Het Nederlandse onderwijssysteem kan beschouwd worden als ‘the hidden secret in education’ (Alma Harris). Weinig landen zijn in staat om hoge onderwijs kwaliteit te combineren met een grote mate van gelijke kansen. Daarmee kan Nederland naast gidslanden zoals Finland, Canada/Ontario en Singapore een inspiratiebron zijn voor andere landen. Met dit doel voor ogen is in mei 2017 het boek ’The Dutch way in education: Teach, learn and lead the Dutch way’ gepubliceerd. ‘because the Dutch score high on Pisa rankings, they top almost every chart on child well-being and have a high performing system with a good balance between equity and excellence. These are just a few aspects that indicate the Dutch society and its education has a lot of things to discover if you look more closely.’In dit boek worden de verworvenheden van het Nederlandse onderwijssysteem beschreven vanuit verschillende invalshoeken (klik hier voor de inhoudsopgave [https://www.thedutch-way.com/downloads/The_Dutch_Way_in_Education_tableofcontents.pdf]). Lector Marco Snoek heeft het hoofdstuk over de leraar in het Nederlandse schoolsysteem beschreven. In the Netherlands, as in every country in the world, the quality of education is an issue of major concern, as education is a key factor in maintaining and developing the economic and social stability of a country. It is a key responsibility of the government to maintain and develop that quality. After all, educational quality is not a static concept, as education needs to adapt itself continuously to changes and new needs in society. This chapter focuses on the way in which educational quality and development are supported in the Netherlands and the role teachers play in these. Three perspectives on that role are presented, one in which teachers are recipients from government measures and follow system structures and regulations, one in which individual teachers are seen as the key actors in defining and realizing educational quality and one in which educational quality is considered the result of close collaboration of teams of teachers. The chapter shows how government and local policies in the Netherlands have moved from the first to the second perspective and are now, slowly, evolving to the third perspective.Het boek is uitgegeven door Uitgeverij Onderwijs maak je Samen. Zie www.thedutch-way.com. Sinds november 2017 is er ook een Nederlandse vertaling beschikbaar: The Dutch Way. Leren, lesgeven en leiderschap in het Nederlandse Onderwijs.
The continuing aging of the population sparked off a public discussion on the extent of state care of elderly people. A historical evaluation of the Dutch system of family care is an essential part in the above discussion, especially regarding options like self-aid and 'mantelzorg'. Using population registers, household stutters of elderly people in the periode 1920-1940 were reconstructed for two different regions in the Netherlands. The most important conclusion of this investigation is that the Dutch elderly were, in most cases, living independently, as head (or wife of the head) of the household in which they were residing.
In summer 2020, part of a quay wall in Amsterdam collapsed, and in 2010, construction for a parking lot in Amsterdam was hindered by old sewage lines. New sustainable electric systems are being built on top of the foundations of old windmills, in places where industry thrived in the 19th century. All these examples have one point in common: They involve largely unknown and invisible historic underground structures in a densely built historic city. We argue that truly circular building practices in old cities require smart interfaces that allow the circular use of data from the past when planning the future. The continuous use and reuse of the same plots of land stands in stark contrast with the discontinuity and dispersed nature of project-oriented information. Construction and data technology improves, but information about the past is incomplete. We have to break through the lack of historic continuity of data to make building practices truly circular. Future-oriented construction in Amsterdam requires historic knowledge and continuous documentation of interventions and findings over time. A web portal will bring together a range of diverse public and private, professional and citizen stakeholders, each with their own interests and needs. Two creative industry stakeholders, Yume interactive (Yume) and publisher NAI010, come together to work with a major engineering office (Witteveen+Bos), the AMS Institute, the office of Engineering of the Municipality of Amsterdam, UNESCO NL and two faculties of Delft University of Technology (Architecture and Computer Science) to inventorize historic datasets on the Amsterdam underground. The team will connect all the relevant stakeholders to develop a pilot methodology and a web portal connecting historic data sets for use in contemporary and future design. A book publication will document the process and outcomes, highlighting the need for circular practices that tie past, present and future.
