T.S.M. van der Zee

PARABLE UNDERSTANDING IN THE PRIMARY SCHOOL CLASSROOM: A SOCIO-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE ON LEARNING TO UNDERSTAND PARABLES

In recent decades parable understanding has been widely researched in the field of pedagogy of religion, mainly conducted in a Piagetian framework. This article presents an intervention study taking a socio-cultural perspective on learning to understand parables. The aim of this research is to investigate the effects of curriculum interventions by way of both comprehensive and partial strategic learning tasks on the understanding of parables in the primary school classroom, as well as which aspects help to explain these effects.The study involved 484 primary school students in the fifth and sixth grades. It consists of an intervention study involving a quasi-experimental design with two experimental groups and a control group.Results reveal that the effect on the group which dealt with the partial strategic intervention is greater than that on the control group. The difference in effect between this experimental group and the control group is jointly attributable to the factors of age, gender and initial achievement level.The study shows that innovation of learning practices is only effective if it proceeds in successive steps. The partial strategic intervention may well be an appropriate first step in the innovation of parable understanding learning practices. Students should first master a limited number of strategies, which gradually increases. This need not wait until the child reaches the age of twelve; the first steps can be taken as early as the age of nine.

Discerning the good. The Practice of Decision-Making in Dutch Catholic School Management Teams

This study addresses normativity in the practice of collaborative decision-making in Dutch Catholic school management teams. ‘Discernment’ is used as a heuristic to describe the process and content of collaborative decision-making. With regard to the process, discernment is marked by four distinctive aspects: reflection; trust; welcoming of diversity; and enactment of decisions. As for the content, discernment in schools requires different modes of reasoning, notably reasoning based on a vision of good education. In addition, this study investigates perceived impediments and conditions for improvement with regard to the practice of collaborative decision-making. The data suggest that the process aspect of welcoming diversity is dominant, whereas trust is almost absent. Reflection and enactment manifest to a moderate degree in decision-making. As for the content of decision-making, reasons referring to (formal) vision, reasons of care, instrumental reasons and reasons of control are dominant in school management teams. Within the reasons of vision, notions referring to the purpose of education are nearly absent; whereas references to (core) values that are abstract (not referring to patterned practices) are dominant. Impediments are experienced as related primarily to institutional, school-bound and team-bound cultural factors, as well as to institutional structural factors. Contrarily, conditions for improvement are experienced as related to team-bound cultural factors and material factors, and are thus found primarily within the direct span of control of the school management team.

Addressing diversity and individualism. The contribution of Catholic religious education to the educational project of Catholic schools in the Netherlands

Societal trends towards diversity and individualism call for a re-evaluation of Catholic Religious Education. However, in practice we see that Catholic schools have difficulty achieving this. This chapter reports about an educational design research to find out what Catholic schools take their educational project to be and the contribution of Catholic Religious Education to it. Two Catholic secondary schools in the Netherlands participated in the research. This qualitative study employed two research methods to ascertain the relevant data. It used semi-structured interviews with staff members as well as focus group discussions involving staff members, students and parents.