that DCU wants students to be connected to themselves, others, the Christian faith, the world and the three-way past–present–future. The question that emerged for the developers of DCU’s personhood formation was how to set the goals to be met—that is, via measurable standards or otherwise. One question was how to deal with students who are not willing or able to relate to, for example, the Christian faith, or to do so only in a negative way.
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