Substantial and continuous shifts in skills demands urge us to rethink education, labour market and reintegration policies and practices. In this article, we argue for a more skills based approach to (re)integration. This skills based (re)integration practice is based more on up-to-date, complete and validated skills sets of candidates, than on diplomas and other, more or less, outdated and incomplete proxies to one’s current skills. Such a new reintegration practice seems feasible if the actual and complete skills set of an individual becomes the starting point for both matching, guidance and (up/re)skilling efforts. Intersectoral mobility, alternative career pathways and suitable training and development routes can be designed on a more fine-grained skills basis, with occupations considered more as dynamic sets of tasks requiring specific skills. This new (re)integration practice presupposes a common skills language, which is being developed in the Netherlands, Competent NL. Sectoral and intersectoral experiments with skills instruments using this language, such as skills passports, are conducted to optimize their quality and effectiveness. Since first experiments with skills instruments seem promising, we argue that more room for experiment is required. So that integration in the labor market can be sustained and reintegration practices can be prevented.
Researchers worldwide have identified affective benefits of improvisational drama techniques (IDTs) on foreign language (FL) learners. Yet the characteristics of professional development programmes (PDPs) that could lead to long-term integration of drama among FL teachers appear largely undiscovered. Through expert interviews, a needs analysis questionnaire and a literature review, this study aimed to determine which design principles a PDP must fulfil to effectively address educational challenges surrounding IDT-implementation. The findings revealed that such training calls for a symbiosis between practical considerations, namely school environment and training conditions, and tapping into a mindset among FL teachers that allows them to (re)discover core beliefs and carry out IDTs with ‘artistry’.
Sociocultural and dialogic theories of education have identified the need to integrate both pedagogical content and language knowledge into teachers’ professional development to promote effective interaction with students about subject content. In this intervention study, a meta-perspective on language was developed to understand how experienced teacher educators (N = 29) conceptualize ongoing language development in professional learning and teaching (referred to as language-developing learning in this study) as part of their pedagogical content knowledge. The data were analysed using content analysis. Language-developing learning was mainly conceived as teacher-oriented professional development. In this process, the language aspect was regarded not only as a tool that applies regulatory and explanatory language but also as a target that connects academic knowledge and interpersonally oriented language. The results increase our awareness of teacher educators’ practical knowledge of academic and interpersonal language in specific disciplinary contexts of teacher professional development in higher education.
