Change is endemic in modern society, and the educational systems that operate in it. In Higher Education societal trends such as globalization and economic rationalism are impacting on teachers. Changes in the student population, new educational methods derived from shifting perspectives on the role of knowledge and re-structuring of the organizations within which teachers work have also led to transformation of the professional context. At European level policy initiatives such as the Bologna Declaration (1999) have necessitated an overhaul of educational provision. This research project attempts to focus on these wideranging changes through the lens of teacher autonomy in order to establish what is changing in the working lives of teachers in a Dutch university, how they are responding to these changes and how they can be helped to respond to change effectively and discriminatingly. This is an insider research project, using case study and semi-structured interviewing to yield data that is subjected to thematic linguistic analysis. It was piloted in 2006, and interviewing was resumed in February 2007. Findings indicate the contested nature of teacher autonomy, and suggest that professional autonomy can impede as well as facilitate teachers in processes of engaging with change. The team - operating as a community of practice - is identified as the location where change agency can operate most effectively. Distributed leadership - specifically perceived in the activities of team leaders and teacher change agents - is seen as crucial to processes of embedding change in educational practice.
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Na het uitbreken van de Covid-19 pandemie heeft digitale participatie een grote vlucht genomen. Door de pandemie was het niet of nauwelijks mogelijk om fysiek bij elkaar te komen. Informatie of inspraakbijeenkomsten konden niet langer op een locatie in de buurt worden georganiseerd. Noodgedwongen vond er een verschuiving plaats van offline naar online burgerparticipatie. Hierdoor is er de afgelopen jaren veel ervaring opgedaan met digitale participatie. De verwachting is dat nu er weer van alles mogelijk is, er vaker gebruik gemaakt zal blijven worden van online participatievormen en - instrumenten. De koudwatervrees voor online participatie lijkt definitief overwonnen. In de toekomst zullen participatiestrategieën worden ontwikkeld waarin online- en offline-instrumenten vaker afwisselend en in onderlinge samenhang worden ingezet. Deze geïntegreerde inzet roept vragen op over de doorontwikkeling van digitale participatie. Hoe kunnen professionals op basis van de ervaringen met digitale participatie de afgelopen jaren de mogelijkheden hiervan in de toekomst beter benutten? En hoe kan er op basis van de ervaring die is opgedaan richting worden gegeven aan de doorontwikkeling van digitale tools?
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The transition towards a sustainable and healthy food system is one of the major sustainability challenges of today, next to the energy transition and the transition from a linear to circular economy. This paper provides a timely and evidence-based contribution to better understand the complex processes of institutional change and transformative social-ecological innovation that takes place in the food transition, through a case study of an open innovation and food transition network in The Netherlands, the South-Holland Food Family (Zuid-Hollandse Voedselfamilie). This network is supported by the provincial government and many partners, with the ambition to realize more sustainable agricultural and food chains, offering healthy, sustainable and affordable food for everyone in the Province of South-Holland in five to ten years from now. This ambition cannot be achieved through optimising the current food system. A transition is needed – a fundamental change of the food system’s structure, culture and practice. The Province has adopted a transition approach in its 2016 Innovation Agenda for Sustainable Agriculture. This paper provides an institutional analysis of how the transition approach has been established and developed in practice. Our main research question is what interventions and actions have shaped the transition approach and how does the dynamic interplay between actors and institutional structures influence institutional change, by analysing a series of closely related action situations and their context, looking at 'structure' and 'agency', and at the output-outcomes-impact of these action situations. For this purpose, we use the Transformative Social-Ecological Innovation (TSEI)-framework to study the dynamic interplay between actors and institutional structures influencing institutional change. The example of TSEI-framework application in this paper shows when and how local agents change the institutional context itself, which provides relevant insights on institutional work and the mutually constitutive nature of structure and agency. Above institutional analysis also shows the pivotal role of a number of actors, such as network facilitators and provincial minister, and their capability and skills to combine formal and informal institutional environments and logics and mobilize resources, thereby legitimizing and supporting the change effort. The results are indicative of the importance of institutional structures as both facilitating (i.e., the province’s policies) and limiting (e.g. land ownership) transition dynamics.
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