310 Chapter 10 DCU’s curriculum, conducted as a case study of faith-based teacher training in a modern, fragmented society with high levels of diversity and complexity. Given the continuous movement caused by the lemniscate, however, there is no chronological order, as there would be if the theoretical chapters were to precede the empirical chapters in time. The insights from theory were constantly influencing the deliberations of the conversational community, especially via the voice of formal theology. Moreover, the deliberations of the conversational community led to new elements of theoretical study that enriched the theoretical chapters. In the second place, for the empirical part of the study, the choice was made to apply TAR. This was helpful in rendering this empirical part not just holistic but also Biblically holistic, in the sense of holism that specifically includes the spiritual or theological domain. In TAR, the whole process is theological and theology is understood as not just the science of theologians but also as the faithful practices of Christians. Therefore, four voices are brought together to disclose theology through conversation—namely, the voices of normative, formal, operant and espoused theology. This conversation leads to the formative transformation of practice and, potentially, to the transformation of theological insights themselves. All of these elements have proven their usefulness for this study. The central characteristics of TAR matched both the content of the study (faith-based teacher training in a changed society) and its holistic approach. Its conversational method matched well with the decision to work with a conversational community along the lines of the lemniscate. The latter was especially helpful in strengthening the voice of formal theology in the conversational community’s meetings. Strengthening the voice of formal theology turned out to be necessary because the voices of operant and espoused theology were already strongly present for two reasons. First, all of the participants were educational practitioners themselves. Second, as the research was conducted with and for DCU, it was relatively easy to invite students to participate the meetings or respond to questions. Through the baseline survey (Chapter 5.2) and the exploratory student research (5.3), there was considerable input from the investigated practice from the very start of the project. The decision to strengthen not only the voice of formal theology but also of normative theology (by starting each meeting with a free Biblical devotion by one of the participants) proved to be an especially fortunate one. It provided the study with useful data regarding what the conversational community’s members considered to be normative theology, both for DCU and for their own educational practice. The idea of starting with short Bible study devotions,
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