This article describes the design and findings of a case study involving seven groups of teachers at six schools for secondary education. The teachers tried to gain insight into their own practice and to improve their own practice by learning to do action research. They were facilitated by teacher educators over a period of 2 years. The research questions of this paper are: (1) What patterns emerge in the way the teachers master action research? and (2) What patterns emerge in the way they are facilitated by the teacher educators? The theoretical framework of the study elaborates on the performance and facilitation of action research using the concept of praxis . The basic assumption is that teachers learn to do action research by communicating with others about the knowledge they have acquired through experience of action research and the tasks they have performed to develop that knowledge. The results show that what is difficult about learning to do action research is not so much the complexity of procedural and methodological aspects of action research itself, but the fact that teachers have to gradually master several skills and actions at the same time; skills and actions that they are not familiar with. Besides, the study found five developments in professional attitudes that teachers go through as they master action research. Facilitators are increasingly successful the more they offer on-going support on the spot to teachers as they carry out their action research. The study identified five aspects of successful facilitation.
Many health education programs use progress tests to evaluate students’ progress in learning and to identify possible gaps in the curricula. The tests are typically longitudinal and feedback-oriented. Although many benefits of the progress test have been described in the literature, we argue that the acclaimed facilitation of deeper learning and better retention of knowledge appear questionable. We therefore propose an innovative way of presenting both the test itself and the study process for the test: a real-time-strategy game with in-game challenges, both individual and in teams.
Om het onderwijs, de curricula, zo goed mogelijk af te stemmen op de benodigde internationale competenties is door middel van halfgestructureerde interviews en een online enquête onderzocht wat alumni van De Haagse Hogeschool en werkgevers in de regio voor ervaringen, wensen en behoeften hebben met betrekking tot internationale competenties. De uitkomsten laten zien dat internationale competenties van belang zijn voor het verkrijgen en uitoefenen van een functie. Er is vanuit werkgevers en alumni vooral vraag naar meer aandacht voor het ontwikkelen van talencompetenties, interculturele competenties en het stimuleren en faciliteren van een buitenlandervaring. Door op deze punten een verbeterslag te maken zou De Haagse Hogeschool de succeskansen op de arbeidsmarkt (employability) van de student en de eigen relevantie kunnen vergroten. To gear education and curricula to the necessary international competencies as effectively as possible, semi-structured interviews and an online survey were used to determine the experiences, desires and needs of alumni of The Hague University of Applied Sciences and local employers with regard to obtaining and performing a job. Employers and alumni primarily desire more attention to the development of language competencies, intercultural competencies and the stimulation and facilitation of international experiences. Making improvements in these areas would enable The Hague University of Applied Sciences to enhance its own relevance and increase students’ chances of success in the job market (employability).
MUSE supports the CIVITAS Community to increase its impact on urban mobility policy making and advance it to a higher level of knowledge, exchange, and sustainability.As the current Coordination and Support Action for the CIVITAS Initiative, MUSE primarily engages in support activities to boost the impact of CIVITAS Community activities on sustainable urban mobility policy. Its main objectives are to:- Act as a destination for knowledge developed by the CIVITAS Community over the past twenty years.- Expand and strengthen relationships between cities and stakeholders at all levels.- Support the enrichment of the wider urban mobility community by providing learning opportunities.Through these goals, the CIVITAS Initiative strives to support the mobility and transport goals of the European Commission, and in turn those in the European Green Deal.Breda University of Applied Sciences is the task leader of Task 7.3: Exploitation of the Mobility Educational Network and Task 7.4: Mobility Powered by Youth Facilitation.
Collaborative networks for sustainability are emerging rapidly to address urgent societal challenges. By bringing together organizations with different knowledge bases, resources and capabilities, collaborative networks enhance information exchange, knowledge sharing and learning opportunities to address these complex problems that cannot be solved by organizations individually. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the apparel sector, where examples of collaborative networks for sustainability are plenty, for example Sustainable Apparel Coalition, Zero Discharge Hazardous Chemicals, and the Fair Wear Foundation. Companies like C&A and H&M but also smaller players join these networks to take their social responsibility. Collaborative networks are unlike traditional forms of organizations; they are loosely structured collectives of different, often competing organizations, with dynamic membership and usually lack legal status. However, they do not emerge or organize on their own; they need network orchestrators who manage the network in terms of activities and participants. But network orchestrators face many challenges. They have to balance the interests of diverse companies and deal with tensions that often arise between them, like sharing their innovative knowledge. Orchestrators also have to “sell” the value of the network to potential new participants, who make decisions about which networks to join based on the benefits they expect to get from participating. Network orchestrators often do not know the best way to maintain engagement, commitment and enthusiasm or how to ensure knowledge and resource sharing, especially when competitors are involved. Furthermore, collaborative networks receive funding from grants or subsidies, creating financial uncertainty about its continuity. Raising financing from the private sector is difficult and network orchestrators compete more and more for resources. When networks dissolve or dysfunction (due to a lack of value creation and capture for participants, a lack of financing or a non-functioning business model), the collective value that has been created and accrued over time may be lost. This is problematic given that industrial transformations towards sustainability take many years and durable organizational forms are required to ensure ongoing support for this change. Network orchestration is a new profession. There are no guidelines, handbooks or good practices for how to perform this role, nor is there professional education or a professional association that represents network orchestrators. This is urgently needed as network orchestrators struggle with their role in governing networks so that they create and capture value for participants and ultimately ensure better network performance and survival. This project aims to foster the professionalization of the network orchestrator role by: (a) generating knowledge, developing and testing collaborative network governance models, facilitation tools and collaborative business modeling tools to enable network orchestrators to improve the performance of collaborative networks in terms of collective value creation (network level) and private value capture (network participant level) (b) organizing platform activities for network orchestrators to exchange ideas, best practices and learn from each other, thereby facilitating the formation of a professional identity, standards and community of network orchestrators.
