Peter van Olst

331 Summary (English) EN How can Christian trainee teachers be prepared to fulfil their duties towards students in a society that can no longer be called Christian? This question refers to the rapid cultural changes in Western Europe and North America in particular. Since World War II, processes of secularisation and globalisation have caused the disappearance of a situation of relative socio-cultural homogeneity there. In its place emerged a high degree of ethnic, cultural and religious diversity. To designate the newly emerging situation of the 21st century, scholars speak of super-diversity and super-complexity; and to characterise the rapid processes of change underneath, they use terms like Great Acceleration and Great Transformation. These developments raise the question of how Christian faith communities can shape their connection to the wider society in this changed and everchanging reality. This is especially true for faith communities involved in training Christian teachers. After all, teachers are supposed to equip students to take their place in society. How do you do that from a Christian perspective when that society has changed dramatically from relatively homogenous-Christian to super-diverse and complex? This question comes on top of the legitimate questions that governments ask of schools, for example to promote active citizenship and contribute to social cohesion; or to promote world citizenship and pay attention to the United Nations Sustainability Goals (SDGs formulated by UNESCO). The introduction to this dissertation contains an exploration of the changing sociocultural reality and the processes underneath. Citing authors such as Biesta and Arendt, attention is drawn to the broad classical function of schools as transit homes positioned between the relative homogeneity of the home environment and the great diversity of society. Super-diversity and super-complexity lead to schools constantly facing new questions and tasks. In the field around (Christian) schools, social cohesion and cooperation have crumbled in recent decades. Data from planning agencies show that families and churches are less powerful than before and that society as a whole shows less social cohesion. The newly emerging situation can be referred to as fragmented, a term coined by Scottish philosopher MacIntyre. This characterisation is preferred in this thesis to designations such as secularised or post-Christian, which have a negative connotation from a Christian perspective, or pluralistic or intercultural, which describe but do not problematise the emerging situation. From the perspective of training Christian teachers, the fragmented society demands Christian citizenship formation for trainee teachers to enable them for citizenship education themselves. This goes beyond responses that are

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