Background: In the Netherlands, most of the academic curricula for teacher training in religious education (RE) focus on shortfalls of students, like a lack of knowledge about the plurality of worldviews and the diversity in interpretations of the Christian tradition. In our research project, the focus is not on the students, but on the university professors and lecturers who teach the subject of RE: professors and lecturers who train and educate students to teach RE. Aim: The main aim of the project was to gain a better insight into the inherent complexity of the professionalism of academics, that is, their own positionality in the plurality of the Roman Catholic traditions they adhere to in relation to their capabilities and commitment to the current curriculum – the ‘old’ one – and the new curriculum to be developed, in the context of the Dutch plural society. Setting: Respondents in this research were university professors and lecturers of the Teacher Training Institute of Tilburg University, located at Utrecht, the Netherlands. Methods: For this investigation, we used a research instrument based on the dialogical self theory and its self confrontation method for organisations to gain insight into professionals’ own and their colleagues’ positionality regarding teaching RE. Results: Preliminary results show that the self confrontation method for organisations has shown itself to be a challenging instrument to invite academics involved in the process of data construction and data analysis. Conclusion: Based on these results, we recommend to include the research population in a validation process to increase the sustainability of the results and to maximise engagement in the implementation phase of the new curriculum.
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In literature, co-teaching is mostly defined as an instrumental and pedagogical means delivered by collaborating special and regular teachers, from which students with and without special educational needs benefit in regular schools. The importance of a shared vision on the part of members of co-teaching teams as to what they consider as good education for students is not mentioned in definitions of co-teaching. The authors argue that sense-making by reflection about what can be considered as good education – good teaching and good learning – is essential when co-teachers want to understand or change their practice or relationship with their partner. We reviewed 17 articles about co-teaching teams’ professional development and identified that challenges to co-teachers’ professionalisation mostly were directed to interpersonal and normative aspects of development in co-teaching teams. We elaborate on five distinguished movements that can bring about change in teacher professionalism. These movements correspond to the challenges retrieved from the literature review and can be used to contribute to move toward a new perspective on professionalism of co-teachers. A contemporary definition of co-teaching is proposed because former definitions do not suffice to express the value of constructing a shared vision on good teaching and learning. We argue that team-reflection is the missing link in terms of enhancing normative professionalism of co-teaching teams and recommend that further research should be conducted to value team-reflection as a means to overcome challenges of co-teaching teams.
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