Background: Continuing professional development (CPD) in nursing is defined as ‘a life-long process of active participation in learning activities that assist in developing and maintaining continuing competences, enhancing professional practice and supporting achievement of career goals’. Research has shown that inability to access resources and activities for CPD influences quality of care and adversely affects nurses’ satisfaction, recruitment and retention. Although more and more research regarding CPD is done, a comprehensive overview about the needs of nurses for successful CPD is missing. Conclusions: All nurses strive for CPD. However, organizations need to recognize nurses' personal goals and unique strategies as this leads to different needs in CPD. In addition, resources must be made available and accessible before CPD can be successfully pursued by all nurses.
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The pace of introduction of new technology and thus continuous change in skill needs at workplaces, especially for the engineers, has increased. While digitization induced changes in manufacturing, construction and supply chain sectors may not be felt the same in every sector, this will be hard to escape. Both young and experienced engineers will experience the change, and the need to continuously assess and close the skills gap will arise. How will we, the continuing engineering educators and administrators will respond to it? Prepared for engineering educators and administrators, this workshop will shed light on the future of continuing engineering education as we go through exponentially shortened time frames of technological revolution and in very recent time, in an unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic. S. Chakrabarti, P. Caratozzolo, E. Sjoer and B. Norgaard.
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Advances in information and communication technologies (ICTs) as well as modern pedagogical perspectives have created new possibilities to facilitate and support learning in higher education (HE). Emerging technologies bring opportunities to reconsider teaching and learning. New ideas and concepts about the educational use of new technologies transform the roles of teachers. In this context the key question of this study is: whether learning as part of a (virtual) community of practice supports teachers' technology professional development. Different learning alternatives such as distance learning, workplace learning as well as blended forms of learning will enhance lifelong learning which forces a rethinking of traditional forms of education. However, most institutions for education foster just-in-case learning while new technologies foster just-in-time learning. As a result of new learning perspectives and the potential pedagogical benefits of ICTs in educational contexts, teachers have to learn how to integrate new technologies in teaching and learning. It is recommended that teacher professional development should be situated in multiple learning settings in which learning is teacher-centred. Next to classroom settings and cross-institutional learning communities, virtual learning communities (VCoPs) are a significant source for learning. There is an overlap between the educational values of interned-based learning and social theories of learning such as Lave & Wenger's situated learning theory and Wenger's theory of communities of practice. Drawing upon these theories, offers a perspective on social learning that emphasizes social processes within (V)CoPs where community participants engage in collective learning and knowledge creation. The data discussed in this paper have been drawn from a cross institutional setting at Fontys University of Applied Sciences, The Netherlands. The data were collected and analysed according to a qualitative approach. The paper concludes that VCoPs are learning environments since these network-based learning communities push learners to take more control of their learning and provide tasks which are more contextualised and meaningful.
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Context When the pandemic hit the world, teachers were forced to change their education from onsite to virtual overnight Understandably, teaching quality decreased in the beginning, as there was little experience in how to adapt the educational design Zuyd University of Applied Sciences ( recognized the problem that teachers were on different didactic and pedagogical levels when it comes to online education Unfortunately, the pandemic made it hard for teachers to connect with each other In the Domain of Health and Welfare, this led to the idea of establishing a professional learning community A professional learning community ( can be seen as an informal group of people who share knowledge and experiences among each other on a common topic they are all highly interested in Zuyd’s vision “passion for development” sets a good basis for the start of such a community. Steps we took In order to find out how a professional learning community can look like in Zuyd, the following steps were taken Firstly, we collected and evaluated literature and best practices around the topic Based on our findings we developed an interview guideline and conducted interviews with eight teachers from the Domain of Health and Welfare Throughout the whole report a SWOT analysis was performed with the literature and best practices filling opportunities and threats and the interviews providing content for strengths and weaknesses Main findings From these sources, we derived enablers for a successful learning community, which led to recommendations for Zuyd on how to strategically position, implement and organize a PLC One of our major recommendations is to make didactic and pedagogical skills an important topic within Zuyd in order to strategically implement the learning community into Zuyd’s strategy Furthermore, we recommend giving the lead in organizing and facilitating the PLC to the blended learning task force To collect a diverse set of interested employees to the core group, the educational managers should personally approach teachers that might be interested The sense of urgency around the topic needs to be addressed regularly through the directors of the Domain, the task force of blended learning, as well as the PLC itself In this way, interest in the topic of didactic and pedagogical skills and blended learning can be enhanced In the report we go into greater detail on how to organize and apply these recommendations. We are convinced that implementing these steps will pay off in the future and will successfully enhance competencies on blended learning and didactic and pedagogical skills through knowledge exchange.
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Background: The aim of this study is to validate a newly developed nurses' self-efficacy sources inventory. We test the validity of a five-dimensional model of sources of self-efficacy, which we contrast with the traditional four-dimensional model based on Bandura's theoretical concepts. Methods: Confirmatory factor analysis was used in the development of the newly developed self-efficacy measure. Model fit was evaluated based upon commonly recommended goodness-of-fit indices, including the χ2 of the model fit, the Root Mean Square Error of approximation (RMSEA), the Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI), the Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR), and the Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC). Results: All 22 items of the newly developed five-factor sources of self-efficacy have high factor loadings (range .40-.80). Structural equation modeling showed that a five-factor model is favoured over the four-factor model. Conclusions and implications: Results of this study show that differentiation of the vicarious experience source into a peer- and expert based source reflects better how nursing students develop self-efficacy beliefs. This has implications for clinical learning environments: a better and differentiated use of self-efficacy sources can stimulate the professional development of nursing students.
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Worldwide, pupils with migrant backgrounds do not participate in school STEM subjects as successfully as their peers. Migrant pupils’ subject-specific language proficiency lags behind, which hinders participation and learning. Primary teachers experience difficulty in teaching STEM as well as promoting required language development. This study investigates how a professional development program (PDP) focusing on inclusive STEM teaching can promote teacher learning of language-promoting strategies (promoting interaction, scaffolding language and using multilingual resources). Participants were five case study teachers in multilingual schools in the Netherlands (N = 2), Sweden (N = 1) and Norway (N = 2), who taught in primary classrooms with migrant pupils. The PDP focused on three STEM units (sound, maintenance, plant growth) and language-promoting strategies. To trace teachers’ learning, three interviews were conducted with each of the five teachers (one after each unit). The teachers also filled in digital logs (one after each unit). The interviews showed positive changes in teachers’ awareness, beliefs and attitudes towards language-supporting strategies. However, changes in practice and intentions for practice were reported to a lesser extent. This study shows that a PDP can be an effective starting point for teacher learning regarding inclusive STEM teaching. It also illuminates possible enablers (e.g., fostering language awareness) or hinderers (e.g., teachers’ limited STEM knowledge) to be considered in future PDP design.
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The principal aim of this study is to explore the relations between work domains and the work-related learning of workers. The article is intended to provide insight into the learning experiences of Dutch police officers during the course of their daily work. Interviews regarding actual learning events and subsequent changes in knowledge, skills or attitudes were conducted with police officers from different parts of the country and in different stages of their careers. Interpretative analyses grounded in the notion of intentionality and developmental relatedness revealed how and in what kinds of work domains police officers appear to learn. HOMALS analysis showed work-related learning activities to vary with different kinds of work domains. The implications for training and development involve the role of colleagues in different hierarchical positions for learning and they also concern the utility of the conceptualisation of work-related learning presented here.
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The artcle describes the outcomes of a pilot study on professional development of teachers. The project was initiated by the school management. Nine teachers volunteered to work on their professional development in a programme consisting of: meetings discussing on relevant teacher topics meetings discussing video fragments of own performances meetings exploring ways to coach each other and how to use videotapes for feedback peer-coaching-sessions in small groups. Within these groups three teachers took turns in different roles: trainee, coach and observer. Aims of the study are: to develop a coaching programme, to describe extensively the process and the outcomes in order to identify the main factors influencing the learning processes of teachers in peer coaching settings with video feedback.
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The energy management systems industry in the built environment is currently an important topic. Buildings use about 40% of the total global energy worldwide. Therefore, the energy management system’s sector is one of the most influential sectors to realize changes and transformation of energy use. New data science technologies used in building energy management systems might not only bring many technical challenges, but also they raise significant educational challenges for professionals who work in the field of energy management systems. Learning and educational issues are mainly due to the transformation of professional practices and networks, emerging technologies, and a big shift in how people work, communicate, and share their knowledge across the professional and academic sectors. In this study, we have investigated three different companies active in the building services sector to identify the main motivation and barriers to knowledge adoption, transfer, and exchange between different professionals in the energy management sector and explore the technologies that have been used in this field using the boundary-crossing framework. The results of our study show the importance of understanding professional learning networks in the building services sector. Additionally, the role of learning culture, incentive structure, and technologies behind the educational system of each organization are explained. Boundary-crossing helps to analyze the barriers and challenges in the educational setting and how new educational technologies can be embedded. Based on our results, future studies with a bigger sample and deeper analysis of technologies are needed to have a better understanding of current educational problems.
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Explicit language objectives are included in the Swedish national curriculum for mathematics. The curriculum states that students should be given opportunities to develop the ability to formulate problems, use and analyse mathematical concepts and relationships between concepts, show and follow mathematical reasoning, and use mathematical expressions in discussions. Teachers’ competence forms a crucial link to bring an intended curriculum to a curriculum in action. This article investigates a professional development program, ‘Language in Mathematics’, within a national program for mathematics teachers in Sweden that aims at implementing the national curriculum into practice. Two specific aspects are examined: the selection of theoretical notions on language and mathematics and the choice of activities to relate selected theory to practice. From this examination, research on teacher learning in connection to professional development is proposed, which can contribute to a better understanding of teachers’ interpretation of integrated approaches to language and mathematics across national contexts.
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