34 Introduction scientists in particular should understand human action as emerging from habitus rather than from structure or agency. Thus, human action cannot be understood as merely determined by structures, nor as just an exercise of individual free will. Instead, habitus functions as an important explaining principle: ‘A system of lasting and transposable dispositions which, integrating past experiences, functions at every moment as a matrix of perceptions, appreciations and actions and makes possible the achievement of infinitely diversified tasks’ (Bourdieu, 1977, pp. 82–83). If human action is to be theorised in this complex habitus way, then human interaction has to be even more so. Bourdieu’s (1977) approach not only holistically considered the interconnectedness of elements but also left room for a subsequent step: the practitioner (in this case, teacher trainers) as a researcher in a dynamic process of thinking though and investigating their own practice. This idea was further elaborated by Jarvis (1999), and it was applied to religious education more recently by Löfstedt and Westerlund (2021). The latter argued that, to develop a suitable practice-theory, a constant back-and-forth between theory and practice, between scientific insights and practical wisdom, can and should be initiated. They practiced this through the formation of research circles—that is, groups of teachers coming together to formulate a problem or research questions based on actual research and challenges encountered in practice. They evaluated it as a ‘fruitful method’ (Löfstedt & Westerlund, 2021, p. 79) to overcome the theory-practice dichotomy stemming from Western rationality and analytic thinking. This study uses a specific model to do so, which was elaborated within the aforementioned overarching project studying WCD (Cijvat et al., 2023). It starts with the formation of conversational communities, comparable to Löfstedt and Westerlund’s (2021) research circles, that include theoretical and practical knowledge and wisdom, as based on van Manen’s (1991) theory about research in teacher education: ‘What teachers need to do is create conversational communities with others to be able to discuss and address experiences’ (p. 82). These communities aim for alignment between the four core elements of educational development—namely, vision, intentions, design and practice. A conversational framework that facilitates discussions within the conversational communities brings the four elements together in a lemniscate providing for a continuous movement of intending, designing, practicing, evaluating, reflecting and contemplating to align the vision, intentions, design and practice (Cijvat et al., 2023).
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