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
The first part of this paper will start with an introduction of the general context of the education system in The Netherlands. This is followed by a presentation of the general characteristics of the teacher education system, of the balance between school autonomy and government control, and of the general policies concerning teacher quality. The second part will give an elaboration of the system of teacher education by introducing five major developments that have shaped teacher education in the past twenty years, and by giving a more detailed description of each type of teacher education. In the third part, I reflect on the role of the government in steering innovations and quality improvement in the area of teacher education
Primary and secondary school teachers are expected to adapt their teaching to the diverse educational needs of students through differentiated instruction (DI). This review included 29 peer-reviewed published articles from 2010 to 2020 evaluating the contribution of preservice and in-service teacher programs for DI. We synthesized program components, outcomes and contextual interplay. Results indicate that successful programs incorporate active learning, collaboration and reflection and were often longitudinal, comprehensive and addressed attitudes, knowledge and skills. Contextual (school) factors acted as facilitators and impediments to program efficacy. Balancing school ambitions with realistic expectations is a concern. Educational and policy implications are further discussed.
