In order to deliver good work, professionals need agency – the ability to act and decide on the course of one’s actions. The agency of professionals in the public sector is however increasingly under pressure. Research suggests that these limitations on the agency of public professionals in turn limit their ability to create and sustain positive outcomes for the people and populations they serve.In this chapter, we discuss findings resulting from a longitudinal bottom-up action research approach in the Dutch education sector. The approach is aimed at strengthening the agency of public professionals, using professional dialogue as a central concept. We present and discuss both the methodology used and the results of that methodology in strengthening the agency of public professionals in 11 teams in 3 educational institutions.The results suggest that there are clear benefits of a tailor-made support for teams of professionals, such as employed in the action research. In varying degrees and dependent on context, this started or accelerated reflection on and improvement in setting goals, cooperation in the team and quality of work, thus at least partly increasing the agency of public professionals in the teams. In varying degrees, the lack of sufficient team and organizational conditions were found to often hinder the development of agency of public professionals.
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In een veranderende arbeidsmarkt is het noodzakelijk om je als professional wendbaar op te stellen, in te spelen op nieuwe rollen en je loopbaan doelbewust vorm te geven. In het hoger beroepsonderwijs sluiten steeds meer onderwijsinnovaties hierop aan met leeromgevingen, waarin van studenten verwacht wordt dat ze hun leerproces autonoom en bewust kunnen construeren. De vraag is hoe student agency in een dergelijke onderwijsleeromgeving wordt gestimuleerd. presentatie Onderwijs Research Dagen
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Higher education is making increasing demands on students’ learner-agency and self-directed learning. What exactly are learner agency and self-directed learning? Why are they important? And what does it take? The aim of the five questions and answers on this poster is to support a common language and to be used as conversation starters when you want to discuss learner-agency and self-directed learning.
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Girls Work, as one of the methods used by professional youth work, focuses on helping vulnerable girls to shape their own lives (a capacity also referred to as ‘agency’). In this study, it is hypothesised that the methodical principles (i.e. the guiding principles of the methodical actions of the youth worker) contribute to the empowerment process of girls, which in turn leads to the development of girls’ agency. Serial mediation was used to test this hypothesis. Results indicate that all of the methodical principles, with the exception of the use of context, are important in helping girls develop agency. Four of the methodical principles contribute to both empowerment and agency, while the other methodical principles contribute to agency only through empowerment. This paper also addresses the importance of focusing on the empowerment of girls, as empowerment is positively linked with agency. All of the components of individual empowerment are important when helping girls develop their agency.--Meidenwerk, een specifieke methodiek van het jongerenwerk, richt zich op het ondersteunen van meiden in kwetsbare posities bij het (leren) vormgeven aan hun eigen leven (ook bekend als agency). In dit onderzoek wordt verondersteld dat de methodische principes (uitgangspunten in het methodisch handelen van de jongerenwerkers) bijdragen aan het proces van empowerment, dat op zijn beurt weer leidt tot de ontwikkeling van agency bij meiden. Om dit te toetsen is een mediatie-analyse uitgevoerd. De resultaten wijzen erop dat alle methodische principes, met uitzondering van ‘werken met de omgeving’, bijdragen aan hoe meiden agency ontwikkelen. Vier van de methodische principes dragen bij aan zowel het empowermentproces als de ontwikkeling van agency, terwijl de andere methodische principes alleen via het empowermentproces bijdragen aan de ontwikkeling van agency. Dit artikel wijst op het belang om aandacht te hebben voor de empowerment van meiden in kwetsbare situaties, omdat er een positieve relatie is tussen het empowermentproces en de ontwikkeling van agency. Hierbij is het belangrijk dat er aandacht is voor alle drie de componenten van psychologische empowerment.
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Western societies are quickly becoming less coherent (Giddens, 1991). As a result it is increasingly unclear how individuals should act in a range of situations or how they may understand themselves. To a certain extent this development towards more diverse perspectives and a broader range of ways to act is a positive one, as cultures can only develop as they are confronted with different perspectives. A uniform culture would simply reach a standstill. That said, current society now demands of its citizens that they become increasingly self-reliant and by extension develop a capacity to be self-governing. On the labour market self-reliance and self-determination have been considered par for the course even longer. It is no surprise then that terms like self-direction, self-governing teams, employability and resilience are considered part of the standard repertoire of politicians and employers (Van der Heijden & De Vos, 2017). Within the social sciences, an ability to be self-governing and self-reliant are terms that are associated with the concept “agency”. However, the latter is a fairly vague, multidimensional concept (Arthur, 2014) that refers to the ‘scope of action’ an individual has in a fluid society (Bauman, 2000). In this article we would like to explore the concept of ‘agency’ further whereby we focus on the role of imagination in enacting it. https://doi.org/10.1177/1038416218777832 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reinekke-lengelle-phd-767a4322/
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Symposium ESWRA - ECSWR 2016: empirical ethics in social work. Objective: ethical aspects of social work (esp. at home) Structure: cooperation of the research group of UAS Utrecht Netherlands with six regional welfare organizations Method: practice based ethics research Focus on professional practice: learning from moral experiences in frontline practice (cf. Van Doorn, 2008) Hybrid approach: combining theoretical resources and professional practice (cf. Banks & Gallagher, 2009) Mixed methods: desk research, interviews, best practice units (BPU), development of ethical tools
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Due to fast and unpredictable developments, professional education is challenged with being responsive, which demands a rethinking of conventional curriculum development approaches. Yet, literature on curriculum development falls short in terms of recognising how to react rapidly and adequately to these new developments. This study focuses on curriculum development initiatives at the school level in a Dutch university of applied sciences. Open interviews were held with 29 curriculum developers to explore how they define and give substance to developing curricula for new, changing or unpredictable professions. These 29 participants were involved in seven curriculum development trajectories. Four themes were detected: (1) curriculum developers are in favour of open, flexible and authentic curricula; (2) the context in which the curriculum development takes place and the different roles and responsibilities of curriculum developers are challenging; (3) curriculum developers feel insufficiently equipped to carry out their tasks; and (4) involving stakeholders is necessary but results in a “viscous” social–political process. Responsive curriculum development requires a great deal of flexibility and adaptability from curriculum developers. Yet, in our study, “institutional concrete” is found to severely hinder responsive curriculum development processes. To be responsive, such processes need to be supported and institutional barriers need to be removed.
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The authors of this article offered training aimed at strengthening the ethical agency of 15 social workers of three Dutch welfare organisations. At the same time, we conducted research into the ethical impact of the training, making use of an adaptation of the Most Significant Change approach (MSC). The participants wrote stories about the most significant change they experienced as a result of the training which we subsequently discussed with care recipients, care providers, and operational care managers. The MSC-stories revealed that the training was significant for the participants, especially to (re)connect with themselves, and with others, as well as to slow down and engage in collective ethics work. At the same time, the learning processes and the learning outcomes diverged, due to individual differences in professional motivation and working conditions. Most MSC-stories show that the training was significant because it helped the social workers to deal ethically with a specific working condition that they experienced somehow as problematic, mostly because it was at odds with their professional motivation. The stakeholders preferred MSC-stories that focus on the impact on professionals as employees, on their relation with service users or on the actual delivered care.
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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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We developed and piloted a course, called Changemakers, that supported interdisciplinary student-led action groups to identify social and environmental sustainability challenges and influence systemic change. By exposing students to dynamic and complex issues from multiple stakeholder perspectives, Changemakers aimed to empower students to find and use their voice and agency to make a difference in society. Students need knowledge and skills to navigate societal challenges, address SDGs and build confidence and creativity to change the status quo (Lozano, 2017; Raelin, 2009). Changemakers provided a playful and safe learning environment to explore societal challenges, form inclusive and sensitive judgments, and enact interventions for change. Students developed self-efficacy (Bandura, 2001) that were encouraged to be autonomous and self-directed in their learning (Morris, 2019). Through learning-by-doing, students gained a set of leadership and change management skills that can be applied to a variety of professional settings in local and global contexts.
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