Alma Spijkerboer

Innovations: Perceptions of teachers and school leaders on bottlenecks and outcomes

New legislation was introduced for the lower grades of secondary education in 2006 in the Netherlands. Innovations and reform implemented by schools related to this new legislation focused on new approaches to educational content such as didactical approaches, active learning, project teams, competence-based teaching and learning, time available for teaching, and standards of quality of education. In order to evaluate the implementation and outcomes related to these innovations and reforms we conducted research in 69 secondary schools, involving 178 teachers. This article presents a part of the results of that research, and focuses on how school leaders and teachers perceive bottlenecks and also how they view outcomes of innovations. The findings show that they agree on what they see as impediments. However, with regard to their perceptions regarding outcomes, significant differences were found. School leaders judged nearly every outcome as more positive than the teachers did.