In the Netherlands, and in many other countries, teacher policy and teacher education are strongly focused on ensuring that teachers meet certain minimum standards. As all student teachers need to meet these standards, teacher education programmes might put the main emphasis on the ‘average’ student and pay little attention to students who can perform better, which would lead to a middle-ofthe-road perspective on teachers and teacher education curricula. However, there is a growing awareness within higher education of the diversity of students with respect to their abilities and ambitions. In the Netherlands, there are initiatives to develop excellence programmes and honours programmes that recognize and accept student diversity. Such programmes offer ‘excellent’ students new challenges in the development of their excellence. But as ‘excellence’ is not centrally defined, higher education institutes can define the concept independently. Here, we present two examples of teacher education institutes that have developed honours programmes that emphasize excellent student teachers. While traditionally honours programmes in universities are focused on stimulating outstanding research performance of excellent students, in both examples a different focus is taken. The honours programmes in these universities for applied sciences do not focus on academic performance, but focus more directly on the roles of outstanding teachers in schools. One of these institutes focuses on primary teacher roles, the other on secondary teacher roles. Both use research in the content of the honours programmes and in the evaluation of the programmes. Here, an analysis of the two programmes is related to developments in teacher policy and the teaching profession with respect to teacher excellence, e.g. the recent recommendation from the Netherlands Education Council to nominate the top 5% of teachers as ‘excellent teachers’ – a recommendation that was received with mixed feelings by teachers, teachers’ unions and school leaders
Wat is teacher leadership precies? En hoe kun je dit stimuleren in je school?Informeel, collectief leiderschap lijkt de beste kansen op succes te geven, volgens Marco Snoek in dit artikel in Didactief.
University teacher teams can work toward educational change through the process of team learning behavior, which involves sharing and discussing practices to create new knowledge. However, teachers do not routinely engage in learning behavior when working in such teams and it is unclear how leadership support can overcome this problem. Therefore, this study examines when team leadership behavior supports teacher teams in engaging in learning behavior. We studied 52 university teacher teams (281 respondents) involved in educational change, resulting in two key findings. First, analyses of multiple leadership types showed that team learning behavior was best supported by a shared transformational leadership style that challenges the status quo and stimulates team members’ intellect. Mutual transformational encouragement supported team learning more than the vertical leadership source or empowering and initiating structure styles of leadership. Second, moderator analyses revealed that task complexity influenced the relationship between vertical empowering team leadership behavior and team learning behavior. Specifically, this finding suggests that formal team leaders who empower teamwork only affected team learning behavior when their teams perceived that their task was not complex. These findings indicate how team learning behavior can be supported in university teacher teams responsible for working toward educational change. Moreover, these findings are unique because they originate from relating multiple team leadership types to team learning behavior, examining the influence of task complexity, and studying this in an educational setting. https://www.scienceguide.nl/2021/06/leren-van-docentteams-vraagt-om-gezamenlijk-leiderschap/
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