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
Situated learning plays a key role in internships and other practice-based learning settings in teacher education. The dominant assumption for a long time has been that the development of teaching competency is advanced most through practical teaching experience and post-lesson conferences between mentor and student teachers. It is through the reflection of teaching and classroom processes that student teachers are believed to develop their professional knowledge. The assistance of such reflection draws on mentor teachers’ teaching expertise. Mentor teachers, however, rarely explicate practical and theory-based knowledge underlying their practice and student teachers are not inclined to search for their mentor teacher’s underlying knowledge. As a consequence, the knowledge underlying effective teaching often remains implicit. The symposium brings together three novel approaches to assist teacher learning, which aim to make knowledge of teaching explicit. To bridge the gap between mentor and student teachers’ instructional concepts, the method of videobased tagging as a pre-requisite to initiate and structure professional dialogue is suggested and researched by van den Bogert, Crasborn, Bruggen and Eindhoven in The Netherlands. The second study by Staub, Waldis, Schatzmann and Futter investigates effects of an intervention with mentor teachers in Switzerland, suggesting the enactment of pre-lesson conferences and/or the use of a core concepts for lesson planning and reflection. A third study involving Germany and Switzerland by Kreis, Schnebel, Wyss, Wagner and Deiringer researches student teachers’ knowledge, beliefs and experiences related to collaborative lesson planning with peers. The shared assumption is that all three approaches enhance explicit communication on teaching and encourage professional dialogues that contribute to teacher learning in significant ways. Eliciting mentor and pre-service teachers’ practical knowledge using teacher-tagged classroom situations Bogert van den, Crasborn, Bruggen van & Jochems) Objectives The present study has a twofold objective. First, elicitation of mentor and pre-service teachers’ conceptualizations of videotaped classroom situations to clarify similarities and differences between practical knowledge of experienced and novice teachers. Second, exploration of ‘collaborative tagging’ as a new method to access mentors and pre-service teachers’ practical knowledge. Theoretical framework Teachers’ practical knowledge underlies overt teaching behavior, and is personal, unique, often tacit, and intertwined with teaching actions (Meijer, Verloop, & Beijaard, 2002). The ability to notice and interpret what is happening in a classroom is a basic aspect of teachers’ practical knowledge (Goodwin, 1994). Experienced teachers are more proficient in this essential perceptional process than novice teachers (Berliner, 2001; Sabers, Cushing, & Berliner, 1991). Consequently, proficient teachers may facilitate the professional development of novices. However, mentor teachers rarely explicate practical knowledge underlying their teaching practice (Edwards & Protheroe, 2004), and most pre-service teachers are not inclined to search for their mentor teacher’s practical knowledge (Penny, Harley, & Jessop, 1996). Hence, in this study we explored ‘collaborative tagging’ (Mika, 2005): a method where many people independently attach keywords called tags to e.g. videos, for categorization and fast future retrieval. Collaborative tagging has gained popularity since 2004 (Hammond, Hannay, Lund, & Scott, 2005), indicating the willingness and ease with which this activity is undertaken. In other studies (Cattuto, Benz, Hotho, & Stumme, 2008; Mika, 2005) network analysis of the co-occurrence of tags revealed the semantic relationships between the tags; a bottom-up taxonomy, or a so called folksonomy (Vander Wal, 2004). In this study, collaborative tagging was applied to explore the structure of teachers’ knowledge and compare conscious aspects of mentor and pre-service teachers’ practical knowledge. The main research questions were: • Which concepts do mentor- and pre-service teachers use to tag videotaped classroom situations? • To what extent do the generated tags and the relations between them differ between mentor- and pre-service teachers? • To what extent is collaborative tagging is helpful in gaining access to conscious aspects of mentors and pre-service teachers’ practical knowledge? Method Participants were 100 mentor-teachers and 100 pre-service teachers. The participants each ‘tagged” five video-fragments of different classroom situations. Data were analyzed with UCINET software as proposed by Mika (2005). Co-occurrences of tags were computed. Familiar measures of social network analysis (e.g. clustering coefficients, and (local) betweenness centrality) were used to describe each folksonomy, and to compare pre-service and mentor teachers’ networks of tags. Results and significance The study established that tagging is a promising new method to elicit teachers’ practical knowledge. The resulting folksonomies clarified similarities and differences between mentors’ and pre-service teachers’ practical knowledge. Results indicate that experienced teachers use more detailed and specific tags than pre-service teachers. This method makes a significant contribution to the methodology of the study of teachers’ practical knowledge. Folksonomies not only elicit individual teachers’ practical knowledge but enable researchers to discern common element’s in teachers’ practical knowledge. Moreover, in teacher education, folksonomies are helpful to initiate and structure professional dialogue between pre-service and mentor teachers.
This study highlights tensions and challenges experienced by language teachers in CLIL contexts. Using an example from the Netherlands, it explores the pedagogical and collaborative practices of Teachers of English in Bilingual streams (TEBs). The study shows how, using formal and practical theories, pedagogical and collaborative practices were formulated and used to investigate the beliefs and practices of language teachers in bilingual settings. The paper presents the operationalisation of 36 practices for TEBs and reports on an online survey investigating TEBs’ stated beliefs and practices. The findings suggest this set of practices has potential, both as a professional development tool for language teachers in bilingual education settings, and for further research. Results of the online survey revealed that the disciplinary identity of most Dutch TEBs leads to a focus on language, communication, literature, and language arts. TEBs are not necessarily aware of, and do not automatically consider, possibilities for expanding their own pedagogical practices in relation to subject-specific language or supporting and collaborating with their subject teacher colleagues. We suggest that policy guidelines, curricula development and teacher education programmes should pay more attention to the unique position of language teachers in these settings.
The project aims to improve palliative care in China through the competence development of Chinese teachers, professionals, and students focusing on the horizontal priority of digital transformation.Palliative care (PC) has been recognised as a public health priority, and during recent years, has seen advances in several aspects. However, severe inequities in the access and availability of PC worldwide remain. Annually, approximately 56.8 million people need palliative care, where 25.7% of the care focuses on the last year of person’s life (Connor, 2020).China has set aims for reaching the health care standards of the developed countries by 2030 through the Healthy China Strategy 2030, where one of the improvement areas in health care includes palliative care, thus continuing the previous efforts.The project provides a constructive, holistic, and innovative set of actions aimed at resulting in lasting outcomes and continued development of palliative care education and services. Raising the awareness of all stakeholders on palliative care, including the public, is highly relevant and needed. Evidence based practice guidelines and education are urgently required for both general and specialised palliative care levels, to increase the competencies for health educators, professionals, and students. This is to improve the availability and quality of person-centered palliative care in China. Considering the aging population, increase in various chronic illnesses, the challenging care environment, and the moderate health care resources, competence development and the utilisation of digitalisation in palliative care are paramount in supporting the transition of experts into the palliative care practice environment.General objective of the project is to enhance the competences in palliative care in China through education and training to improve the quality of life for citizens. Project develops the competences of current and future health care professionals in China to transform the palliative care theory and practice to impact the target groups and the society in the long-term. As recognised by the European Association for Palliative Care (EAPC), palliative care competences need to be developed in collaboration. This includes shared willingness to learn from each other to improve the sought outcomes in palliative care (EAPC 2019). Since all individuals have a right to health care, project develops person-centered and culturally sensitive practices taking into consideration ethics and social norms. As concepts around palliative care can focus on physical, psychological, social, or spiritual related illnesses (WHO 2020), project develops innovative pedagogy focusing on evidence-based practice, communication, and competence development utilising digital methods and tools. Concepts of reflection, values and views are in the forefront to improve palliative care for the future. Important aspects in project development include health promotion, digital competences and digital health literacy skills of professionals, patients, and their caregivers. Project objective is tied to the principles of the European Commission’s (EU) Digital Decade that stresses the importance of placing people and their rights in the forefront of the digital transformation, while enhancing solidarity, inclusion, freedom of choice and participation. In addition, concepts of safety, security, empowerment, and the promotion of sustainable actions are valued. (European Commission: Digital targets for 2030).Through the existing collaboration, strategic focus areas of the partners, and the principles of the call, the PalcNet project consortium was formed by the following partners: JAMK University of Applied Sciences (JAMK ), Ramon Llull University (URL), Hanze University of Applied Sciences (HUAS), Beijing Union Medical College Hospital (PUMCH), Guangzhou Health Science College (GHSC), Beihua University (BHU), and Harbin Medical University (HMU). As project develops new knowledge, innovations and practice through capacity building, finalisation of the consortium considered partners development strategy regarding health care, (especially palliative care), ability to create long-term impact, including the focus on enhancing higher education according to the horizontal priority. In addition, partners’ expertise and geographical location was also considered important to facilitate long-term impact of the results.Primary target groups of the project include partner country’s (China) staff members, teachers, researchers, health care professionals and bachelor level students engaging in project implementation. Secondary target groups include those groups who will use the outputs and results and continue in further development in palliative care upon the lifetime of the project.
The central aim of this project is to increase the participation of people (all ages) with severe multiple disabilities (PIMD) in the field of sport, exercise and physical activity, by expanding the number of coaches and organizations who offer a Motor Activity Training Program in a professional and custom way. This aim will be achieved by the following activities:- Creating a more appropriate and varied offer of sport, exercise, and physical activity to increase the choice of the PIMD target group. - To develop a curriculum for MATP Coaches and Trainers (PE Teachers, Physical Therapists, etc). - To implement, test and contextualize a PIMD offer in 3 EU countries, this will be done with local stakeholders. - Strengthening the connection between sport, education and health care organizations to enable participation of the PIMD people in the field of sport, exercise, and physical activity. - Consortium members create a European network and exchange knowledge, including through best practices
