How Cohesion Matters 4 71 teaching within a protected setting, connected with the religious climate of the family” (translation by the authors). We could add that Dutch orthodox Protestants are used to speaking about “the triangle” when referring to the strong bond between school, church, and family. This is linked to the baptismal promises in which parents promise to instruct their child in religious doctrine and to have it instructed in this doctrine by others (De Muynck, 2008; Spoelstra, 2016). Empirical research in the international context has shown related reasons why people of religious communities feel the need for separate schooling for their children; these are the following: education about religious and cultural traditions, protection from outside influence, offering a specific social and moral framework, and insuring continued adherence to the faith (McCreery et al., 2007; based on Hurst, 2000; Evan Kaplan, 2001; McKinney, 2004; Scholefield, 2004). 4.4 Teachers’ Views on the Religious Dimension of the School Realizing that the orthodox Protestant worldview of the school matters a great deal to parents making school choices, it is then essential to know whether teachers’ school choices are influenced by a school’s specific worldview as well. Generally, it could be assumed that when schools highlight their religious nature, a teacher’s choice to work in such a school will be linked with his or her own religious convictions and socialization (De Muynck, 2008). However, no studies specifically discussing teachers’ preferences for religious or other denominational schools were found in the databases of the U.S. Institute of Education Sciences, Web of Science, or various other agencies. However, there were several studies of OPPS teachers in the Netherlands that dealt with teachers’ perceptions of the religious dimension of schools and the religious dimension of their job. These studies indicate that the mono-religious characteristic is important in the opinion of teachers (De Muynck, 2008; Markus et al., 2018; cf. Bertram-Troost et al., 2015b). In a study concerning the definition of the identity of Christian schools, OPPS teachers, in contrast to teachers of two mainline Protestant schools, believed that the Christian worldview should resonate in everything that happens in their school, and this was believed to depend significantly on the teacher’s role (De Wolff, 2000). According to them, socialization in the Christian faith is the most important aim to which all aims and activities in the school should contribute. When it came to concrete pedagogical or educational situations, there were no striking differences found among the actions of the teachers in the three schools (De Wolff, 2000; cf. Bertram-Troost et al., 2015a). However, religious education and worldview education in those three schools did differ: within the
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