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
In 1996 innovative, double major teacher education programs for Physics & Mathematics and Physics & Chemistry were initiated at the University of San Carlos in Cebu, Philippines. Both programs require 4 years of study. From the outset the focus was on making a difference in the quality of Science and Mathematics Teacher Education, producing teachers with a good mastery of subject matter and able to teach the subjects in exciting and effective ways in typical Philippine crowded and resource-poor classrooms. The programs recruit top high school graduates using a promotion and scholarship scheme and then expose them to the best science lecturers at the university, and create a special learning environment for the duration of their training. Early 2011 a study was conducted to assess long term effects of the programs through a tracer study of the 300 alumni, interviews, and 22classroom visits to observe their teaching. Of the 300 alumni 245 are still teaching of whom 33 abroad (mainly USA) and 212 in the Philippines. Alumni are highly valued by principals of the top schools in Cebu and their students win many local and even national science competitions. Their teaching is competent with lots of interaction and good subject matter mastery, but they are also facing some typical Philippine education problems.
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This paper reports on a multiple-case study of five participants in a school-university research network in a Dutch master's program. Outcomes indicate that use of existing network structures in master's programs is complex, but could be a promising avenue for creating succesful school-university networks.
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