Professional development of teacher educators is an important topic, because teacher educators need to maintain and enhance their expertise in order to educate our future teachers (Kools & Koster, n.d. ; Dengerink, Lunenberg & Kools, 2015). How do teacher educators fulfil this task, especially within the hectic timeframe of everyday work? I asked four colleges to participate in a group to share their experiences, actions or behaviour in the organisation about their development in their profession of being a teacher educator. My purpose is to bring awareness and movement into that group. My research focusses on teacher educators in a large teacher education department in the Netherlands and the opportunities for action available to them. During this study we are currently creating a learning environment in which mutual cooperation increases the learning potential of all participants. In this group participants take or make time to learn, giving words to their scopes . Researcher and participants discuss and explore on the basis of equality, reciprocity and mutual understanding. By deploying methods borrowed from ‘Appreciative Inquiry’(Massenlink et al., 2008) the enthusiasm of a study group is raised and the intrinsic motivation of the participants stimulated. Our study group will convene three times. Its goal is to stimulate cooperation among teacher educators through optimisation of existing qualities, a method that could be described as empowerment, or a process of collective reinforcement ‘To learn’ involves experiencing that what one does really matters, as well as developing one’s own persona in the local community. Intervention, action, reflection and study group meetings alternate in the course of our research. In addition to audio and video recordings, data consists of reports drawn up on the basis of member checks. Data is analysed qualitatively by coding the interview texts and reports. After applying the codes, the researcher discusses the coding in a research group and with the participants of the study group (membercheck). Working collaboratively can offer learning challenges that catalyse growth as a professional, teacher educators become acquainted and approach each other from the perspective of their respective professional and functional responsibilities. This study offers perspectives for other teacher educators to recognize these possibilities in their own situation. Moreover the study offers a description of a way to organise collegial exchange. The research is related to the RDC professional development of teacher educators.
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Currently, various higher education (HE) institutes develop flexible curricula for various reasons, including promoting accessibility of HE, the societal need for more self-regulated professionals who engage in life-long learning, and the desire to increase motivation of students. Increasing flexibility in curricula allows students to choose for example what they learn, when they learn, how they learn, where they learn, and/or with whom. However, HE institutes raise the question of what preferences and needs different stakeholders have with regard to flexibility, so that suitable choices can be made in the design of policies, curricula, and student support programs. In this workshop, we focus on student preferences and share recent insights from research on HE students' preferences regarding flexible education. Moreover, we use participants’ expertise to identify new (research) questions to further explore what students’ needs imply for several domains, namely curriculum-design, student support that is provided by educators/staff, policy, management, and the professional field. Firstly, a conceptual framework on flexible education and student’s preferences will be presented. Secondly, participants reflect in groups on student personas. Then, discussion groups have a Delphi-based discussion to collect new ideas for research. Finally, participants share the outcomes on a ‘willing wall’ and a ‘wailing wall’.
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Mathematics teacher educators in primary teacher education need expert knowledge and skills in teaching in primary school, in subject matter and research. Most starting mathematics teacher educators possess only part of this knowledge and skills. A professional development trajectory for this group is developed and tested, where a design based research is used to evaluate the design. This paper describes the professional development trajectory and design. We conclude that the professional development design should focus on mathematical knowledge for teaching, should refer to both teacher education and primary education, should offer opportunities for cooperative learning, and need to use practice based research as a developmental tool.
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Teachers in Europe are educated in a wide variety of institutes and by a wide range of curriculum models. The main aim of teacher education is the same throughout Europe – the education of teachers – but the underlying ideas and the contexts differ, leading to significant differences between teacher education curricula Eurydice, 2002). Nevertheless, the teacher education institutes in the various European countries face similar challenges, like how to support the development of teacher identity, how to bridge the gap between theory and practice, how to find the balance between subject studies and pedagogical studies, how to contribute to a higher status of teachers and how to prepare teachers for the needs of pupils in the 21st century (European Commission, 2007a). Both the academic discourse and the exchange of examples of good practice show that in most countries, the national debates focus on similar issues (see, e.g., OECD, 2005). The curriculum designs of European countries differ, as they are based on different national contexts such as different education systems, political choices and underlying mental models, for example, with respect to the expected level of knowledge and skills of teachers. Reflection on these differences can stimulate discussions and help to identify alternatives, find new perspectives and raise awareness of national presuppositions. It is impossible within the context of this chapter to make a thorough comparison of all systems of teacher education in Europe. Chapter 2 offers a more detailed description of teacher education in the United Kingdom, Israel and the Netherlands. In this chapter, we reflect on some of the issues that define teacher education, and we try to identify choices that are made in different countries and the differences and similarities in structures and approaches that are a result of these choices. To structure our reflections, we use a comparative framework focusing on: The system of teacher education ; The content of teacher education
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The present study focuses on the level of stress a teacher perceives when dealing with the most behaviorally challenging student in his or her classroom. To measure stress in Dutch elementary classrooms, a sample was drawn of 582 teachers. Two questions concerning this relation between student and teacher will be addressed. First of all, we focus on background variables of teachers and students as sources of variation in explaining the magnitude of challenging student behavior and the associated level of stress teachers experience. The second topic of this paper is to accommodate the potentially stressful relationship between student and teacher in a wider network of surrounding variables, which are, Self-efficacy, Negative affect, Autonomy in taking decisions, and Support amongst colleagues. To evaluate the presence of challenging behavior, the behavior of the student is related to more general variables like student responsibility, class size and ratio of boys to girls. We close our paper by assessing the validity of the studied relationship between teacher and student with respect to possible burnout.
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This study was conducted in the context of primary teacher education. The primary teacher education program at HU University of Applied Sciences is at the start of a curriculum redesign in which assessment for learning and feedback will be emphasized. We know assessment and feedback can increase student learning and performance. In the last couple of years students as feedback receivers are placed in the centre of the feedback process. When students actively take up feedback their engagement in feedback will increase. However, some feedback situations work well for them and some don’t. In this study we try to grasp both situations and figure out which factors of the feedback situation did work or did not. We focused on two processes during the interviews and the coding. The first process was about the feedback situation, which characteristics of the feedback context, the receiver and the sender were at hand, and second what did students do with the feedback, did they try to understand and use the feedback, react to or ask for new feedback. The aim of this study is to provide feedback situations that work for our students and use them as elements in the redesign of the curriculum.
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National and international education policies acknowledge the importance of the quality of teachers. Research literature emphasises the teacher profession as an dynamic and extended profession, driven by a moral perspective and a collaborative identity across the profession. In this paper the question is raised to what extent this understanding is reflected in the way in which teacher quality is defined within the Dutch policy context. The Dutch narrative describes how the debate on teacher quality over the past 20 years has led to an image of a static, fragmented, narrow and instrumentalized profession. This creates a dilemma for teacher education institutes, balancing between the narrow formal expectations and the extended profession as derived from research. Creating space for that wider and innovative identity of teachers will require a process of redefining teacher quality in which all stakeholders need to play an active role.
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Societal trends such as increased accountability, teacher shortages, and flexibility in learning paths affect the work of teacher educators. This study explores the collective agency of Dutch geography teacher educators as they enact the subject pedagogy curriculum within this rapidly changing context. Whilst teacher agency has been widely studied, research on teacher educators—particularly from a collective perspective—remains scarce. Drawing on Priestley et al.'s ecological approach, this study aims to disentangle teacher educators' collective spaces of agency by means of cultural, structural, and material resources. Using focus group interviews with three teams of geography teacher educators, we identified three key challenges that define their collective spaces of agency: (1) accommodating students' developmental phases, (2) gaining insight into students' internship learning, and (3) the growing divide between subject-specific and general teacher education. Thematic analysis revealed that teams of educators experience a different sense of agency in each of these spaces, depending on their ability to draw on the available resources. Our findings show that teams of educators draw on strong subject teacher identities (cultural resources) and experience collective agency when enacting subject pedagogy at the course level (structural resources). Their sense of agency is weak at the institutional level, particularly in relation to curricular change. This study contributes to a more profound understanding of teacher educators' collective spaces of agency. Disentangling these spaces can help teams of teacher educators to identify the necessary resources to restore their sense of agency in difficult times.
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In this chapter, we discuss the education of secondary school mathematics teachers in the Netherlands. There are different routes for qualifying as a secondary school mathematics teacher. These routes target different student teacher populations, ranging from those who have just graduated from high school to those who have already pursued a career outside education or working teachers who want to qualify for teaching in higher grades. After discussing the complex structure this leads to, we focus on the aspects that these different routes have in common. We point out typical characteristics of Dutch school mathematics and discuss the aims and challenges in teacher education that result from this. We give examples of different approaches used in Dutch teacher education, which we link to a particular model for designing vocational and professional learning environments.We end the chapter with a reflection on the current situation.
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Teacher education is in a state of change. There is a new focus on professional competence, including the competence for further development and learning, conceived of as workplace learning. Teacher shortages put pressure on the development of alternative routes to teaching. The arrival of prospective teachers with experience and qualifications in other areas than education requires adaptive programs, with a greater emphasis on professional learning in school. It is argued that promoting professional workplace learning asks for a conceptual clarification, based on new theory of learning and concepts of professionalism. A definition of professional learning is proposed. Some examples of new practice in teacher education are discussed.
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