Innovation is crucial for higher education to ensure high-quality curricula that address the changing needs of students, labor markets, and society as a whole. Substantial amounts of resources and enthusiasm are devoted to innovations, but often they do not yield the desired changes. This may be due to unworkable goals, too much complexity, and a lack of resources to institutionalize the innovation. In many cases, innovations end up being less sustainable than expected or hoped for. In the long term, the disappointing revenues of innovations hamper the ability of higher education to remain future proof. Against the background of this need to increase the success of educational innovations, our colleague Klaartje van Genugten has explored the literature on innovations to reveal mechanisms that contribute to the sustainability of innovations. Her findings are synthesized in this report. They are particularly meaningful for directors of education programs, curriculum committees, educational consultants, and policy makers, who are generally in charge of defining the scope and set up of innovations. Her report offers a comprehensive view and provides food for thought on how we can strive for future-proof and sustainable innovations. I therefore recommend reading this report.
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Informal learning spaces create opportunities for children and youth to develop their talents and to experience new social roles. In recent years, several public libraries in the Netherlands have established makerspaces to empower youth by facilitating the development of their digital skills in conjunction with their creativity. The Amsterdam Public Library created a network of makerspaces (Maakplaats021) and provided training for the makerspace-coaches. These coaches – former librarians or other professionals – have a central role in the makerspace and fulfill several functions. This contribution describes informal learning of children in these makerspaces and distills critical features that enforce learning through the lens of children aged 8–12 and their makerspace-coaches.
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professional development through informal learning In planning professional development for teachers or teacher educators, very often a formal course or training is offered. There is a lack of attention for the fact that a lot of professional development takes place at work through so-called workplace-learning (Eraut, 2004;Tynjälä & Heikkinen, 2011, Tynjälä, 2008). Raising the awareness of one's professional development through workplace learning might help to intertwine professional development with the performance of tasks. Professional development than becomes part of the job instead of an extra -workload increasing- task outside the job. In our research group, we are studying ways to raise awareness for informal learning. In this workshop we focus on a method that we designed, consisting of a learning report and an analysis tool. The workshop consist of three parts. We start the session with a short presentation of our study and the findings (15 minutes). After that, the participants of the workshop will work with the tools we have developed in our study to raise the awareness for informal learning (20 minutes). The results will then be discussed according to two questions: (1) what is your opinion on the analysis-tool; (2) what is your opinion on the use of this tool for raising awareness for informal learning on a personal and institutional level (20 minutes).
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Many students graduating in higher education will achieve a managerial or professional position, with leadership qualities being highly important. The need to reflect on leadership as an important developmental goal in higher education is highlighted by pointing out that many curricula, especially in the managerial, organisational and economic domain, include specific courses on leadership. It seems that some of our thinking on leadership needs revision. According to Kellerman, leaders’ ability to connect to followers is paramount to gain and remain in power. Dutch management scholar Manfred Kets de Vries (2004) underlines that the main responsibility of a leader is to envision and inspire. In this chapter we will examine the role of personality and personal values in the ability of informal leaders to inspire other team members. In the first section we will elaborate on transformational leadership and shared leadership. In the next, we will link these forms of leadership to personality and personal values. In the third section the findings of our empirical study will be discussed. We conclude with the implications of our study for leadership practice and the scholarly field of leadership. From an educational point of view our findings are important. The results shed additional light on the importance of personality traits on leadership, and informal leadership in particular. As leadership is an important phenomenon in society and working life, (under)graduates can be assisted in understanding and developing it. But in the context of this book it should be highlighted that transformational leadership is highly relevant in knowledge innovation (García-Morales et al., 2012), which is a core issue in higher education. Consequently, inspiring others is relevant, because group work is commonly used in higher education. Understanding group dynamics within student teams, informal leadership specifically, can help lecturers to explain and discuss effective and ineffective group work. In our opinion, the results of this study offer interesting evidence-based insights to reflect on and develop those personal characteristics that can be important for informal leadership effectiveness.
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Professional development of teacher educators is an important issue. In order to be able to teach the teachers of the future, teacher educators have to keep their own knowledge and skills 'future proof'. When it comes to professional development, very often people think of 'attending courses'. But attending courses to keep up knowledge and/or skills, is only a small aspect of the broad range of possible activities to fill in ones professional development. A lot of professional development takes place at work, the so-called workplace-learning or informal learning. In this study we look at the professional development of teacher educators through informal learning. Often forms of informal learning are not recognized by the learner, because they are so integrated with work. In this study the goal is to stimulate awareness of informal learning processes by teacher educators. Teacher educators use a logbook and report daily, weekly or once in three weeks what they have learned. After a three-week period they analyse their logbooks by looking at 'what is learned, 'how is learned', with or from who is learned'. This study has two types of outcomes: (1) awareness of the informal learning processes of the participating teacher educators themselves and (2) insights into the processes of stimulating awareness of informal learning processes. The study is in progress (march 2012) and we will present our findings at the conference in Antwerp.
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The maker movement is increasingly finding its way into informal and formal educational settings. This chapter welcomes that trend and reflects on the cases in this book through five lenses, whereby informal and formal settings are contrasted. The first lens focuses on the development of a maker identity. In the formal setting in Delft (The Netherlands), for instance, students are expected to develop a professional engineering identity, which calls for certain task characteristics and a learning environment that differs from informal settings. The second lens focuses on what in being learnt: maker skills can be a learning objective in itself but making can also be a vehicle to learn other things. The third lens is about ‘what drives learners, what is motivating?’ The fourth lens is concerned with the value of working with tangible objects, and the use of different types of materials. Lastly, ways to sustain ‘making in education’, for instance by means of collaboration between learners, teachers and stakeholders is a lens that is used to shed light on contrasts between formal and informal settings.
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This scoping review focuses on the views of informal caregivers regarding the division of care responsibilities between citizens, governments and professionals and the question of to what extent professionals take these views into account during collaboration with them. In Europe, the normative discourse on informal care has changed. Retreating governments and decreasing residential care increase the need to enhance the collaborationbetween informal caregivers and professionals. Professionals are assumedto adequately address the needs and wishes of informal caregivers, but little is known about informal caregivers’ views on the division of care responsibilities. We performed a scoping review and searched for relevant studies published between 2000 and September 1, 2016 in seven databases. Thirteen papers were included, all published in Western countries. Most included papers described research with a qualitative research design. Based on the opinion of informal caregivers, we conclude that professionals do not seem to explicitly take into account the views of informal caregivers about the division of responsibilities during their collaboration with them. Roles of the informal caregivers and professionals are not always discussed and the division of responsibilities sometimes seems unclear. Acknowledging the role and expertise of informalcaregivers seems to facilitate good collaboration, as well as attitudes such as professionals being open and honest, proactive and compassionate. Inflexible structures and services hinder good collaboration. Asking informal caregivers what their opinion is about the division of responsibilities could improve clarity about the care that is given by both informal caregivers and professionals and could improve their collaboration. Educational programs in social work, health and allied health professions should put more emphasis on this specific characteristic of collaboration.
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This paper analyses the ways in which informal mediation channels facilitate service delivery in the Citizen Service Bureaus at the Municipal Corporation of Delhi and give rise to an interplay between formal and informal institutions. In particular, the personal backgrounds of brokers as informal mediators and how they ensure their acceptance amongst service seekers are explored. Further, the motivations of the service seekers to solicit help from these mediators as well as institutional responses from the municipal administration along with other relevant actors like the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi are examined.
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Over the past decade, the maker movement and in its slipstream maker education have attained worldwide popularity among educators, politicians, and the media. Makers’ enthusiasm for creative design and construction, using old and new tools has proven contagious, and is worth exploration and critical reflection by the community of engineering and technology education (ETE). This chapter describes what has been said about “making” by philosophers and educators; what maker education is, and what is new and not so new about it; why it has gained momentum; what the evidence is about its effectiveness and its possible weaknesses; and how mainstream technology education may benefit from maker education. This chapter concludes with ideas for a research agenda.
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Introduction and theoretical background Professional development of teacher educators is an important issue because in order to be able to teach the teachers of the future, teacher educators have to keep their own knowledge and skills 'future proof' (Kools, 2011a). A lot of professional development takes place at work (workplace-learning) (Eraut, 2004;Tynjälä & Heikkinen, 2011). In an attempt to typecast this type of learning, Eraut introduces a continuum of formal and informal learning. At the informal end of the continuum we find 'implicit, unintended, opportunistic and unstructured learning and the absence of a teacher' (Eraut, 2004, p250). At the formal end, opposite types of learning can be found. In between the two ends of the continuum, all kinds of fusions of formal and informal learning exist. Research goals In our study, we intend to take a closer look at informal forms of learning as a means of professional development. The purpose of our study is to recognize the possibilities and to appreciate the value of informal forms of learning with regard to teacher educators' professional development, both by teacher educators themselves as well as by their managers. In a quick-scan at our Teacher College (Kools, 2011b) teacher educators were asked to mention which activities they had undertaken in the past two years to develop themselves professionally. In this quickscan, informal forms of learning were often ticked off. These findings might indicate that informal forms of learning do take place and can be recognized retrospectively. In our study we focus on the recognition of informal learning processes by teacher educators. We are investigating ways to stimulate teacher educators' awareness of informal learning processes. The question for this part is: 'in what ways do writing logbooks and the analysis of these logbooks help teacher educators to become aware of their own informal learning processes?' Proposed design of the study In our study we would like to invite teacher educators to participate and study their own informal learning processes. We would like them to describe their learning experiences and learning outcomes in a logbook. Logbook entries are made on the basis of regular time intervals such a daily entries, weekly entries or entries every six weeks. After 6 weeks we ask them to look at their own logbooks and analyse how and what they have learned and what they experienced in the process writing log entries. We will ask them to express this in a learner-report. For this task, we provide them with an analysis-tool, consisting of a checklist with critical questions. These learner reports form the input for an overall analysis in which we would like to answer the research question. The design of the study leads to two types of outcomes: (1) awareness of their informal learning processes of the participating teacher educators and (2) insights into the processes of stimulating awareness of informal learning processes. At the conference In Coimbra we hope to present our first experiences and some results of this approach. References Eraut, M. (2004). Informal learning in the workplace. Studies in Continuing Education, Vol 26, N0, July 2004, 247-273 Kools, Quinta H. (2011). Future proof! Professionaliteit van leraren en lerarenopleiders. Lectorale rede, Fontys Hogescholen. Kools, Q.H., J. Dengerink, K. Melief and M. Lunenberg (2011). Professional development activities of teacher educators. Paper presented at the annual ATEE conference Riga, August 2011 Tynjälä, Päivi, and Hannu L.T. Heikkinen (2011). Beginning teacher's transition from pre-service education to working life. Theoretical perspectives and best practices. Published online: 29.03.2011, © VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften 2011
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