Jeroen Onstenk

Coaching and Collaborative Work-Based Learning in Dutch VET: The ‘TEAMstages’ Project

In the Netherlands, work-based learning has become a substantial part of vocational education at all levels. So availability as well as quality of workplace learning places is of crucial importance. The paper gives a short overview of developments with regard to coaching and new learning arrangements in workplace learning in Dutch school-based VET. Different and more intensive interaction patterns between employers and vocational schools as well as between teachers and workplace coaches are developing to improve the connection between learning in school and in the workplace. The second part of the chapter focuses on an innovative project TEAMstages (‘Team traineeships’) where students of different levels in the VET system work together as a team of trainees in a company assignment. This involves intensive guidance by school and company coaches as well as peer coaching.

Vocational Education in the Netherlands

This chapter introduces the Dutch vocational education system and aims to foster an understanding of how it currently works. It describes and discusses the features of this system and the foundational issues that underlie it. Patterns of participation show the crucial position of vocational education in the overall education system in the Netherlands. It provides opportunities for supporting promising educational careers and positive positions in the labour market. The system design is to be without “dead ends”: everybody is supposed to leave the system with a fitting qualification. However, this design has proven to be less promising in its realization. Early tracking foreshadows pathways and makes some careers, if not dead ends, difficult, elevating the risk of dropping out. Five fundamental issues are highlighted when discussing the current Dutch vocational education system in practice in this chapter. Firstly, within a public frame, vocational education is a product of cooperation amongst various stakeholders. The specifics of the private-public frame are helpful for understanding the processes by which Dutch vocational education is uniquely shaped, and lead to its specific kinds of programmes and cooperation between schools and enterprises. The freedom of education concept comprises a second issue. Thirdly, tensions between accessibility and allocation to labour market and, fourthly, between educating for the short term and the longer term future are common to most vocational education systems, albeit manifested differently because of the national peculiarities. Fifthly, the current expectation for the Dutch public provision of vocational education contributing to lifelong learning of workers is a challenge for the future and, already, testing its capacity as a system to support this goal.

Philosophy for Democracy

Philosophy for Democracy is a research project that aims to examine whether and how Philosophy with Children contributes to the development of democratic skills and attitudes. In the Netherlands, as in almost all Western countries, Philosophy with Children is linked with the movement for citizenship education. This article reports the research on the practice of Philosophy with Children. Sixteen philosophical inquiries by children in the classroom were recorded, transcribed and analysed. The analyses show that children develop relevant reasoning skills and advanced dialogical skills. The study shows that embedding Philosophy with Children in a democratic practice is necessary for contributing to a critical-democratic citizenship development. The study also shows that Dutch children often give their opinion, but are not often involved in inquiring their own opinions. From a pedagogical point of view, we think that in Dutch culture and in Dutch schools it would be important to stress more a dialogical – community-based – inquiring attitude.

Enhancing teaching and learning in the Dutch vocational education system

This book discusses how the Dutch vocational education system has undergone significant waves of reform driven by global imperatives, national concerns and governmental policy goals. Like elsewhere, the impetuses for these reforms are directed to generating a more industry-responsive, locally-accountable and competence-based vocational education system. Each wave of reforms, however, has had particular emphases, and directed to achieve particular policy outcomes. Yet, they are more than mere versions of what had or is occurring elsewhere. They are shaped by specific national imperatives, sentiments and localised concerns. Consequently, whilst this book elaborate what constitutes the contemporary provision of vocational education in the Netherlands also addresses a broader concern of how vocational education systems become formed, manifested within nation states, and then are transformed through particular imperatives, institutional arrangement and localised factors. So, the readers of this book whilst learning much about the Dutch vocational education system will also come to identify and engage with a selection of contributions that inform factors that situate, shape and transform vocational education systems. Such a focus seems important given an era when there are concerns to standardise and make uniform educational provisions, often for administrative or political imperatives. As such, this book will be of interest not only to those who are engaged in the field of vocational education, but those with an interest in educational policy, practice and comparative studies.

Teacher educators’ personal practical knowledge of language

Abstract This paper describes teacher educators’ understanding of language for classroom communication in higher education. We argue that teacher educators who are aware of their personal practical knowledge of language have a better understanding of their students’ language use and provide better support for knowledge construction. Personal practical knowledge originates from teachers’ professional practice and is based on their past experience, current awareness and future expectation. Data from focus group interviews with teacher educators (N = 35) were used for content analysis. Findings demonstrate an emerging conceptualization resulting in two language modalities of personal practical knowledge, specified as: ‘language-sensitive and interpersonally oriented’ and ‘language-focused and pedagogically oriented.’ The insights contribute to building a professional practical knowledge base of language and communication-oriented teaching.

Vocational and Professional Education and Lifelong Learning

This chapter focuses on the role of vocational education at the secondary and higher levels of adulteducation and lifelong learning (LLL) in the Netherlands. While traditionally the emphasis was on formaland non-formal learning in organized settings (adult education), nowadays there is growing awarenessof the importance of informal LLL in the workplace. In this chapter, three topics are presented. First, it isargued that policies concerning LLL in the Netherlands are ambiguous and sometimes contradictory.Second, the relationship between adult education and the vocational education and training system isdiscussed. The extent of actual adult vocational and professional education delivered in ROCs (regionalMBO colleges) or universities of applied sciences (Higher Professional Education, HBO) is very limited.Third, another angle on adult vocational education is discussed, namely, accreditation of prior learningas a way to raise the qualification levels of the working population.

Teacher educators’ conceptualization of ongoing language development in professional learning and teaching

Abstract Sociocultural and dialogic theories of education have identified the need to integrate both pedagogical content and language knowledge into teachers’ professional development to promote effective interaction with students about subject content. In this intervention study, a meta-perspective on language was developed to understand how experienced teacher educators (N = 29) conceptualize ongoing language development in professional learning and teaching (referred to as language-developing learning in this study) as part of their pedagogical content knowledge. The data were analysed using content analysis. Language-developing learning was mainly conceived as teacher-oriented professional development. In this process, the language aspect was regarded not only as a tool that applies regulatory and explanatory language but also as a target that connects academic knowledge and interpersonally oriented language. The results increase our awareness of teacher educators’ practical knowledge of academic and interpersonal language in specific disciplinary contexts of teacher professional development in higher education.

Work-Based Learning (WBL) in Dutch Vocational Education: Connecting Learning Places, Learning Content and Learning Processes

In this chapter developments and issues with regard to the integration of workplace learning in Dutch vocational and higher professional education are analysed. The value and quality of workplace learning in both vocational education and training (VET) and higher professional education (HPE) remains a topic of heavy debate and much experimentation. Two serious ‘sticky’ problems remain and are frequently discussed in the Netherlands: the quality of workplace learning with regard to content, guidance and assessment, and the quality of the connections between work based and school based learning.

P4D: Philosophy and Democracy in the Classroom

The journal was a forum for the work of both theorists and practitioners of philosophical practice with children, and published such work in all forms, including philosophical argument and reflection, classroom transcripts, curricula, empirical research, and reports from the field. The journal also maintained a tradition in publishing articles in the hermeneutics of childhood, a field of intersecting disciplines including cultural studies, social history, philosophy, art, literature and psychoanalysis.