Gijs Verbeek & Ben Smit (Eds.)
Just education
Closing act Professoriate Petra Ponte
Behaviour and research in educational praxis
Just education
Just education
Closing act Professoriate Petra Ponte
‘Behaviour and Research in Educational Praxis’
Edited by
Gijs Verbeek
Ben Smit
Boom Lemma uitgevers
Den Haag
2012
Originally the texts in this publication were included in the language as used by the authors:
Dutch or English. This English translation of the texts in Dutch is available through the
website of Boom Uitgevers Den Haag (www.boomlemma.nl) and through the website of
Petra Ponte (www.actieonderzoek.com). The original Dutch edition can be ordered at Boom
Uitgevers Den Haag.
© 2012 Gijs Verbeek & Ben Smit (Eds.) | Boom Lemma uitgevers
Cover photography: © Petra Ponte
Dutch title: Rechtvaardig onderwijs: Slotakkoord lectoraat Petra Ponte ‘Gedrag en onderzoek in de educatieve praxis’
Translation/correction: authors & Pat Grocott
Behoudens de in of krachtens de Auteurswet gestelde uitzonderingen mag niets uit deze uitgave
worden verveelvoudigd, opgeslagen in een geautomatiseerd gegevensbestand, of openbaar gemaakt, in
enige vorm of op enige wijze, hetzij elektronisch, mechanisch, door fotokopieën, opnamen of enige
andere manier, zonder voorafgaande schriftelijke toestemming van de uitgever.
Voor zover het maken van reprografische verveelvoudigingen uit deze uitgave is toegestaan op grond
van artikel 16h Auteurswet dient men de daarvoor wettelijk verschuldigde vergoedingen te voldoen
aan de Stichting Reprorecht (Postbus 3051, 2130 KB Hoofddorp, www.reprorecht.nl). Voor het
overnemen van (een) gedeelte(n) uit deze uitgave in bloemlezingen, readers en andere
compilatiewerken (art. 16 Auteurswet) kan men zich wenden tot de Stichting PRO (Stichting
Publicatie- en Reproductierechten Organisatie, Postbus 3060, 2130 KB Hoofddorp,
www.cedar.nl/pro).
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm or any other
means without written permission from the publisher.
ISBN 978-90-5931-860-1 (Dutch edition, pbk)
NUR 841
www.boomlemma.nl
Preface
Ben Smit
In delivering her inaugural lecture 'Behaviour and research in educational
praxis: an orientation' in 2009 at Utrecht University of Applied Sciences
(UUAS), Professor Petra Ponte adopted a position in the debate about
education and described how she and the members of her research group
would approach education research in the professoriate from different
orientations. These were a psychological orientation by explaining, predicting
and understanding behaviour; a pedagogische orientation by changing
behaviour in educational practice; an epistemological orientation by acquiring
knowledge through applied research; and a professional orientation by
enlarging teachers’ scope to act. The lecture formed a sound basis for the
activities of the professoriate.
Three lines of research were distinguished for the research group's research
program:
-
Conversations of traditions;
-
Teachers’ perspectives;
-
Pupils’ perspectives.
Themes have emerged in these lines of research that have played a central role,
not only in the research group at UUAS but throughout Petra Ponte’s active
professional life. These include themes such as participation, action research,
and positioning or clarification of stance - themes which Petra has repeatedly
used to focus on the philosophical background to education and research. She
constantly makes connections between acquiring knowledge and making
choices, between conducting research and acting in practice, out of:
the need to keep asking critical questions about what it is wise and desirable to
do in a specific situation at a specific moment in time; how we could have acted
differently; how we perceive reality, other people, pupils; how we can do right
by our pupils; how researchers, teacher educators, student teachers and teachers
can do all these things together. (Ponte, 2009, p. 30)
V
Education is more than performing technical operations; it is always about the
people involved, their beliefs and perceptions and their behaviour in practice.
The perspectives of teacher and student will determine the way in which
education takes shape and only in the interaction between teacher and student
does education and learning acquire substance. Moreover, education takes
place in a complex historical, cultural and moral-ideological context in which
those involved are asked to act on the basis of choices: educational praxis.
Studying, making explicit and criticizing these choices and the actions within
the context in order to open them up for discussion ('conversation') has run as
a constant thread through Petra's career. Behaviour and research are closely
linked in this. Conducting education research without those who are directly
involved playing a significant role is absolutely unthinkable in this approach.
Working according to principles of action research and applied research by
and with teachers, students and researchers was, therefore, a logical step for
Petra. At the same time, it is the manifestation of the pursuit of more ‘justice’ in
education and research in general, and certainly also of a personal principle in
acting and thinking.
In 2011, when it became clear that the research group ‘Behaviour and research
in educational praxis’ would come to an end within a year, a clear marking of
that occasion seemed desirable and appropriate. And what could be more
appropriate than to answer a position paper that marked the opening with a
public closing act? As it happens, the ending of the professoriate coincides
with Petra's resignation from active professional life. It is then very
appropriate that the closing act should take the form of a number of essays and
position papers by people who have been in some way involved in Petra’s
work throughout her career. In this way again – and by others rather than
Petra herself – a position is taken on education and research, around issues of a
moral, pedagogische, educational, social, political, and scientific nature. Besides
skills (competence) in teaching and research, justice (fairness, responsibility,
autonomy, care, commitment) plays an important role in these contributions.
Thus they touch on the central theme of this volume and on Petra’s cry from
the heart for just education, and they touch on matters that affect whether it can
be achieved.
VI
This collection offers divergent and provocative perspectives on themes and
topics of interest to anyone working in or for education and educational
research. A better way of putting it may be to say that we expect it to get the
reader to think about his or her own actions in both teaching and research, as
we travel towards a more just education.
The authors of the contributions to this volume are not only members of the
research group or employees of the UUAS, they also come from outside the
UUAS and even from outside the Netherlands. All the authors deserve warm
thanks for their collaboration in the creation of this collection of essays and
position papers. Petra Ponte – as head of the research group – has been given
the first and last word, although hopefully it will not be the last word we hear
about just education.
Ben Smit
June 2012
References
Ponte, P. (2009). Behaviour and research in educational praxis: An orientation [inaugural lecture].
Utrecht University of Applied Sciences, Professoriate in Behaviour and Research in
Educational Praxis, 2009. http://www.education.research.hu.nl/Lectoraten.aspx.
VII
Table of contents
Preface
v
Ben Smit
1
Competent education still does not amount to just education
1
Petra Ponte
2
Justice is neither absolute nor arbitrary; it exists by the grace of
multiple judgments
5
Jan Ax
3
Same work, different field of play
9
Renny Beers
4
Petra Ponte: Reclaiming education as a socially just enterprise
13
Susan Groundwater-Smith
5
The teacher's contribution matters!
15
Carlos van Kan
6
Education in a world of schooling
19
Stephen Kemmis
7
A case for redefinition of teacher competence
23
Dubravka Knezic
8
Ability to change
27
Nijs Lagerweij
9
Food for thought: four experiences with practitioner research
31
Mieke Lunenberg
10
Obligatory: a Malone note for education
35
Ton Notten
IX 11
Change driven by economics in education is a professional mistake
39
Leon Plomp
12
Nurturing a collaborative practice
43
Karin Rönnerman
13
Pupil participation is not a favour to students, it is their right
45
Ben Smit
14
The incongruous prediction paradigm or the school as an incubator
49
Luc Stevens
15
We should not judge a duck on its ‘climbing’ skills
53
Hanne Touw
16
Towards an intellectual competency
57
Piet-Hein van de Ven
17
Action Research squared
63
Gijs Verbeek
18
Knowledge of history in the debate on education
69
Nico Verloop
19
Shared Leadership: An Essential Ingredient to Improve Educational
Praxis
71
Kyla Wahlstrom
20
Appropriate education: from problem dossier to quality boost
75
Kees van der Wolf
21
Educational research should help us improve education
79
Theo Wubbels
22
Cross-cultural collaborative research partnerships foster better
understanding and appreciation of one's own culture of educational
practices
Semyon Yusfin & Nina Michailova
X
81
23
Epilogue: just education as an unending project
85
Petra Ponte
About the authors
93
Information and contact
99
XI
1
Competent education still does not
amount to just education
Taking up a position in the Professoriate in
Behaviour and Research in Educational Praxis
Petra Ponte
In 1992, during the perestroika and glasnost period in the former Soviet Union,
Oleg Gazman and his team at the Institute for Pedagogical Innovations in
Moscow initiated numerous innovations in the field of pupil guidance. These
reforms were part of the democratisation of Russian education that was
supported by the then Minister of Education, Dneprov. At that time Oleg
asked us: “What does democratic education in the Netherlands look like?” By
that he did not refer to the right to participate in education, as that right had
existed during the totalitarian Soviet regime. What he was referring to was the
question of how to do justice to the uniqueness and potential of individual
pupils through interaction and communication processes in day-to-day
educational practice. The moment he asked his question I realised that I had
nothing to offer him, that we were no longer accustomed to asking
fundamental questions about how we treated our pupils in the Netherlands
and what purposes we were trying to serve. So for me Oleg’s question ushered
in a long period of collaboration with American, English, Dutch and Russian
educators, researchers and pupils in a number of international projects. Several
universities in Australia and the Scandinavian countries joined us at a later
stage. The leitmotif was then and still is a joint quest to find ways to give
concrete form to education that is just.
The Professoriate in Behaviour and Research in Educational Praxis built on the
experiences gained in all these projects. So in my inaugural lecture (Ponte,
2009) – intended as the professoriate adopting a position – I said that we
wanted to research pupils' behaviour as praxis. By that I meant behaviour as
1
interaction between pupils and teachers in a social context, interaction that
always means something in terms of inherent 'mores', and therefore in terms of
what is or can be seen as desirable or undesirable from a pedagogic
perspective. I also said that we wanted to particularly focus on the intrinsic –
therefore always present – meaning of educational behaviour in terms of social
justice for vulnerable pupils.
In defiance of the dominant instrumental neoliberal Zeitgeist, this was also a
plea to place educative questions back on the agenda, by which I meant that in
educational studies we cannot make do with understanding that which exists
or current manifest behaviour. We also need to make a link with the normative
demand for ‘the more desirable’ or in other words the need to look at the
nature of the relationship between child, school and community, why it is as it
is, and what purpose it aims or should aims to serve (the 'what, why and what
for'). In education, sense making in terms of desirable or undesirable behaviour
always comes up in some form or other, either explicitly or implicitly. That
goes for the behaviour of the teachers and pupils, for the goal they are striving
for and for the way that goal is achieved (Ax & Ponte, 2010).
Researchers are also members of the education community and they too have
to ask themselves this normative question about what ‘the more desirable’ is or
should be. Of course, I am not talking about questions or statements along the
lines of “What do I as a researcher feel about it personally?” or “That's just
what I think as a researcher”; what I am talking about is carefully selecting the
spectacles through which we look at reality and justifying that choice. In
substantive terms this concerns questions about what view of people and
society we take as our starting point; in procedural terms it concerns the
justification of these choices and the type of knowledge to be developed.
According to Habermas’ idea about ‘communicative action’ (Habermas, 1981,
see also Groundwater-Smith, Mitchell, Mockler, Ponte & Rönnerman, 2012)
rules for critical intersubjective reflection form part of this justification process.
Following the Canadian philosopher Gilabert (2005), three levels of
justification can be distinguished:

First order: Justifying the way democratic ideas about social justice take
shape in concrete educational practice.
2

Second order: Justifying the way research procedures and
communications about research procedures are congruent with
democratic ideas about social justice at third order level.

Third order: Justifying views of people and society and the democratic
ideas about social justice stemming from them.
The standpoint of the professoriate can now be summarised as follows:
Competent practice (in the sense of being able to apply ‘what works’) still does
not amount to just practice (in the sense of knowing ‘why something should
work and what purpose it is serving’). Just practice is only possible when it
includes intersubjective critical reflection on the question of how views of
people and society and the democratic ideas about social justice stemming
from them are expressed in teaching and research (and vice versa).
This standpoint, in my view, has three important consequences:

The philosophy of science and moral philosophy provide inspiration
for the procedures and substance of critical intersubjective reflection
and should therefore be included in any self-respecting education for
researchers and teachers. Philosophy could and should also play a
bigger role when experienced researchers and teachers justify their
positions.

Researchers and teachers need each other to learn to understand
behaviour in educational praxis and for that reason participative forms
of research and development deserve more attention than they
currently receive in the Netherlands. Participation in international
partnerships in this field deserves to be given more attention and
should be valued more highly than it currently is.

Participative forms of research and development take for granted that
researchers and teachers have a substantial degree of professional
freedom to take decisions and to act. The ever-increasing influence of
administrators and managers, which has been facilitated by
deregulation and enlargement of scale in education, must therefore be
curtailed in the interests of the professionals themselves having a voice.
3
The positions outlined above do not provide a definitive answer to Oleg
Gazman's question: “What does democratic education in the Netherlands look
like?” Nor would a final answer be desirable; it is continuing to ask the
question that is so important.
References
Ax, J., & Ponte, P. (2010). Moral issues in educational praxis: a perspective from
‘pedagogiek’ and ‘didactiek’ as human sciences in continental Europe. Pedagogy,
Culture & Society, 18(1), 29-42.
Habermas, J. (1981). Theorie des Kommunikativen Handelns. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Gilabert, P. (2005). A substantivist construal of discourse ethics. International Journal of
Philosophical Studies, 13(3), 405-437.
Groundwater-Smith, S., Mitchell, J., Mockler, N., Ponte, P., & Rönnerman, K. (2012).
Facilitating Practitioner Research: Developing transformational partnerships. London:
Routledge.
Ponte, P. (2009). Behaviour and research in educational praxis: An orientation [inaugural lecture].
Utrecht University of Applied Sciences, Professoriate in Behaviour and Research in
Educational Praxis, 2009. http://www.education.research.hu.nl/Lectoraten.aspx.
4
2
Justice is neither absolute nor arbitrary; it
exists by the grace of multiple judgments
Jan Ax
In the film Chaos, the Taviani brothers relate a number of Pirandello's stories
from Sicily. One of these stories is called The Jar.
A gentleman farmer buys an enormous, majestic terra cotta jar to store his
olives. The jar gets broken and has to be mended. This can only be done if the
maker of the jar seals himself up inside it forever and so it happens. The farmer
considers it just that another human being should pay for his material property
with his own life. In the context of the film it would have been a trifling matter
to find a judge who would also pronounce this to be lawful. Justice here is
therefore synonymous with lawful; ‘the law allows it’ and as such it is a
tautology. The jar maker would certainly have a different opinion on the
matter. What the film makes clear to us is this.
If justice exists, then there is more than one real, true justice; that of the farmer
versus the jar maker. What is at stake here is the question of whether justice is
relative or absolute. If it is absolute, then it applies to everyone at all times and
is a universal good. If it is relative, then there are different modalities of justice.
In the second case, the question is who has 'real' justice on his side. That is a
question to be settled through argument, persuasion and, in some cases,
requires a judgment of Solomon.
The gentleman farmer, however, is overcome by another fit of justice when he
contemplates his own death: “what an injustice on this earth, see me – who am
rich and have everything – who must die and those poor wretches there –
pointing at his labourers – live on”. (if I recollect his heartfelt cry correctly, J.A.)
However, it would not have been so easy to find a judge to pronounce an
adequate judgement on this, seeing as it concerns a natural phenomenon:
universal mortality. That is not a matter for moral judgment.
5
Justice, therefore, is not objective, something apart. It is a moral judgment that
has to be called into being and which must be cherished. It has an actor and a
petitioner and so is relational. It is a human experience, something that is lived
through. Thus it cannot be bought, but it can be thrown away.
Can it not be made more tangible, you may ask. No, is the answer, not in the
sense of a summary or list of the characteristics of justice. Yet we can expand
on the concept. The legal philosopher, Rawls (1999, 2001), developed a theory
of justice that comes down in principle to the acceptance and formulation of a
number of fundamental, substantial principles and a basic procedure for
passing judgment. The substantial principles include maximum individual
freedom and increasing human happiness and wellbeing in combination with
the requirement that one person's happiness may never be gained at the
expense of another. That is to safeguard individual integrity. The procedure for
passing judgment is equally simple. It involves the principle of ‘veiled
ignorance’. A decision, concerning for example the setting up of an education
system, is deemed to be just if it is fair in the eyes of people who,
hypothetically speaking, have no idea of their own specific life circumstances
and the place that they will occupy in the education system. In that ‘veiled’
state one does not know what positions one will find oneself in, what tangible
and intangible capacities one will have, or even whether one is a woman or a
man. In other words, justice is fairness ‘regardless of who the person is’. It is
not random, but applies to all, while observing Rawls' substantial principles
and judgement procedure. It is not an absolute natural phenomenon
independent of human beings and nor is it a logical truth. In that sense his
thinking has much in common with Rousseau's 'general will' and Kant's
'categorical imperative'.
The question now is whether Rawls' instruments for evaluating justice do not
leave us with half-empty hands in concrete educational practice. After all, in
our practice we have to take decisions which involve weighing up in very
concrete terms our own position (as researchers and as teachers ) and that of
the pupils, in order to be able to judge whether our action turns out to be just
and whether we can be effective in that sense. The more complete the
information and the more ‘veils’ are removed, the better the conditions for
6
educational success in our actions. The question remaining therefore is
whether there is then no place for universal justice in educational praxis and
whether only casuistry applies.
The answer lies in the multiple dimensions of that praxis. Justice is a core value
in educational praxis, but that does not mean that every professional decision
is entirely and exclusively moral in nature. As we have seen, it is concerned
with decisions in the real world and there, modern man assumes, knowable
causalities or laws apply. Morality is a stranger in the midst of the languagegame (Wittgenstein, 1992/1953) of empirical laws. Educational praxis cannot
therefore be captured in a simple language-game. There is the language-game
of ‘what we find desirable’ (morality) and the language game of fact
(empiricism).
Respecting fair relationships (in the educational relationship) and
strengthening the sense of justice (in the curriculum) are both moral
imperatives in education. We can use Rawls’ principles and procedures for
passing judgement to assess the result of our actions in terms of justice but that
is by no means enough to make us good educators. After all, reality cannot be
moulded to our liking. The plurality of educational praxis places higher
demands on the professionalism of the researcher and teacher. There is no
place in professionalism for courses which are only geared to competences and
learning ‘tips, tricks and tactics’, or courses which are geared to mental
training with conforming ‘to just the way it is’ as their goal. Professional
researchers and teachers must be able to distinguish reality from desirability,
facts from necessities, ‘how it is’ from ‘how it could be’. They investigate facts
and their opinions are carefully considered; they communicate, argue and
justify their positions. It all looks suspiciously like action research, as Petra has
always recognised (Ponte, 2012).
References
Ponte, P. (2012). Onderzoek en onderwijs van eigen makelij: Actieonderzoek met en door leraren
[Research and education of our own making: Action research with and by
teachers]. Den Haag: Boom Lemma.
Rawls, J. (1999). A theory of justice (2nd revised edition). Massachusetts: Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press.
7
Rawls, J. (2001). Justice as fairness: A restatement. Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press.
Wittgenstein, L. (1992/1953). Filosofische onderzoekingen [Philosophical investigations/
original in German: Philosophische Untersuchungen] (Dutch translation: Maarten
Derksen & Sybe Terwee). Amsterdam: Boom.
8
3
Same work, different field of play
Renny Beers
‘You know’, he said, ‘you have to learn that progress is slow in education. The
key is to persevere. And to keep on seeking answers to questions that the
intractable practice throws up. Not to fall back on comfortable routines, which
often stand in the way of improving quality’.
We were sitting on the terrace of Het Open Meer, glass of wine in hand, and we
had just been talking at length about his imminent retirement from his position
as school principal. This was his last year.
I had known K from the basic ‘Managers in Education’ course that I taught in
the 1980s. Having just joined the school management team – after teaching
biology for about 10 years in a broad-based combined school – he had a lot of
questions.
Leadership is complicated. It assumes that you know where you are and what
you want to achieve in school and that you have to create the conditions to do
that. Conditions such as scope and security for everyone involved. It demands
the guts to go and stand in front of the troops and tell them what you think is
important. And then to engage in dialogue, to persuade, but also to listen, to
enquire, to ask the other person questions and to constantly criticise and
question yourself. He understood that better than anyone and, more
importantly, he put it into practice.
A man from the real world of professional practice, with a background that
had made him who he is today. His childhood had not been easy. As a young
boy with glasses and a brace, he experienced what it is like to be different. And
later at the gymnasium – not accepted by his hockey-playing classmates and
thrown back on his own resources – he learned what was important to him,
what was at the heart of his being, what he stood for.
9
‘He'll never need to learn anything else’, he overheard his neighbour say when
he heard that he had qualified as a teacher. Where he came from, that was
enough. Learned enough? How can a person stop learning and growing?
We kept in touch, spoke regularly, and kept each other informed about
personal and family developments. He was healthy and had a great deal of
energy, his son did really well and his grandchildren added a little lustre to his
hobby of philosophy with questions such as: ‘What do you want to be when
you're older, grandpa?’; ‘How does a wish come true?’; ‘Why do people die
and who thought of that?’.
‘What are your plans for the future?’ I asked. ‘I'm not quite sure’, he said, ‘but I
have plenty of ideas. I'm going to take up my study of philosophy again and,
whatever else I do, I'm going to be more intensively involved with De
onderwijstafel’.
I thought about the meetings of this network, set up by K, to which I had been
invited as a guest a few times. The network was made up of people from
different backgrounds with the same shared interest: education. From their
different perspectives, they discussed themes such as the role of education in
society, values, identity and development. A couple of school board members
had joined – albeit reluctantly – and took their part in the discussion. That was
new. Spurred on by the government, the main focus of education managers
since the 1980s had been on efficient ways of working and on the processes of
planning, controlling and dominating. Now things seemed about to turn. In
Leiden met liefde [Leading with Love], based on interviews with current and
former members of school boards in which he asks them about their
motivation, Chris Tils describes a number of key points for the first steps
toward a profile for the new education manager. Integrity, love of education
and being of service to the education professional were among these key
points.
Rob Riemen's book De adel van de geest [The Nobility of the Spirit], which talks
about the need to speak out, was discussed at one of the meetings of De
onderwijstafel. The duty of the ‘intellectual elite’; educated or not, ordinary wise
10
people, who reflect on the questions that need asking and keep searching for
values which matter. Using their intellect to foster depth. Sorely needed in this
age of unashamed populism. In recent years K had put all his energy into this
by organising dialogues in his team. He did that in a way that you rarely see
among school principals: by throwing his own questions into the ring, by
promoting cooperation, by not allowing teachers to do their own thing behind
closed classroom doors. Unhindered by hierarchical relationships, he did not
keep the executive board of his school at arm's length, but managed to get
them to talk to him about what drives them and how they relate to the primary
process.
‘Now that you look back’, I ask, ‘have you done what you wanted to do?’ ‘It's
always possible to do more and do things better’ he said, ‘but that's OK. And
I'm going to carry on with the same work but on a different field of play. First
the farewell party. Would you like to come? It won't be boring’. I was very
ready to believe that. ‘I'll be there,’ I replied. The waiter put the glasses on his
tray. We walked to the car park together.
Assertion
Education managers and members of school boards are just the people who
should be participating in networks of teachers, students and researchers.
Together they can search for answers to the questions about social justice in
education. The nobility of the spirit should tempt them to do this through
professional dialogue in verbal, written and visual media.
References
Tils, C. (2011). Leiden met liefde: Op zoek naar de nieuwe onderwijsbestuurder. Den Haag: Sdu
Uitgevers.
Riemen, R. (2010). Adel van de geest: Een vergeten ideaal. Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Atlas.
11
4
Petra Ponte: Reclaiming education as a
socially just enterprise
Susan Groundwater-Smith
The definition of a liber amicorum is that it is a book of friends. To be a friend
and colleague of Professor Petra Ponte is a great privilege. Petra, over more
than a decade of moments of joy, shared passion, even conflict and disjuncture,
has created for me the spaces that have led to more insightful thinking and
understanding about what we believe when we speak of a ‘just education’. As I
read her statement, ‘Competent education still does not amount to just
education’, I was reminded of her great intellect and unswerving commitment
to matters of an education that is inclusive and informed by moral reasoning.
As a visitor to the Faculty of Education at the Utrecht University of Applied
Sciences, I found my academic understanding of professional practice became
more nuanced and enriched as a result of my interactions with Petra and her
colleagues.
After a second visit to the Faculty of several weeks in 2010 I wrote to Rick van
Dijk, Director Research Center of Education, who has sadly died since then:
During my time I was able to make several presentations, the principal one
being ‘Forging New Alliances’ in which I argued that professional schools and
faculties within universities have a moral responsibility to the cognate
profession such that its practitioners and consequential stakeholders may play
an active and critical role in an examination of a particular enterprise.
Petra has long demonstrated a commitment to the notion that professional
knowledge is not created in the academy alone, but as a result of a fruitful
interaction between those in universities and the field of practice. In my own
work I have also espoused a need for the pupils in schools, as the
consequential stakeholders, to also be enabled to participate in the
conversation about practice thus opening the communicative space even
further. In her standpoint Petra points out that ‘researchers and teachers need
13
each other to learn to understand behaviour in educational praxis’ to which I
would add that the pupils also deserve a voice if a democratic education is to
evolve.
Following Fielding and Moss (2011), I see that a radical education will be one
that nurtures a human flourishing, building on both the desirable features of
the past that have provided us with a rich legacy, and an openness to the
future in which young people can be active and imaginative agents. In these
days of burgeoning neo-liberalism it is a demanding project to attempt to
reclaim education as a process that transcends the pragmatic acquisition of
skills and competencies that contribute to the human capital of the nation and
instead ask ourselves ‘how and what can we do to enhance the common good
and wellbeing?’. This is a question that Petra addresses not only now, but I am
convinced, will do so well into the future.
References
Fielding, M., & Moss, P. (2011). Radical Education and the Common School: A democratic
alternative. London: Routledge.
14
5
The teacher's contribution matters!
Carlos van Kan
Finding a balance between self-direction and self-regulation is a complicated
process. In order to do this professionals need an inquiring attitude that enables
them to: . . . enter into the professional and public debate to justify their own
actions, and to raise the issue of the position of vulnerable pupils in the
education system and in society (rather than thinking that their contribution 'is
irrelevant') (Ponte, 2003, p.23).
This citation from Petra's work can be seen as a rallying cry to teachers to get
involved in the debate about just what is worth teaching. Teachers have a
special position in this debate because they are faced with the task of
answering this crucial question in their daily interactions with their students.
However, the question is whether the teachers' voice is being heard in debates
which ultimately affect the essence of their professional practice (Van Haperen,
2007).
Teachers always have to deal with frameworks laid down by others, such as
the government, the school board, the management team, the professional
group, etc. (self-regulation). At the same time professionals have a certain
amount of scope to make their own choices about what they believe to be in
the interests of their students (self-direction). Petra has argued that the attempt
to find a balance between self-regulation and self-direction requires teachers to
have an enquiring attitude. This enquiring attitude relates not only to ‘how
questions‘ tied up with practice, such as ‘What is the best way to help students
to master a particular maths strategy?’, but also to ‘why questions’, such as
‘Why is it actually important to give more time to Dutch and maths in the
curriculum?’. It is the ‘why questions’ above all that are at the heart of the
debate about just what is worth teaching. If they are to enter this debate,
teachers need to examine their ideas about what they consider to be in the
interests of their students, express these ideas openly and be able to question
them.
15
The teacher as a quiet operator
Various research studies have shown, however, that teachers for the most part
lack a vocabulary to express the 'why' component of their teaching (see for
instance Sanger & Osguthorpe, 2011; Shapira-Lishshinsky, 2011). Debates
about what a good education is tend to be monopolised by politicians,
researchers, members of school boards and people outside the profession (Van
Veen, 2005). Teachers do put themselves forward for the outcomes of such
debates, when all that remains is the ‘how question’, for example: ‘How are we
going to introduce competence-based teaching in senior secondary vocational
education?’. By then the stage of considering why that is desirable is already in
the past (see also Biesta, 2010). It may be that teachers' special dedication to
their students and to classroom teaching (Steinbach, & Jantzi, 2000) is part of
the reason why they seem (reluctantly) to resign themselves to the role of
implementing what others have conceived. After all, the primary process must
always take precedence, at least in the teachers' eyes.
The pedagogische question
On the question of what good education is, Imelman & Tolsma (1987) argued
for an ongoing social debate to be organised, in which cultural experts, experts
on the child and educationalists work on the fundamental question: ‘What
should be taught, to whom, when, how and why?’ (Imelman, 1995, p. 60). For
teachers, this question, known also as the pedagogische question, often seems to
be answered at a different level from the level of day-to-day practice. Here is
an example to illustrate this. The government has introduced the ‘Regulation
to intensify the teaching of Dutch and mathematics in senior secondary
vocational education'. The who in this regulation refers to all students in senior
secondary vocational education (MBO students); the what refers to a
requirement to place more emphasis on Dutch and maths in the curriculum;
the when has been set at 2014 (when the national examinations for this content
will become compulsory); the how is largely left to the schools themselves; and
the why is partly to be sought in evidence from international comparative
research (PISA; OECD, 2009) of the worsening position of the Netherlands in
language and mathematics. All kinds of glosses can be put on the decision to
place more emphasis on Dutch and maths; in any case, in terms of the
pedagogische question, this policy decision can be problematised at teacher
16
level. In any event students who enter MBO at the lowest level and who have
had little success with Dutch and maths in their school careers so far cannot
simply be expected to be able to meet the new requirements (who). In
vocational education, the content of Dutch and maths teaching is on the one
hand linked to the specific occupational function and on the other hand linked
to the general social functioning of education. From a policy perspective the
latter function is receiving increased attention. The question remains if this
development is also desirable from the perspective of the teaching practice
(what). Another question that can be raised is whether the introduction of
national exams for all MBO levels is feasible by 2014, in terms of preparing
teachers and students and practical organisational aspects (when). While it is
true that the new system leaves schools free to decide how to provide their
maths education, national examinations will push teachers in the direction of
teaching maths as a separate subject rather than being integrated with other
subjects, with the main focus on the content of the national exam (how). Finally,
teachers may ask themselves whether the MBO sector is designed to provide
general Dutch and maths teaching. Is that not primarily the job of general
secondary education (why)? Problematising educational policy decisions from
the perspective of the teaching practice is often done after the process of policy
decision-making has taken place.
Teachers make their voices heard
In her inaugural lecture ‘Behaviour and research in educational praxis’ (2009),
Petra asked herself how much time teachers take to get involved in debates
about what is worth teaching. The fact that teachers are coming together to
make their voices heard in this context is a sign of hope. An example of this is
the ambitious and critical manifesto drawn up by the Leraren met lef foundation
[Teachers with Courage] in 2012. Another brave initiative is the professional
association for vocational education and training (BVMBO). One of the aims
which this professional association has set for itself is to represent the voice of
the teacher on the question of what is worth teaching and to contribute to the
emancipation of teachers in the senior secondary vocational sector. These are
developments which, to use Petra's words (2009), bring ‘moral questions about
whose interests the various parties are acting in, where that action should lead
and why the situation is as it is’ (p. 37), back closer to the teacher. Without a
17
shadow of a doubt, they will make Petra's education heart beat faster: the
teacher's contribution matters!
References
Biesta, G. J. J. (2010). Good education in an age of measurement: Ethics, politics, democracy.
London: Paradigm Publishers.
Imelman, J. D. (1995). Theoretische pedagogiek. Nijkerk: Intro.
Imelman, J. D., & Tolsma, R. (1987). De identiteit van het (bijzonder) onderwijs als modern
normatief pedagogische probleem. Pleidooi voor een cultuurpedagogische
discussie. Pedagogische Studiën, 64, 390-404.
Leithwood, K., Steinbach, R. & Jantzi, D. (2000). Identifying and explaining the consequences for
schools of external accountability initiatives. Or what in the world did you think I was
doing before you came along? Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American
Educational Research Association, New Orleans, April 2000.
OECD (2009). PISA 2009 Results. www.oecd.org/edu/pisa/2009
Ponte, P. (2003). Interactieve professionaliteit en interactieve kennisontwikkeling in speciale
onderwijszorg [inaugural lecture]. Apeldoorn/Leuven: Garant.
Ponte, P. (2009). Behaviour and research in educational praxis: An orientation [inaugural lecture].
Utrecht University of Applied Sciences, Professoriate in Behaviour and Research in
Educational Praxis, 2009. http://www.education.research.hu.nl/Lectoraten.aspx.
Sanger, M. N., & Osguthorpe, R. D. (2011). Teacher education, preservice teacher beliefs,
and the moral work of teaching. Teaching and Teacher Education, 27(3), 569-578.
Shapira-Lishchinsky, O. (2011). Teachers' critical incidents: Ethical dilemmas in teaching
practice. Teaching and Teacher Education, 27(3), 648-656.
Van Haperen, T. (2007). De ondergang van de Nederlandse leraar. Amsterdam: Uitgeverij
Nieuw Amsterdam.
Van Veen, K. (2005). Lesgeven, een vak apart. In G. van den Brink, D. Pessers & T. Jansen
(Eds.), Beroepszeer: Waarom Nederland niet goed werkt (pp. 196-205). Amsterdam:
Uitgeverij Boom.
18
6
Education in a world of schooling1
Stephen Kemmis
Education has a double purpose. On the one side, it is about the formation of
persons. On the other side, it is about the formation of communities, societies
and our shared world. It has both an individual purpose and a collective
purpose. It aims to produce reasoning persons and a reasonable society. It aims
to form people who are able to live well, and a world worth living in.
Here is my definition of education:
Education, properly speaking, is the process by which children, young people
and adults are initiated into (a) forms of understanding that foster individual
and collective self-expression, (b) modes of action that foster individual and
collective self-development, and (c) ways of relating to one another and the
world that foster individual and collective self-determination, and that are, in
these senses, oriented towards the good for each person and the good for
humankind.
Throughout history, the practice of education has always been engaged in a
struggle with the institution invented to nurture and defend it: the school, at
every level from the pre-school to the university. In the European tradition,
schools have existed for over two thousand years. First, from Plato’s Academy
in 387 BC, there were the philosophical schools of ancient Greece, an
institution that spread to every major city around the Mediterranean and
lasted around nine hundred years. The other major schools were those
following Aristotle (the Lyceum), Zeno of Citium (the Stoics) and Epicurus (the
Epicureans). The philosophical schools aimed at the education of the young to
live a good life by speaking and thinking well, acting well in the world, and
relating well to others. To achieve these ends, they studied logic, physics and
1
This is an excerpt from Kemmis, Stephen (2012) ‘Contemporary schooling and the
struggle for education’ The 2012 Bob Meyenn Lecture, presented at Charles Sturt
University, Thurgoona campus, Albury, April 24.
19
ethics. The philosophical schools were for aristocratic young men, and they
excluded women and slaves.
In the early centuries after Christ, the Christian Church began educating its
followers, eventually coming to suppress the ancient philosophical schools in
529 AD. Through Middle Ages – a time when the learning of the ancients was
almost lost – the Church created the institution of the monastery and the
monastery schools that aimed at the salvation of those they taught, and at
preparing some with the knowledge to maintain the Church’s alliances with
the nobility (the military) and the wealthy. Schooling remained accessible only
to the wealthy few, however, although also to young men and women who
entered religious orders.
Around 1100, a new institution arose out of the monastery schools: the town
school, and especially its radically new institutional form, the university. The
first universities spread knowledge in many fields – particularly in the Liberal
Arts, medicine, law and theology. They also created new professions of
teaching and studying. Education spread to become more secular, offering
access to learning beyond the institutions of the Church.
By the late Middle Ages, secular education was extended in the institution of
the guild schools. The guilds wanted education for their members not just for
the practice of their crafts, but also so their members could take their places as
respected members of their societies and as members of an emerging
mercantile class.
Finally, by the mid-nineteenth century, when schools and education had
spread to large proportions of their populations, it was an only short step for
the nation states of Europe, North America and Australasia to legislate for
mass compulsory education. Through compulsory schooling, those
progressive nation states aimed to achieve mass literacy and numeracy, and
the preparation of a citizenry sufficiently well educated as to propel the
economic and political progress of the nation states of the developed world,
and, though perhaps less assiduously, the progress of the colonies in their
empires.
20
Through the twentieth century, the aspiration for universal education has been
more or less achieved in the developed world. Petra Ponte has devoted a life to
ensuring that the practices and forms of the institutions of schooling have not,
in fact, excluded the vulnerable from access to education, recognition and
respect in the work and life of those institutions, and to success in education
that will allow each and all to live interesting, productive and satisfying lives.
Through the history I have sketched here, as each of these new institutions
arose, it fostered new educational practices and new educational aspirations.
With each transformation, however, new threats also emerged. The practice of
education remained – and still remains – threatened by the normalising
expectations, the routines and rituals, and the sheer institutional selfcentredness of schooling at every level. Too many people in our schools,
especially the vulnerable, are present but ignored – their personhood, their
circumstances, their needs and their aspirations remain overlooked.
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, we stand at another important
moment in human history. We live in a small world that is under immense
duress environmentally, economically, socially and politically. Humankind
needs to re-educate itself if it is to meet the challenges with which we are
confronted: the challenge of climate change, the challenge of ever more
extreme maldistribution of wealth within and between nations, and the threat
to civility caused by religious intolerance (as well as intolerance of secularism),
to mention just three examples. Education is urgently needed on all these
fronts, and schooling is making some steps towards responding to these
challenges – in education for sustainability, for example. In my view, this is a
moment when we need transformational, not just incremental, change in
education and in our educational institutions. It is not a moment to return to
the monological curriculum of the industrial age that allowed the spread of
mass compulsory education through the nation states of the late nineteenth
century. We have left the nineteenth century far behind. For the twenty-first
century, let us renew education by finding new opportunities to extend
education as dialogue, through a dialogical curriculum. Let us, for example,
explore the possibilities of the new media to realise and extend education as
dialogue, whether or not in schools and classrooms. And let us find ways to do
21
it by recognising and respecting those who enter the process of education, not
just by informing them.
We need to revive the notion of a public education that educates, that aims to
do more than inform. We need to revive the idea of education conducted as
dialogue, not as monologue. We need to recognise that in our times, as in times
past, the institution of schooling may threaten the possibility of education, and
that we, too, have a role in remaking the institution so it can nurture and
protect a practice of education worthy of the name: education for living well in
a world worth living in. That is the struggle for education in a world of
schooling. We may even find that we need to abandon the schools of today to
find new kinds of real or virtual institutions through which we can conduct
education as dialogue. But let us be sure not to abandon education.
22
7
A case for redefinition of teacher
competence
Dubravka Knezic
It goes without saying that every child has a right to suitable education and
teachers who can realize it. The question is how can teacher education help
teachers become competent agents of tailored education. Teacher competence
has been a guiding concept for teacher education curricula and assessment for
some time now.
Competence is, however a problematic term (Norris, 1991). Norris
distinguishes between three different constructs of competence: a behaviourist,
a generic and a cognitive one. In behaviourist terms, competence is a
description of action, behaviour or outcome in such a way that it can be
observed and assessed. In these terms, a competent teacher could be described
as observable action and behaviour. The generic definition of competence goes
for ‘broad clusters of abilities which are conceptually linked’ (Elliott, 1989,
p. 98, as quoted in Norris, 1991). This would mean that a competent teacher
could be described in terms of groups of abilities somehow appertaining to
teaching. The cognitive definition of competence, (Messick, 1984, as quoted in
Norris, 1991) says that competence is what a person knows and can do under
ideal circumstances, in contrast to performance, which is what a person does
under real circumstances.
None of the three approaches seems to be succeeding in capturing the wide
complexity and dynamics of a teacher’s competence in constantly changing
professional situations. Perhaps this is for the best, since Gellner (1974, as
quoted in Norris, 1991) justifiably warns against such an attempt it being
morally offensive. An attempt at a comprehensive definition of teacher
competence would be an effrontery to teacher’s autonomy.
23
Nevertheless, the Dutch ministry of education sanctioned a formulation of
seven generic competences in 2006 for all professions in education, and the
additional specifications for teachers in primary and secondary education. The
latter distinguishes between junior vocational education, junior general
education and preparatory higher education. For example, formulations of the
requirements for teaching standards in pre-university education (cf A levels in
the British education system) are compellingly behaviourist and generic. They
are behaviourist in the sense that they use observable behaviour elements.
They are generic in the sense that they cluster knowledge and skills around
seven aspects of teaching thus producing seven competencies: interpersonal,
pedagogical, subject-related and didactical, organisational, intra-cooperative2,
extra-cooperative,3 and self-developmental and reflective competence.
A problem with this model is that, being based on a wanting definition of
competence, it approaches teaching profession as a primarily professional
development. However, perhaps in no other profession is personal
development as important as the professional one. Richards and Lockhart
(1994) point out that teaching is a very personal activity. Teacher development
calls for a holistic approach to the person of the teacher and with it a holistic
definition of teacher competence. Therefore, teacher competence should best
be redefined.
Firstly, teacher competence should not be seen as a goal but rather as a process.
It is a dynamic and, above all, a dialectical process of sustained personal and
professional development. It is an ongoing dialogue not only between the
agent and his or her social and material context, but also between his or her
personal and professional development. In this process, competence is seen as
making meaning and as an act of knowing (Leont’ev as cited in Wells, 1999,
p. 76), it being an inherently personal and social process.
In the light of this view of competence, teacher education may take another
route. By taking the whole person of a teacher into account, it may choose to
train the skills in an integrative way so as to anchor the professional
2
3
Intra-cooperative competence refers to cooperation with colleagues in the same school.
Extra-cooperative competence refers to cooperation with the organisations and
institutions outside the school.
24
development in the personal one. It will then live up to what it best can do,
namely enter the life of a teacher by increasing his or her awareness of the
nature of his development through improving his or her learning, so that one
day the teacher can do the same for his or her students.
References
Norris, N. (1991). The trouble with competence. Cambridge Journal of Education, 21(3), 331341.
Richards, J. C., & Lockhart, C. (1994). Reflective Teaching in Second Language Classrooms.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wells, G. (1999/2003). Dialogic Inquiry: Toward a Sociocultural Practice and Theory of Education.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
25
8
Ability to change
Nijs Lagerweij
“People do want to change but they don't want to be changed”
I have often used this one liner to demonstrate that top-down changes arouse a
great deal of resistance if they are not in line with the motivation of the target
group. For a long time I was optimistic about the possibility of making changes
in education. I believed in a constructive education policy, in which the
government formulates goals for education and develops the resources to
achieve those goals. I seriously overestimated the chances of this approach
having a good outcome.
A poignant example of this has been the attempt to introduce the
comprehensive school in our country. Throughout a period of about 10 years
in the 1970s and 80s, experiments with schools were set up and various
resources were made available to demonstrate that comprehensive schools
were both possible and desirable. Very little came of this. This was mainly
because of a lack of public support for the ideology behind the comprehensive
school. This proposed educational reform had insufficient support from the
outset. The problem was not with the participating schools, they were well
motivated to take part. However, in many cases that was not enough to
compensate for the lack of skills among teachers and school teams. The
experiment required a great deal to be changed in a short time. Most teachers
and school principals were not well enough equipped for this and they did not
have sufficient opportunities to acquire the required skills. People were
insufficiently aware of the necessary learning processes at individual and
organisation levels.
Even if the experimental schools had managed to implement a reasonable form
of comprehensive school, it would have been no simple matter to spread that
success to the other schools in that sector. The whole education profession
27
needs to be motivated for this type of reform to be successful. Schools and staff
must be convinced that it is both desirable and possible. It cannot be taken for
granted that they will be just as motivated as the experimental schools. It is
human nature to keep doing what you are used to doing and to resist changing
it when others think you should.
Teachers are the gatekeepers at their classroom door. They have a great deal of
autonomy and are able to keep out all kinds of reforms that they believe to be
undesirable. That raises the question as to how on earth we can expedite
necessary changes in education. The answer is not to simply wait and see
whether the professionals are motivated and will work on the reforms of their
own free will. A professional has a moral duty to engage in regular continuing
professional development. Wise lessons can be drawn from the many failures
of top-down reforms. We will have to look at things differently and act
differently from what we have habitually been doing up to now.
In our book Anders kijken [Watching it differently] we describe the dynamics of
a century of education reform. We have compiled a collection of experiences
with reforms and tried to learn something from them for the future. That
turned out to be no simple task. There is no such thing as a recipe for
educational innovation. We conclude in the book that attention needs to be
focused on giving people and organisations the opportunity to learn. The skill
is in finding a way to do this. The uniform approach will not work; what is
required is a strategy tailored to the particular situation of each school. The
target for intervention is not the personal development and autonomy of the
teacher. The main point to remember is that the process of school development
offers the platform for education reform. The ability to change results from the
belief that the school as an organisation can learn, just like the individuals
within it.
Change can only succeed if there is the opportunity to learn. The question that
remains is how we can ensure that people are motivated to learn.
28
References
Lagerweij, N., & Lagerweij-Voogt, J. (2007). Anders kijken:De dynamiek van een eeuw
onderwijsverandering [Watching it differently: The dynamics of a century of
educational change]. Apeldoorn: Garant.
29
9
Food for thought: four experiences with
practitioner research
Mieke Lunenberg
Researchers and teachers (and teacher educators, M. L.) need each other to learn
to understand behaviour in educational praxis and for that reason participative
forms of research and development deserve more attention than they currently
receive in the Netherlands (Ponte, 2012)
I have adopted Petra's statement from Chapter 1 of this volume with a small
modification as my proposition. Over the past five years, I have tried in
various ways, with others, to encourage teacher educators to study their own
practice. In this contribution I will present a very brief impression of four
experiences, which I hope will provide input for a discussion of this
proposition.
Experience 1 – Teacher educators research their own practice
In this project, nine teacher educators, guided by us, carried out research into
their own teaching practice. The results of our research into this project show
that the participants grew as scholars. Furthermore, the process of doing this
self-study contributed to their perception of their professional identity
(Lunenberg, Korthagen, & Zwart, 2010).
Participants:
I know more now about my students' learning process. I already knew a lot
about it but now I also know what the literature has to say about it. What's more,
I know more about what the students think of me as a teacher educator.
I've discovered that I like doing research! I'm aware that now I can switch from
teacher educator to researcher and vice versa.
I'm really aware now that we teacher educators have a very great deal to say and
that it's useful and important enough to write down. That's also been a lesson: as
31
soon as you start making it bigger, on a higher abstract level, you lose sight of
the meaning. . . . We teacher educators know a great deal, have a great deal of
data filed away, and often do not realise how useful and important it can be to
others, how useful it is to formulate research questions for once and organise
that data.
Experience 2 – Lesson learned across the Atlantic
Independently and an ocean away from each other, both of us asked ourselves
if we could engage with the methodology of self-study by actually teaching it
to others. Our broader goal was to move self-study beyond our own work by
encouraging others to apply it in their practice and demonstrate its usefulness
for educational reform.
In both the Dutch and the American studies, our own teaching of self-study
research was an object of study.
Like our participants, we studied our practice, made ourselves vulnerable and
learned. Working together on this study, we also supported each other, as did
the critical friend we invited to add another perspective.
We have presented what we learned about teaching self-study in six guidelines
(Lunenberg & Samaras, 2011).
Experience 3 – ‘Research in teacher education’ module
In the 'Research in teacher education’ module, we discussed different types of
research that can be distinguished, using a text from the Kennisbasis van
Lerarenopleiders [Knowledge base of teacher educators]. Then the participating
teacher educators carried out a phased mini research project on the theme of
pedagogy of teacher education. Based on their own experience of the different
phases of doing research, they examined the question of what this experience
means to guiding and supervising students doing research (Geursen,
Korthagen, Koster, Lunenberg, & Dengerink, 2012).
Participants:
Even our little research project produced useful results and made us want more.
32
By doing my own small piece of research, I learned what the pitfalls are, when
gathering relevant data for example. Through this experience, I think I'm better
able to help students with this step in their research, so that they don't invest a
huge amount of energy in gathering data which later turns out to be largely
unusable/irrelevant to their research and get bogged down in something which
they no longer have any enthusiasm for.
Sharing knowledge with others in the same ‘struggle’ with doing research.
Experience 4 – Transformative Educational Studies
The Transformative Educational Studies (TES) project, a collaborative project
involving three South African universities, aims to stimulate commitment in
education and research. Together with my American colleague, Anastasia
Samaras, I put on a three-day workshop on self-study research for the
participants in this project. Self-study research, they find, can help them to give
their personal and work experiences a place in the research and to use them to
achieve their goal (logbook M. L.).
Participants:
The ideas on how to start a self-study project, how to proceed with it, that my
experience and life is relevant to what I do are truly reaffirming. I feel more
confident. That I can collaborate with others – some of whom I have met here –
is wonderful.
That there is no such thing as a boring self-study project. The passion becomes
visible when the right question is asked or rather when the question is asked in
the right way.
A learning point was that I needed to share my work thus far with some critical
friends and obtain feedback. . . . I realised that listening to myself and others was
very useful to get clarity on my research journey.
Conclusion
Gaining insight into your own practice; experiencing what doing research
means; learning that even a small (though high-quality) piece of research can
produce something; discovering that you cannot do research alone; growing as
a teacher educator: these are the five themes which emerge from each of these
33
experiences. Were these experiences made up of nothing but success stories?
No, there was criticism too: a participant who dropped out, an imbalance
between doing justice to beginning and more experienced participants, and so
on. But there was always a demand for more.
All the same, a critical comment is not out of place. Practitioner research is
ambitious. It not only aims to contribute to better and more just educational
practice but also to developing knowledge on this. This knowledge is not
conceived as ‘truth’ but as a social construction. The development of such
knowledge requires research that meets scientific standards of transparency
and trustworthiness. Research is a discipline in its own right and most teacher
educators have not been trained for it. Lunenberg, Ponte and Van der Ven
(2007) warned that the quality of practitioner research needs to be monitored and
they also warn against the tendency that “anything and everything is taken to
be practitioner research” (p. 14).
If practitioner research aims to contribute to better and more just education,
then the debate on how to achieve that must go on. Hopefully the experiences
presented here will provide food for thought and debate.
References
Geursen, J., Korthagen, F., Koster, B., Lunenberg, M., & Dengerink, J. (2012). Eindelijk: een
opleiding voor lerarenopleiders! Tijdschrift voor Lerarenopleiders (in press).
Lunenberg, M., Ponte, P., & van der Ven, P. H. (2007). Why Shouldn’t Teachers and Teacher
Educators Conduct Research on their Own Practices? European Educational Research
Journal, 6(1), 13-24.
Lunenberg, M., Korthagen, F., & Zwart, R. (2010). Een onderzoekende lerarenopleider
worden. Pedagogische Studiën 87(4), 253-271.
Lunenberg, M., & Samaras, A. (2011). Developing a Pedagogy for Teaching Self-Study
Research: Lessons Learned Across the Atlantic. Teaching and Teacher Education,
27(5), 841-850.
34
10 Obligatory: a Malone note for education
Ton Notten
Cultivating talent – that is what education is about, I would say. Now, take the
opera: on a couple of DVDs you can watch choirmaster Gareth Malone (aged
36, ‘animateur, presenter and populariser of choral singing’) attempt to attract fifty
normal, that is talented, teenagers from a number of local secondary schools,
clubs and community centres in poor districts of Sussex Downs to reinforce the
choir that is going to appear in the brand-new opera Knight Crew. This is a new
work by contemporary composer Julian Philips that was performed in the
world-renowned Glyndebourne Opera house, which is located in a region of
England that has been suffering for over 30 years under the neoliberal policies
of successive governments. All the world's major opera stars and orchestras
have appeared at Glyndebourne. The opera is a reworking of the myth of King
Arthur but now the Saxons are clashing with the Knight Crew – fifty years after
West Side Story. The film uses both long shots and close-ups to record Gareth
Malone's efforts in 2010 to get young people involved. He approached almost a
thousand teenagers. He established contact with around 450 school students,
including a number of drop-outs. Almost all of them were completely
uninterested in opera at first: fat ladies with squeaky voices, expensive
showing off. The young people were completely uninterested in singing,
dancing, expression; to quote some of them it was complete 'shit'.
So what happened to them over a period of six months? About 100 young
people took part, week in week out, and some parents and grandparents even
got involved. ‘I never would have expected this of my son in a million years’,
said a mother as the project went on; her Desi, well known to the local police,
became one of the stars. The viewer sees young people learning to sing,
keeping in tune, sees their guts and growing self-confidence; as well as laziness
and larking about that sometimes hold things up. They gradually came to see
the music as whaow. And all this while they went through the real physical
35
strain and suspense of solo auditions in front of a professional jury, running
the risk of being gently rejected.
The film follows the progress closely. Gareth Malone is the passionate
conductor, teacher and youth leader who knows exactly what he wants; he is
delighted, sometimes tense – understandably – because he does not know the
professionals in the jury very well either. He goes back over things, evaluates,
from time to time he adjusts his method, which is as friendly as it is
challenging. He even coaches himself. ‘I haven't got enough time, you're
asking too much of me’ and ‘I'm exhausted’, he mutters in the wings. He really
engages with the teenagers' educational needs, speaking to them individually,
even visiting them at home: ‘Really, trust me: You Can Do It!’ Pep talk. Inbetween Malone calls in at the Youth Offending Service, which works hard
with street kids to keep them out of young offenders' institutions.
In the end 20 boys and 27 girls made it on to the opera stage. Meanwhile
Gareth had created a mothers' chorus and their lack of confidence and inability
to sing in tune was worse than that of their children. The film is a
musicological, didactic and evaluative tour de force about the ability to spot
talent, perseverance, and the disappointments and successes of a daring
project. The film makes your spine tingle more and more as every half hour
passes. Gareth Malone Goes to Glyndebourne won an International Emmy Award
voor 'Best Arts Programme' and unqualified praise from the critics.
Now over to education. Developing the talent of 5% of an initial 1,000
underprivileged young people – for an education system that would be a rather
poor achievement. Schools, of course, must aim for an exit level that can be
achieved by all pupils and for the requirements of further education rather
than the fragile competences of novices. The era of the 'new learning' is over,
thank God – that lazy concept that may perhaps have been stimulating for
highly gifted pupils but was disastrous for those of their peers who started out
with significant language delay. Education must be monitored more closely,
cried certain hypocritical politicians when on 11 January the SCP (Dutch Social
and Cultural Planning Bureau) research appeared to have demonstrated that
36
the ever-increasing education spending had not produced any improvement in
quality.
So we need better education? Of course. We need to begin with better teacher
training. Primary schools cannot manage without good primary training
colleges and there have been some problems in that sector in recent years. For
instance, the benefit to be gained from the upward mobility of senior
secondary vocational students to higher professional education suffered
because of the weak maths and language skills of many students who qualified
via that route. The educational standard of some qualified primary teachers
was found to be inadequate. New ideas emerged. The Secretary of State for
Education decided that more primary teachers should study to master's level.
Academic primary teacher training courses are now up and running in
Amsterdam and Rotterdam.
Class teachers in primary and secondary schools and teaching staff at the
training colleges: they are subject specialists, teaching specialists and
educationalists in the broadest sense. I would like to argue for a Malone note to
keep this trio together.
References
Gareth Malone Goes To Glyndebourne [2 DVDs].
Notten, A. L. T. (2012). Vleermuisouders en andere essays over het opgroeien in de stad.
Apeldoorn: Garant.
37
11 Change driven by economics in education
is a professional mistake
Leon Plomp
In the orientation lecture for the professoriate given on the occasion of her
inauguration, Ponte (2009) claimed that ‘teachers are being deprofessionalised’
in the current dynamics of our education system (p. 37). She was referring here
to the outcome of political and administrative power games. Driven by
economic motives, education policy is, sometimes deliberately and sometimes
unconsciously, restricting the teacher's scope to act on a day-to-day basis.
Education is no longer based on ‘substantive and moral questions about whose
interests the various parties are acting in, where that action should lead, and
why the situation is as it is’ (p. 37). We currently see this economics-driven
control in, for instance, orders to schools from the Education Inspectorate to
work with development perspectives and to provide evidence-based
education. We also see the influence of thinking driven by economics in targets
requiring pupils (and students) to be steered through their educational careers
more quickly. This is also behind the growing trend to call pupils 'clients'
nowadays.
This trend is threatening the identity and autonomy not only of teachers but
also of their pupils. It is the kind of development that can soon lead to a lack of
legitimacy for teachers' actions, which has repercussions in school and is
harmful to pupils and their parents.
The real reasons for educational change should lie in the increasing complexity
in society, which forces us to critically reflect on answers to changing questions
for the next generation. Because it has the task of preparing children to become
citizens, education has an obligation to adapt to these changes. After all, if we
go back to the meaning of the word pedagogiek, Greek paidagoogia, made up of
paidos (child) and agogein (guide), we recognise this preparatory task to guide
39
the child to adulthood. This is therefore the task that should be the focus of any
education reform.
Because of the relationship between education and our continually changing
society, the education profession itself is constantly searching for answers to
new questions that society presents it with. Change is based on finding the
right balance with society. This means that change is an important factor in
education. However, changing education is not an easy process (Lagerweij
& Lagerweij-Voogt, 2004) and social and psychological factors play an
important role in change processes (Van den Berg & Vandenberghe, 1995).
These factors are described as involvement, meaningfulness and conjunction.
Paying attention to these factors in change processes in education and the
commitment of all stakeholders leads moreover to more successful outcomes
(Lagerweij & Lagerweij-Voogt, 2004).
Lagerweij and Lagerweij-Voogt give three methods for educational change
which advocate dynamic development and do justice to the socialpsychological factors mentioned. In addition to working with scenarios and
narrative designs as methods, they specifically mention action research. That
action research is an efficacious strategy for educational reform is made clear
by for instance Tromp (2006) ‘the research subjects are taken seriously as active
sources of knowledge and experience with respect to the research topic, and
because of the objective to actually change something and ideally to empower
the people involved through the research’ (p. 36) and by Cohen et al. (2011) ‘a
powerful tool for change and improvement’ (p. 344). Using this method allows
a culture to develop of taking joint responsibility on professional grounds for
the way decisions to change are made and for the consequences of these
decisions. This not only links up with the social-psychological factors
mentioned earlier, but also with the discussion of ‘substantive and moral
questions about whose interests the various parties are acting in, where that
action should lead, and why the situation is as it is’ (Ponte, 2009, p. 37) which
accompanies this method of educational change.
With her efforts and commitment to action research (Ponte, 2002), Petra Ponte
has long been a champion of justice for all who are involved in education and
40
its continual change processes. She has argued that the dynamics of change
need not lead to deprofessionalisation. On the contrary, the dynamics of
change appeal to the autonomy of those involved, out of a strong connection
with education, to collaboratively plan and implement just education. Just
education that is based on the right ground: a social-pedagogisch perspective.
It is extremely important for this that teachers think about these issues
themselves and that they teach their pupils to think for themselves. Today's
pupils will make up the society of tomorrow – they matter!
References
Cohen, L., Manion, L., & Morrison, K. (2011). Research methods in education. Oxon: Routledge.
Lagerweij, N., & Lagerweij-Voogt, J. (2007). Anders kijken:De dynamiek van een eeuw
onderwijsverandering. Apeldoorn: Garant.
Ponte, P. (2002). Onderwijs van eigen makelij: Procesboek actieonderzoek in scholen en opleidingen.
Soest: Nelissen.
Ponte, P. (2009). Behaviour and research in educational praxis: An orientation [inaugural lecture].
Utrecht University of Applied Sciences, Professoriate in Behaviour and Research in
Educational Praxis, 2009. http://www.education.research.hu.nl/Lectoraten.aspx.
Tromp, C. (2006). Action research als relevante vorm van interventieonderzoek. Sociale
Interventie, 4, 33-41. Utrecht: Universiteit Utrecht.
Van den Berg, R., & Vandenberghe, R. (1995). Wegen van betrokkenheid: Reflecties
op onderwijsvernieuwing. Tilburg: Zwijsen.
41
12 Nurturing a collaborative practice
Karin Rönnerman
Teachers’ professional practice has to be recognized as something important
and highly valued for future citizens, a practice built on collaboration with
other teachers but also in a natural way with researchers. There is a need for
reciprocity between different professionals in the field of education to act for a
sustainable development of education. The voices from the actors themselves
need to be heard, not just whisperings, in the global time of governing and
assessments.
Drawing on Nordic traditions of Bildung (in Swedish bildning) and folk
enlightenment (in Swedish folkbildning) values of democracy, collaboration,
knowledge building and praxis are at the fore. Involving this tradition in the
conversation of education is about nurturing an educational selfunderstanding in a world more and more built on fragments.
Participative forms for developing meetings for dialogue and collaboration can
be found as study- or research circles that allow all voices to be heard in a
mutual discussion by creating an atmosphere where practical as well as
theoretical knowledge are acknowledged and where the meeting itself plays an
important role as a means of learning from one another, and as a means of
gaining a deeper understanding about how things work and how change can
be brought about.
Also important as a parallel effort to acknowledging teachers’ knowledge and
practices as something important and listening to their voices in times of
changes, is acknowledging and heeding students voices in the local practice of
a school. Including all voices as a means for stimulating critical reflection of
educational development can be seen as mutual empowerment, which refers to
strengthening others in fulfilling their work commitments and supporting the
development of others by creating good conditions.
43
To develop a professional practice has to do with acknowledging each-others’
knowledge and experiences and relying on teachers decisions to act for an
education based on democratic values.
44
13 Pupil participation is not a favour to
students, it is their right
Training teachers in such a way that they are able
and willing to organize their teaching accordingly is
therefore not a choice but an obligation
Ben Smit
Recently I spoke to a teacher trainer about my project ‘Students as coresearchers’, a project that aims to actively involve students in decisions about
their own education. A blank stare was what I got in response. I noticed it first
came across as something completely new, something that had not previously
crossed this person's mind as a topic relevant for teachers or for teacher
training. The response was even somewhat reluctant. That was really strange
to me. I explained that students were still not being seriously listened to on
matters that concern them, not by their teacher, nor their school, nor the
researchers who come to study them. For me that was a really sad observation.
The content and organization of education is determined by the teachers, the
influence of students in decision-making is usually limited to the installation of
a student council that is ceremonial rather than having a real role in decisionmaking, and in research students are just seen as a data source and not as
partners.4 This is remarkable, since there are several good reasons to strive for
student participation in education and research and even a legal ground. The
Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) states explicitly that children not
only have a right to good education, but also that ‘States Parties shall assure to
the child who is capable of forming his or her own views the right to express
those views freely in all matters affecting the child, the views of the child being
4
As aptly put by Susan Groundwater-Smith: “They are observed, surveyed, measured,
interviewed and commented upon in order to inform a research agenda to which they
have made little contribution. […] The students are rarely recognised as active agents,
who can be not only reliable informants, but also interpreters of their own lives. They are
at worst, silenced; at best patronised.” (2005, p. 2)
45
given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child.’
(UNICEF, 1989, p. 4, Art. 12). Only listening to students is not sufficient.
Taking their opinions and ideas seriously, letting these opinions be actually
part of decision-making and creating an environment in which pupils are able
to make their voices heard have all become an obligation. This applies equally
to everyone working in the Dutch education system, because the Netherlands
ratified this Convention in 1995 and is therefore bound by it. Teachers are no
exception.
Apart from this legal obligation and mission, there are several other reasons
for involving students in education and for setting up that education in a
different, perhaps even radically different, way:5

Pedagogische motives (the desire for better teacher-student relationships
and for increased student motivation and participation);

Innovative motives (a more informed basis for educational
development and for changes and innovations in education; better fit
with the needs, capacities and perspectives of students);

Social motives (a concern for democratic education and education for
citizenship).
There are, therefore, both compelling and worthwhile reasons for student
participation in education. However, in most cases it is not happening at all,
and if it does, not structurally, or only in a spurious form – as pseudoparticipation.
If enabling students to have a real voice is now being asked of teachers and is
even a legal obligation but is not based on their natural attitudes and skills,
then it must certainly be included in teacher training. That will not happen
without a struggle, because not even all teacher educators have an idea of what
student participation entails, let alone know how they should prepare their
student teachers for it.
How can this issue be tackled? It certainly cannot be achieved all at once. It is a
process that proceeds from developing a positive attitude and willingness on
5
See e.g. De Winter, 2009; Fielding & Moss, 2011; Rudduck & McIntyre, 2007.
46
the part of individual teachers and trainers, through action in educational
practice, to building a participatory culture in the school and then gradually
building up levels of participation. Adults may have cold feet and fear losing
power and control. In most cases, this fear is unjustified. To allay fears it might
be better to speak and think in terms of gains in the space to act and to decide
and in students' responsibilities rather than in terms of loss of power to the
teachers.
Time is really pressing though. As long ago as 2001, Shier outlined a path
along which a participatory process in schools could be achieved: from level 1,
listening to students, to level 5, shared power and responsibility for decisionmaking (Shier, 2001). Further postponement and delay have started to be
unacceptable. Apologies and explanations no longer suffice. More than 15
years have now elapsed since the commitment to implement the UNICEF
Convention was entered into. It is high time now to attend to this in teacher
training as well.
As a ‘grown-up idealist’ – in terms of Susan Neiman's book Moral Clarity (2008)
– I assume of course that the moral of this story will find a clear echo and
support in the teacher training institutes in the Netherlands:
Within a few years there should be no teacher training institute in the
Netherlands without student participation in the curriculum. That's the task we
have to set ourselves.
References
De Winter, M. (2009, October 7). Pupils as Citizens: Consequences for teaching, policy and
research. Paper presented at the inauguration symposium for Petra Ponte,
Hogeschool Utrecht, the Netherlands.
Fielding, M., & Moss, P. (2011). Radical education and the common school: A democratic
alternative. London: Routledge.
Groundwater-Smith, S. (2005, November 4-6). Learning by listening: student voice in
practitioner research. Paper presented at the International Practitioner Research &
Collaborative Action Research Network (CARN) Conference, Utrecht, the
Netherlands.
Neiman, S. (2008). Moral clarity: A guide for grown-up idealists (1st ed.). Orlando: Harcourt.
Rudduck, J., & McIntyre, D. (2007). Improving learning through consulting pupils. Oxon / New
York: Routledge.
47
Shier, H. (2001). Pathways to participation: openings, opportunities and obligations. Children
& Society, 15(2), 107-117. doi: 10.1002/chi.617
UNICEF (1989). Convention on the Rights of the Child.
www2.ohchr.org/english/law/pdf/crc.pdf (download May 14, 2012).
48
14
The incongruous prediction paradigm or
the school as an incubator
Luc Stevens
Is it possible for people to become so accustomed to an undesired reality that
they start to consider it normal and start to defend it? Even if this reality turns
against them? Of course. We all know of historical examples of this happening
due to people being repressed or as the result of extreme circumstances. We
adjust, even if only to achieve the least worst result. We want to survive and go
on.
The more I consider our educational reality, the more it seems to me to be a
reality that no one wants, but one that has excellent powers of endurance. A
reality that no one wants, because parents do not want their children selected
(out) in advance and neither do the children want this for themselves. People
want for their children and the children and young people want for themselves
a school that offers opportunities. That is to say, a school that lets its pupils
show to themselves what they are capable of. A school as a chance. Not a
school in which the organisation and the system focuses on what ‘goes wrong’,
on identifying as soon as possible the pupils who ‘have difficulty with the
subject matter’ and on classifying and addressing supposed shortcomings, as
they are called.
Comparative assessments are the rule in our schools and training colleges. As a
pupil, early in the year, you receive a ranking in the class or group and you can
never change this ranking. After all, it is linked to the teacher's expectation of
your performance and this expectation almost always proves to be fulfilled.
That is how we had arranged it. This is called a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Everyone has an example of such a self-fulfilling prophecy in his or her school
career. The literature is full of such examples.
As a young researcher into the transitional problems (why are they called
problems? But forget that for the moment) of the five and six year olds in our
49
schools, it struck me how proficient the primary school teachers of Group 1
and 2 (Kindergarten) were in predicting the success of their children in Group
3 (Primary). They were certainly as accurate as the tests that were available.
Were their observational skills so accurate? That was and certainly still is the
case, however, what they knew for certain was how things would go in Group
3 and later and that nothing much would change. It was the stability of the
school organisation in particular that gave them a good chance to make a
reliable prediction. They knew precisely what assignments their kids would
face and in many cases who their teachers would be in Group 3 (as such they
had a head start on the tests). The more stable the school organisation and with
it the teaching practice, the more reliable the prediction. These were
observations I made at the start of the 70's, last century.
The ‘reliable prediction’ idea has now become a hallmark of policy makers and
affiliated researchers in The Netherlands with the same strong belief in the
new orthodoxy. An orthodoxy that has reinforced the rigidity of the
curriculum organisation, if only to increase the reliability of such predictions.
Of course, that is necessary if you ask teachers to predict the development of
the pupils in school and if you make them stick to these predictions, as the
school inspectorate currently does. The pupils then have no opportunity to
deviate from what is expected. The motivational literature shows us how
perfectly the self-fulfilling prophecy works in this case. The ironic thing is that
the task of the school is to counteract the predictions for pupils who originate
from less privileged backgrounds.
The reality sketched out here is a flagrant contradiction of what is expressed in
the children's rights as the right to good education, of what parents see as
developmental opportunities for their children and of what our society
considers to be just or fair. Moreover, this reality, that is to say an educational
environment that is standardised for time, space, content, objectives and
standards, is in total contrast to what human development demands of the
environment: a relationship in the first place, that is to say recognition of who
you are as a pupil and with it recognition of the (massive) individual
differences that exist between people with respect to talent, tempo and
temperament, recognition not initially of the pupils' need for instruction, but of
50
their psychological needs, the need to be challenged and supported, but
mainly the need to be encouraged to develop self regulation, therefore the
need to have the freedom to investigate and learn, on one's own and with
others.
These initial needs of people where learning is concerned cannot be
standardised. Human development is pre-eminently dynamic and cannot be
accurately predicted.
The concept of man employed by our school organisation and its political
representatives on the one hand and the concept of man that is accepted by
Dutch society and that since the 19th century has developed as a result of
extremely radical social changes and scientific understanding of human
development, seem to be diametrically opposed to each other. Why does peace
still reign in the majority of schools (although of course there is serious under
achievement)? Because in daily life in the classroom, the human qualities of the
teachers and their pupils compensate for this tension. They try to make the best
of things. However, the margin for unexpected developments, which is such a
characteristic of human development, is extremely small and things regularly
go unnecessarily wrong.
A school is comparable to an incubator: everything must be predictable. All of
the attention is focussed on things that can go wrong. If things actually do go
wrong, the bell rings. The multitude of sensors ensures that the nursing staff
can arrive in time. Our schools operate based on a care model, instead of on a
developmental model.
What allows this educational misunderstanding to survive in a developed
society? Fear of what we will be faced with if we drop the standardised
system? The fear of parents and the fear of teachers? This is probably the case.
The irrationality of the phenomenon is too great to consider serious
substantive arguments.
51
15 We should not judge a duck on its
‘climbing’ skills
Hanne Touw
Fable of the animal school
Once upon a time there was a group of animals that wanted to do something to
help them to cope with the problems of the modern age. They decided to set up
a school. A curriculum was adopted that consisted of running, climbing,
swimming and flying. For administrative reasons and in the spirit of equality,
each animal was required to take all the subjects.
The duck was very good at swimming, even better than her teacher. She also got
good marks for flying but she was lagging far behind in running. Time and time
again she was made to stay behind after school to practise and she dropped
swimming as a subject. She practised so much that her webbed feet became
seriously damaged. Now she was no more than an average swimmer.
The squirrel was an excellent climber until he got frustrated in the flying lessons.
His teacher wanted him to take off from the ground and not glide down from a
treetop which is what he was used to. He took so many extra flying lessons that
his marks for climbing and running started to suffer.
The hare started out as the best runner but his marks dropped because of the
many extra swimming lessons he was taking.
The eagle was a problem child. He had to be taken firmly in hand. In the
climbing lesson he always got to the top first but insisted on sticking to his own
way of getting there. Swimming was a problem for him because of his suit of
feathers.
At the end of the year it was the unremarkable eel which won the class prize. He
could swim nicely, run and climb a little and also fly a little. He got the highest
average score.
53
What can we learn from this fable? As a result of the demands of the animal
society, the animal school failed to take sufficient account of the unique
potential of the different animals. To simplify and possibly overstate the case
somewhat: the education system fails to draw on pupils' strengths. There is far
too much emphasis on pupils' problems, on things they do not have going for
them, on what they cannot do. On average the mediocre eel was the best. He
could do a little bit of everything.6
Children need to learn to read, write and work with numbers but is learning
these skills the only purpose of education? Micha de Winter (2012) expresses
his concern about education's unilateral focus on measurable knowledge. He
warns of a problem with this approach: ‘the more you focus on outcomes, the
more you deprofessionalise the professional’. This has major consequences for
the teaching profession. Hans van de Kant and Peter Linschoten (2012) argue
that it is a fundamental misconception in the knowledge economy for
education to focus mainly on pupils' cognitive development. They point out
that imagination and creativity have an enormous influence on pupils'
developmental potential and therefore on innovation in society. For a long
time school was seen as the place where pupils learn to think critically and to
be given a broad education to become mature and understanding citizens.
However, since we seem to have placed economic growth above all else, the
education system has also focused on producing economically useful and
productive students (Pleij, 2012).
How are we going to stand up to this? In 2008 Jan Ax and Petra Ponte put
Bildung back on the map. In Critiquing Praxis they revealed the variety of
interpretations and the impact of the complex concept of Bildung. It would
seem that – as Matts Mattson (2008) describes it – the Bildung tradition is being
challenged by the curriculum tradition. Martha Nussbaum (2010) argues,
however, that learning the skills for a job is unthinkable without learning to
use your imagination and critically question your own culture.
6
Adapted from Rosenberg (1968). From a presentation by Professor Kees van der Wolf,
former professor in the Research Group Behavioural Problems in Educational Practice,
Utrecht University of Applied Sciences.
54
If by Bildung we mean the process of forming your own ideas and your own
personality – after studying the knowledge and insights of previous
generations – then it is high time for a revival of Bildung. I believe that a broad
education alongside specialisation is necessary for that: not a one-sided but a
broad curriculum with sufficient scope for disciplines such as philosophy,
history, art and culture. That brings the balance back to a just education with
opportunities for all pupils.
References
Ax, J., & Ponte, P. (2008). Praxis: Analysis of theory and practice. In J. Ax & P. Ponte (Eds.),
Critiquing Praxis: Conceptual and empirical trends in the teaching profession (pp. 1-18).
Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
Mattsson, M., Johansson, I., & Sandström, B. (Eds.) ( 2008). Examining praxis: Assessment and
knowledge construction in teacher education. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
Nussbaum, M. (2010). Not for profit: Why democracy needs the humanities. Princeton
University Press.
Pleij, S. (2012). Waarom filosofie moet: Wij willen Bildung! Wij willen Bildung! Vrij
Nederland, 13, 20-23.
Rosenberg, M.G. (1968). Diagnostic teaching. Seattle / Washington: Special Child
Publications.
Van de Kant, H., & Linschoten, P. (2012). Bildung en sociale integratie van groepen met een
achterstand:De taak van de lerarenopleidingen en scholen. Internal document,
Seminarium voor Orthopedagogiek.
Winter, M. de (2012). De angst voor China en Japan. SpeZiaal, 1, 23-26.
55
16 Towards an intellectual competency
Piet-Hein van de Ven
The novel Het Reservaat (The Reservation, Ruyslinck, 1964) tells the story of
Basile Jonas, a teacher of Dutch in an Orwellian society in which everything is
controlled by the government, including education, the curriculum and the
textbooks. Jonas has the courage to discuss non-canonized poetry in his classes.
He comes to realize that poetry is unfit for a “utility-and-profit society”, unfit
for the “cult of ecstasy and danger, the desperate speeding up of a meaningless
life”. Jonas ends up in a reservation as a “homo mollis”, a ‘gentle, kind
human’.
In an interview (Zonderland, 1986), the Flemish author Herman de Coninck
claims poetry teaches us things we cannot learn elsewhere. Rather than having
to succeed in everything, we learn to lose. Losing our youth, our beloved, our
ideals, that is what half of the world’s literature is about, according to De
Coninck. Poetry helps to give meaning to important personal experiences –
although these experiences are doubtlessly unimportant in a ‘utility-and-profit’
society. Referring to Habermas’ (1972) concept of knowledge interests, I would
like to argue that poetry contributes to the construction of ‘interpretative
knowledge’, i.e. knowledge required for interpreting and understanding the
world and the relationship between our personal micro-world and society’s
macro-world.
Poetry is language, and language consists of several layers. Beneath the surface
of words and sentences, values, standards and self-evidences are hidden. In
secondary education, the subject Dutch hardly deals with poetry anymore,
partly due to lack of time. Students are barely offered the opportunity to learn
to search for deeper meanings. The subject is mostly utilitarian. After all,
reading and writing referential texts is more beneficial to our knowledge
economy. University studies in the humanities, traditionally focusing on
interpretation, will not even end up in a reservation; in the Netherlands they
are slowly being crushed by an economic regime.
57
The current educational language uses dominant concepts such as input,
output, investment, productivity, and efficiency. These words frame education
as a manufacturing company in which everything is predetermined and
measured in order to keep track of ‘profit’. Education is being regulated by
what De Swaan (cfr. Giesen, 2010) calls marketism: the idea that life, work,
education and society can be determined by scientific models, in this case
economic ones. Marketism supposes that education and society can be
manipulated. The economy is colonizing social sectors that represent other
types of knowledge and values. It assesses these other sectors based on ‘utility
and profit’. Output financing is a good example. Of course, the time students
need to graduate indicates the quality of their education and, of course, peerreviewed publishing demonstrates that the quality of the research has reached
a certain level. However, whether or not education and research help student,
teacher, or researcher to give meaning to the topics they discuss, or the actions
they undertake, is considered to be irrelevant. Output financing is used as an
incentive for quality improvement. This tool is now being used for its own
sake, which makes it a perfect example of a technocratic rationality, a perfect
example of an instrumental view of education and research, and also an
example of manipulability. This manipulability also becomes apparent in topdown educational reform, and in the view that fundamental research generates
knowledge that merely needs to be implemented in practice. Thus, it is a
matter of regulating and controlling. This is remarkable as at the same time
various studies have shown that this manipulability is questionable.
The technocratic-economic education policy ignores other educational goals
that are just as important, such as personal growth, Bildung, the transmission of
cultural heritage and emancipation. These goals all can add to interpretative
skills and therefore to ‘civilization’. In order to acquire these goals, the people
involved, including students, need to develop an 'intellectual competency'.
‘Competency’ is a dangerous concept. Various meanings have been attached to
it, often that of ‘skill’. This restricted and narrow-minded interpretation of
‘competency’ as a mere ‘skill’ has its origin in history. Forty years ago, the
competency concept was adopted from the USA and subsequently developed
into isolated skills training. However, the current competency concept is much
58
wider. It involves knowledge, skills, attitudes and convictions. The semantic
narrowing to ‘skill’ cannot be explained based on history alone. It ties in with
the view that knowledge is unimportant, since it quickly becomes obsolete. As
may be clear, this view defines ‘knowledge’ as purely instrumental knowledge.
Interpretative knowledge – history, ethics, philosophy, language, culture, etc.
is not prone to ageing. This semantic narrowing can be explained by the wish
to control and regulate. After all, skills are easier to measure than attitudes and
convictions, which have an ethical dimension. This becomes apparent in the
competency concept as phrased by the European Council: savoir, savoir faire,
savoir apprendre, savoir être (cf. Coste et al. 2009). The ethical dimension is
expressed in ‘savoir être’. This notion incorporates an objective: knowledge and
skills should support learning and life. The notion matches the ideal of Bildung
as formulated by the same Council. By means of education, Bildung should
create responsible and reliable citizens, who are equipped with a level of
scholarship, wisdom, power of judgement, and ethics. In short, it should create
‘gebildete’ intellectuals.
Like ‘competency’, ‘intellectual’ is another dangerous word. Policy-makers,
managers, politicians and the like tend not to care for intellectuals. Intellectuals
have the unpleasant habit of looking beneath the surface of language, which
results in them asking critical questions, formulating nuances, and pointing
out contradictions and dilemmas. Intellectual competency helps to answer the
most unwelcome questions which are how and why our society has become a
utilitarian one and what and especially whose interests are served by it.
Intellectual competency does not serve economic progress per se, but rather
personal growth, emancipation and cultural transfer – the latter by developing
a framework of knowledge that supports the process of giving meaning, which
is more than the mere transfer of canonical knowledge. Intellectual
competency is based on and leads towards interpretative knowledge. The
Danish philosopher Johan Fjord Jensen (1987) described how the tradition of
educating in the humanities led to four traditional ‘humane’ competencies: the
historical, the communicative, the creative, and the critical competencies. Like
Jensen, I believe the historical competency is essential for seeing the present as
a result of decisions taken in the past, which resulted from conflicts that were
present at the time. The historical competency also helps us to read current
59
images of the past critically as interpretations representing today’s interests.
The communicative competency is necessary for the exchange of thoughts and,
especially, for the construction of thoughts, in order to reach a shared
understanding. The creative competency enables us to think out of the box and
causes constructive friction that leads to reassessment and new analyses. In my
opinion, the critical competency questions what is considered obvious and
phrases ideals based on historical, communicative and creative thinking.
According to Jensen, together these competencies create a fifth competence:
recognizing coherence, or being able to understand developments from a
wider framework that tries to explain the relationship between macro and
micro level.
All this requires much knowledge, especially from the humanities and social
sciences, because observing and interpreting are based on knowledge that
functions as a framework to see – he who knows nothing, sees nothing. On top
of that, it requires an attitude, the wish to see, and the conviction that whatever
we see is influenced by language. After all, language constructs world views
that are not generally valid and self-evident – and therefore have to be
questioned critically.
It is very important to educate students and teachers in this. For researchers, it
is important to bear that principle in mind when working. Furthermore. . . it is
important that researchers use research to give meaning and to see the
connections between the micro and the macro. It is important that researchers
use this principle for analyzing practical problems and for analyzing their own
actions concerning those same problems from both the perspective of the
people involved and from a wider, socio-historical framework. This is not
likely to be profitable in an economic sense but it probably will lead to the
creation of gentle, kind people who are ‘understanding’ in more than one
sense: intellectuals with ideals, even if these ideals do not gain them any
concrete benefit.
References
Coste, D., Cavali, M., Crişan, A., & Van de Ven, P. H. (2009). Plurilingual and intercultural
education as a right./ L’éducation plurilingue et interculturelle comme droit. In
J. C. Beacco, M. Byram, D. Coste & M. Fleming (Eds.), A Platform of resources and
60
references for plurilingual and intercultural education/Plateforme de ressources et de
références pour l’éducation pluilingue et interculturelle. Strasbourg: Council of Europe,
language policy division. www.coe.int/lang.
Giesen, P. (2010, 13 november). ‘De elite heeft het afgelegd’. Interview Bram de Swaan. De
Volkskrant.
Habermas, J. (1972). Knowledge and Human Interests. London: Heinemann.
Jensen, J. F. (1987). Det tredje: Den postmoderne udfordring. København: Valby.
Ruyslinck, W. (1964). Het Reservaat. Den Haag: Manteau.
Zonderland, P. (1986, 3 januari). Poëzie verandert de zaak: De gewoondoener Herman de
Coninck. De Volkskrant.
61
17 Action Research squared
The time has come for a synergy between the
external-objective and internal-subjective science
traditions
Gijs Verbeek
The external-objective research paradigm – which can be labelled as ‘Western’
but which has been adopted globally – has already more than proved its
worth. Mankind seems to have succeeded in manipulating his external
surroundings to a huge extent. This has led – at least for the lucky few – to
great material wealth and prosperity. At the same time there is a growing
awareness – originating from diverse disciplines – of how mankind is
increasingly threatened by global issues of an ecological, social and financial
nature. Closer to home we find this mirrored in increasing problems of an
inter- and intra-personal nature; children with divorced parents, for instance,
used to be an exception say twenty years ago (at least in The Netherlands), but
it seems that we currently find ourselves in exactly the opposite situation. We
seem to be confronted with a certain imbalance between our internal and
external affairs.
For the argument I am trying to make, I am defining the world’s current state
as the external manifestation of human culture which is rooted in the human
mind. Culture is an integrated pattern of shared knowledge, beliefs, attitudes,
values and goals (all of which originate in the mind) which manifests itself in
behaviour that influences the environment. Critical humanist Professor
Kunneman (2005) gives an elaborate and critical analysis of this point of view
with his identification of the ‘dikke-ik’ and its impact on the environment. 7
Kunneman’s dikke-ik (which can be translated as fat-I) is a product of post modernism,
which suffers from gluttony and insatiability, thinks everything can be manipulated, has
access to inexhaustible consumption possibilities thanks to technological advancement but
7
63
From the state of the world which is a manifestation of the human mind
through human culture we arrive at the pedagogische kwestie or ~taak. This
compels me to think about what to convey and what not to convey to the next
generation and by what means. These questions, their answers and conduct
based upon them is what forms the very core of educational praxis.
The domain of the educational praxis, however, finds itself increasingly
confronted with attitudes and values which are grounded in the externalobjective research paradigm. This is especially the case with values grounded
in the empirical-analytical paradigm, accurately identified and termed
'functionalism' by Ax and Ponte. This development has led to a complete
absence of the moral-ideological perspective from education policies, teacher
education and educational research (Ax & Ponte, 2010, p. 40). Alongside this,
teachers find their substantial rationality increasingly being threatened by
instrumental and centralistic influences – both side effects of the hierarchical
dichotomy between policy and practice (Ax & Ponte, 2008a, pp. 244-245; Ax &
Ponte, 2008c, p. 254). In other words, teachers are ignored in the debate
concerning the legitimacy and intended goals of their praxis. Ax and Ponte
correctly identify that children are being harmed by this and propose a
redefinition of the disciplines pedagogiek and didactiek in response to these
developments.
I would like to argue that the issues raised not only ask for a redefinition but
also a reorientation: a reorientation that provides for the incorporation of the
human mind as research object, since it is the breeding ground of our culture.
This incorporation can only be facilitated by means of a synergy between the
external-objective and internal-subjective research traditions, as represented by
traditions such as yoga and Zen Buddhism.8
Action research seems to be perfectly suitable for functioning as the first link in
the proposed synergy. The necessity and rationale for action research as a
is, despite all this, isolated, lonely, deeply frustrated and dissatisfied and manifests
extremely ambivalent behaviour in diverse areas.
8 which is by no means an idea that’s ‘mine’ or ‘new’, I only specify the implication for the
field of education. See Rajneesh 1988; The Dalai Lama, 2005.
64
method for training and professionalization of teachers is already evident
(Ponte, 2009). Also evident are the similarities between the principles of
Buddhist meditation practices and the external-objective research tradition in
general (The Dalai Lama, 2006) and action research in particular (Winter, 2009).
The similarities identified with respect to action research cover: a) guiding
principles such as care and cooperation, b) attitudes regarding differences
between people, c) change, d) creativity and e) reflexivity.
Alongside the identified similarities, we find two other developments pointing
in the same direction. First, the increasing interest in the linking of what can be
termed the 'internal' with the 'external' within the context of the work of
teachers (Van Manen, 1991). Second, the belief that the teacher is his own
instrument, which necessitates self-understanding (Stevens, 2008, p. 88).
Central to this self-understanding is the development of self-knowledge and
authenticity; in other words, in order to understand the other, understanding
yourself is a prerequisite. Pedagogy as human science is in the end a science
about and for human beings (Ax & Ponte, 2008b, p. 2). Self-understanding and
self-knowledge constitute, in my opinion, the very core of this.
Disciplines such as yoga and Zen Buddhism can supplement our endeavour to
educate and prepare the next generations for life on earth. Both are ancient
traditions, complete with methods and techniques, and both require the same
discipline and rigour from their practitioners as the external-objective
tradition. The research object and domain concerns the nature of our inner
experiences and the Self. Intended goals for Zen Buddhist meditation practices
are a) “to bring forth the inner Self” (Dhiravamsa, 1990, p. 14) – which will
establish the desired link between the internal and the external in the context
of the work of teachers – and b) “stilling the mind so that random thoughts
cease” so that egoism and attachment vanish and “all virtuous qualities are
naturally fulfilled” (Cleary, 2000, pp. 17-18). Thus they form the perfect
antidote for Kunneman’s dikke-ik.9
9
See Feuerstein (2007) for the added value of yoga.
65
The foremost implications are:

Firstly, a reorientation in which the human mind is taken as a research
object and domain, since it is the breeding ground of our culture. The
increasing global problems compel us to make a critical analysis.

Secondly, the human mind, by its very nature, can only be properly
researched by means of a synergy between the internal-subjective and
external-objective science traditions.

Thirdly, action research is the most suitable option for functioning as
the first link in the proposed synergy. Action research implies not only
an optimization of knowledge and contact with the external, but also
with the internal; the action researcher’s domain constitutes his/her
own actions within the given context.
The end result is action research squared.
References
Ax, J., & Ponte, P. (2008a). Praxis, rationality and professional scope. In S. Kemmis & T. J.
Smith (Eds.), Enabling praxis. (pp. 243-262). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
Ax, J., & Ponte, P. (2008b). Praxis: Analysis of theory and practice. In J. Ax & P. Ponte (Eds.),
Critiquing praxis. (pp. 1-18). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
Ax, J., & Ponte, P. (2008c). Reflections on ‘Nurturing praxis’. In: K. Rönnerman, E. M. Furu &
P. Salo (Eds.), Nurturing praxis. (pp. 251-256). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
Ax, J., & Ponte, P. (2010). Moral issues in educational praxis: A perspective from
‘pedagogiek’ and ‘didactiek’ as human sciences in continental Europe. Pedagogy,
Culture & Society, 18(1), 29-42.
Cleary, T. (2000). Aandachtige geest. Deventer: Ankh-Hermes.
Dhiravamsa, V. R. (1990). De ongedwongen weg. Utrecht: Kosmos.
Feuerstein, G. (2007). Yoga morality. Arizona: HOHM Press.
Kunneman, H. (2005). Voorbij het dikke-ik. Amsterdam: SWP.
Ponte, P. (2010). Action research as a tool for teachers’ professional development. In P.
Peterson, E. Baker & B. McGraw (Eds.), International encyclopedia of education. (pp.
540-547). Oxford: Elsevier.
Rajneesh, B. S. (1988). Manifest voor een gouden toekomst. Amsterdam: Stichting Rajneesh
Publikaties Nederland.
Stevens, L. M. (2008). Leraar, wie ben je? Een benadering van de basis van het handelen van
leraren. In L. M. Stevens (Red.), Leraar wie ben je? (pp. 63-71). Apeldoorn: Garant.
The Dalai Lama. (2005). The universe in a single atom. London: Abacus.
Van Manen, M. (1991). The tact of teaching. London: The Althouse Press.
66
Winter, R. (2009). Developing relationships, developing the self: Buddhism and action
research. In: S. E. Noffke & B. Somekh (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of educational
action research (pp. 336-346). London: SAGE.
67
18 Knowledge of history in the debate on
education
Most misunderstandings concerning ‘evidence-based
education’ that arise nowadays between proponents
and opponents are because of a lack of historical
understanding
Nico Verloop
Is it the task of educational research to provide ‘evidence’ for decisions about
implementing or not implementing educational innovations?
Some proponents of evidence-based education especially seem to believe and
give the impression that this topic is currently being discussed for the first
time. While in reality almost all the arguments and pros and cons of this
approach were extensively debated in the seventies, albeit under several
different names and labels, such as “process-product research”.
Just as in the seventies, the sheer number of ‘pieces of evidence’ that are
supported by hard empirical proof is quite modest. Just as in the seventies, the
opinions people have about the value of this approach is mainly determined,
not by empirical evidence, but by the fundamental notions they have about the
character and the role of education research as such. Is the goal of educational
research to find ‘laws’ and regularities which, although not as ‘hard’ as the
laws from science and mathematics, are explicit enough to prescribe how
teachers should behave in the classroom? Or is the goal of educational
research, in view of the enormous diversity of contexts and variables, basically
an interpretative discipline, not focused on finding laws and regularities but
on interpreting and illuminating certain aspects of reality and providing
concepts and theories that help teachers and other professionals to ‘see more’
in school and classroom reality, enabling them to act more professionally.
69
In the whole spectrum of disciplines (from hard sciences at one end to, for
example, philosophy at the other end), it is clear that there are fundamental
differences between the disciplines in this respect or, for some disciplines, it is
clear that one can make an explicit choice about how to conceive one’s
discipline. For some reason, however, this awareness seems to disappear as
soon as educational research is at issue, and proponents and opponents of
evidence-based education simply try to ‘prove’ that their own opinion is the
correct one. But proponents of evidence-based education who believe that
education is basically the ‘application’ of the findings of educational research
will never succeed in convincing those who think education is something
totally different from that. And vice versa. What we can do is to explicate as
clearly as possible what the underlying convictions are of both proponents and
opponents. Not to decide who is ‘right’, but to make sure that we stop talking
at cross-purposes. Some knowledge of the, almost identical, debate of about 40
years ago might be helpful for that.
70
19 Shared Leadership: An Essential
Ingredient to Improve Educational Praxis
Kyla Wahlstrom
The concept of leadership is as old as human history, but in the field of
education it has evolved significantly since the early 1990s. Prior to that time,
educational leadership was primarily associated with power, authority, and
the control of resources. It centered on management and sought to maintain a
distance between the leader and those being led.
However, with greater emphasis on the democratization of education at the
end of the 20th century came related questions of how teachers and students
were being involved in educational praxis. To bring the needs and interests of
teachers and students together, leadership became a partner in that process.
Leaders began to realize the role they have in facilitating the dialogue and the
actions between students and teachers. That role has become even more
significant as recent research has shown that effective leadership is strongly
linked to improved student learning (Wahlstrom et al., 2010).
In the past twenty years, the concept of leadership has expanded beyond
formal leaders, such as heads of school or principals to also include teachers
who lead their peers in their local schools. It is the teachers who have become
leaders in their own professional growth that have been the focus for the
participative forms of research and development projects (e.g., TRIO and
ARTE) initiated by Professor Petra Ponte. These forward-thinking projects
were directly concerned with educational praxis, specifically by bringing the
voices of students and teachers into the discourse about educational
improvement and self-learning. Petra Ponte believed then, and still asserts,
that those voices need to be an integral part of day-to-day work in every
classroom. To do so is, in her words, “to give concrete form to education that is
just”.
71
Just practice that depends on critical dialogue and honest self-reflection is, in
my view, strongly linked to the concept of shared leadership. This means that
not only does the principal share leadership with his or her teachers, it also
refers to teachers sharing leadership with each other, and to teachers sharing
leadership with their pupils. This tri-partite view of shared leadership may be
one of the most powerful forces for the improvement of educational praxis. In
a sense, it is like a Venn diagram where each sphere has its own nature, but the
power comes when all three spheres interact at the center to combine or even
multiply their knowledge, perceptions, and attitudes.
Shared leadership is difficult to do well (Spillane, 2006). Even knowing that
much is possible to be gained and better understood when leadership is not
held by just one person (as in the principal) or in one group (as in the teachers),
sharing power and decision-making across all groups, including students,
causes all persons involved to feel a bit insecure at first. However, giving all
stakeholders or participants in the educative process a voice and a recognized
platform will enable the greatest amount of growth to occur.
Effective leaders create the conditions in which teachers and students are
provided the training, the tools, and the support structures that allow critical
self-knowledge to develop. In addition, effective educational leaders are,
themselves, engaged in self-learning and self-discovery as well (Louis &
Wahlstrom, 2011).
Leadership and learning are inextricably linked to each other and are the
building blocks for the ultimate goal in education, which is the development of
the minds of our students. Teachers who work together to improve their
practices are sharing with each other the leadership for their learning.
Involving students in reflecting on their own learning is sharing leadership as
well. And school administrators who believe in and support teachers and
students learning together are modeling shared leadership at the highest level.
Learning leaders live the value of reflective practice. Where there is no
reflection, there will be no learning. Professional learning creates energy and
improves practices that result in improved outcomes, not only for students, but
also for the professionals. It is truly, and only, accomplished together that we
72
educators can improve educational praxis and create a more just educational
experience for the young people who will assume the mantle of leading our
world. This is no small task for us, and for them.
References
Louis, K. S. & Wahlstrom, K. (2011). Principals as cultural leaders. Kappan, 92(5), 52-56.
Spillane, J. P. (2006). Distributed leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Wahlstrom, K., Louis, K. S., Leithwood, K., & Anderson, S. (2010). Learning from leadership:
Investigating the links to improved student learning. Executive summary of research
findings. University of Minnesota: Center for Applied Research and Educational
Improvement. (http://www.cehd.umn.edu/CAREI/Leadership/Learning-fromLeadership_Executive-Summary_July-2010.pdf ) download d.d. 24 April 2012.
73
20 Appropriate education: from problem
dossier to quality boost
Kees van der Wolf
Unfriendly reception
Appropriate Education has not met with a very friendly reception in the world
of education. Insofar as teachers are familiar with it – which is not always the
case especially in secondary education – they wish to know what implications
it has for their daily work. They are insecure about their own abilities, expect
disruption of their classes because of behavioural problems, fear lack of
support, are worried about an increase in their duties and predict a lowering of
standards. They also feel insufficient ownership of Appropriate Education.
Those who do know what Appropriate Education is about have different ideas
about the desired approach to learners with complex needs. Some believe in
professional help outside mainstream education, others argue in favour of
exactly the opposite. Let’s say, more specialist versus more inclusive. So
Appropriate Education also has an ideological dimension to it.
Social justice
In her inaugural lecture delivered in Utrecht in 2009, Petra Ponte drew
attention to the ‘having’ and ‘doing’ perspectives of social justice theory.
‘Having’ is related to material matters for certain groups of children, like
special education, pupil care, extra money for special services, ambulatory
guidance, internal counseling, etc. ‘Doing’ concerns a shared perspective that is
developed by those actively involved in education and the stimulation of
critical discussions about existing practices.
The present state of affairs may be said to belong to the ‘having perspective’.
Appropriate Education is approached as a technical and isolated dossier.
Appropriate Education is usually about vulnerable learners who are in need of
customised education and support; policy mainly concerns management
directions.
75
Appropriate Education is considered equivalent to pupil care and pupil care is
then approached as an organisational issue. The so-called vulnerable learners
were and are often dealt with by a disjointed collection of teachers, care
professionals, institutes and authorities that get under one another’s feet with
partial solutions, uncoordinated interests, conflicting rules, terminology issues
and differences in professional ethics. The social and ideological dynamics
behind the Appropriate Education dossier are not addressed.
Specialist versus inclusive
Whether we like it or not, the international inclusion debate always plays a
part in the discussion about Appropriate Education, however much
policymakers say it does not. This debate, at times heated, has been going on
for decades. What arguments do traditionalists and inclusionists present?
Traditionalist10
Inclusionist
Disabilities are innate conditions that require
Diversity is an inherent human condition,
treatment to correct them.
but people are more alike than different.
Students who achieve above or below
Diversity is natural and expected; sorting
normal expectations should be sorted into
students into groups is unnecessary and can
groups.
be damaging.
Disabilities create problems for schools and
Diversity contributes positively to
society.
classroom climate, learning outcomes, and a
'richer' community.
Academic and behavioural supports are
Diversity is managed best in inclusive
provided most effectively in special
learning environments where all children
education settings.
are active and valued and where families
are welcome.
Students who achieve below expectations
Diversity enhances the performance of
will improve only if they receive special
individuals of varying achievement levels,
education.
competence and behavioural patterns when
they learn together.
10 Adapted from E. Brantlinger (1997). Using Ideology: Cases of Nonrecognition of the
Politics of Research and the Practice of Special Education. Review of Educational Research, 67,
pp. 425-459
76
Special education teachers are more
Diversity is a challenge for all teachers, who
successful than general education teachers in
should be prepared to include and engage
meeting the needs of students with
successfully all learners in their classrooms.
disabilities.
Different stakeholders have divergent ideas about the desired approach to the
problems. What stands out, in particular, is the tension between separation
(help for pupils with specific educational needs outside the mainstream) and
socialisation (support within regular channels like primary and secondary
schools). How far is the care for and teaching of pupils with complex needs
part of ‘normal’ services?
Social learning process
It would be better to bring about a shift in perception, approach and
terminology. In most cases we are dealing with pupils that qualify for ordinary
teaching and who are in need of additional support, depending on their
disability. It is about children and young people with additional support
needs.
In an essay written for the Appropriate Education Evaluation Commission,
Noordegraaf and De Wit point out that those concerned with Appropriate
Education have not taken the ideological dimension and increased workload
seriously enough and have approached the issue too much as a technical and
isolated dossier. Discussion of the links with other education dossiers, such as
the strengthening of teachers’ professionalism, the quality agenda and the
emphasis on improving language and maths, but also with more medical
dossiers, including the diagnosis of behavioural disorders, has been avoided.
Relevant practical solutions are not being devised by professionals or enforced
by the regulatory authorities. They develop in a social learning process. The
emphasis should be on facilitating this learning process. Petra Ponte’s work
has a lot to offer in this field. She is not so much in favour of scholars offering
external solutions but of helping to clarify practical problems and helping to
look for alternative perspectives on change. That is something the Appropriate
Education policy could certainly benefit from.
77
21 Educational research should help us
improve education
Theo Wubbels
The motto of the annual convention of the American Educational Research
Association (AERA) in 2012 was Non Satis Scire: it is not enough to know. With
this motto AERA was urging researchers to also pay attention to the use of
their research results in practice. I can live with that call, although it reflects a
one-sided view of the impact of research on practice. A more reciprocal
approach, where practice also affects research is far more productive. The
statement "Educational research should help us improve education," goes one
step further. I have modeled this assertion after a statement by Sietske
Roegholt (1995) in the preface to her thesis, which she attributed to Nijs
Lagerweij's first lecture on her educational studies course: “Why are educators
on earth? In order to improve education". With that statement, I disagree, and
that holds even more for the idea that we only need to do educational research to
improve educational practice.
The report of the De Graaf Committee (committee charged with producing a
National Plan for the Future of Educational Sciences in 2011) expressed
concern about the limited usefulness of educational research for practice in the
Netherlands. Although I think the committee underestimated the utility of
educational research and the extent to which it is used in practice, it was
absolutely right in claiming that its practical usefulness is limited, at least in
the short term. In the long run this is very different, as can be illustrated, for
example, by the use of research findings on language acquisition processes in
primary education. The counterproductive notion that I have formulated in the
assertion underlies the concern of the committee. The task of educational
research (like any other research) is, in my opinion, to gain knowledge:
knowledge about education, for example about what works and what does
not. It is not wrong to choose research topics that increase the chance of
producing useful results, but if we only focus on usefulness, then this easily
79
leads to poor research focusing on short-term issues which can be quickly
investigated. When we focus on immediately useful research, we neglect the
long-term contributions that fundamental research can deliver for educational
improvement. The study of language acquisition is a good example of this.
It is even worse when research topics are chosen for which research is not the
right tool. Many of the questions arising from practice are not really research
questions but design questions: how can we cater better for children in special
education? How can we keep more problem children within mainstream
education? Apart from what literature study has to say about such issues,
research can offer little. A design question should not be answered by research
but by making something. Then research may investigate whether the claims
of the design are convincingly demonstrated. Considering such design
questions as research design is one of the biggest misconceptions in the hype
surrounding research by teachers. Through research we find out what
something is but far less how something can be achieved.
Educational research is not suitable for answering the question of what the
goals of education should be. Research can be used to provide knowledge,
such as the effects that a particular choice of aims may have, but it does not
provide answers to questions about their desirability. They are normative
questions and we have democratic institutions to give answers to those
questions.
To sum up, an assertion that I support is: The task for educational research is to
produce knowledge about education.
References
Commissie Nationaal Plan Toekomst Onderwijswetenschappen. (2011). Nationaal Plan
Onderwijs/leerwetenschappen. Den Haag, Nederland: Ministerie van Onderwijs,
Cultuur en Wetenschap.
Roegholt, S. (1995). Meerperspectivisch onderwijs. Academisch proefschrift. Amsterdam: Vrije
Universiteit Amsterdam.
80
22 Cross-cultural collaborative research
partnerships
Fostering better understanding and appreciation of
one's own culture of educational practices
Semyon Yusfin & Nina Michailova
Our collaboration dates back to the Imtek-1991 Conference and has continued
for over 10 years. The Imtek-1991 Conference, held in Sochi, was one of the
first international conferences on education in Russia after the ‘perestroika’
period. Its timing certainly affected the content of the conference
programme. The Western world was learning about Russia, while Russia was
getting acquainted with the West. And since education is inextricably linked
with the history and reality of life in each country, from the very beginning our
partnership was very much a cross-cultural exchange.
The aim of the conference was primarily to create an environment where
interesting international projects could get started. We got acquainted in a very
informal way, when two Russians were sitting on a bench in Sochi, singing
Russian folk songs one September evening. As Dutch people are quite musical,
they were attracted by the singing as they passed by the benches. As a nation
which loves to get engaged with other people (even those who do not speak
Dutch), those Dutch people stopped near the two Russians and began to sing
along. The singing Russians thought that was nice and eagerly started a
conversation about who was who, where from, and doing what.
Relationships developed during the conference in the days that followed,
resulting in the launch of the TRIO project, involving Dutch and Russian
researchers and teachers. A few months later American and British colleagues
joined the project. We have to note that the role of mediator in organizing
81
partners from the four countries was taken on by the Dutch side. And most of
the coordination work was assumed by Petra Ponte.
Petra Ponte was not only an effective facilitator, but a true leader of her
country, as well as a strong professional educator, effectively representing her
country’s educational experience in a multinational project. The important
standpoint, which Petra Ponte began to take soon after the start of the project,
was the understanding that direct transfer of other countries’ experiences to a
different culture (in this case, to Russia) was not appropriate. Each country has
its own culture and social environment, as well as its educational experiences
and realities that cannot be ignored. Experts from each country needed to
understand the potential of their educational systems and develop it
themselves, while interactions with partners from other countries could help
them to reflect on their experiences and suggest certain changes. This
proposition was then largely shared by all project participants.
The TRIO project was devoted to cross-cultural study of education systems,
aimed at addressing children's problems during the educational process. It
turned out that the Dutch education system had many specialists and services
which worked with children's problems. This system was a well-functioning
mechanism. Based on the analysis of this practice, Dutch experts have
concluded that, on the one hand, the system enabled professionals to address a
large number and range of children’s issues. But on the other hand, in many
situations the Dutch education system and other social services and agencies
were working to eliminate the consequences of those problems without
addressing their causes. What's more, the system did not always put any
responsibility on the children, helping them to understand their own problems
or encouraging them to correct them.
In Russia, educational practice was quite different. There was no extensive,
organized system of services and professionals working with a wide range of
children's problems. It was obvious that many of children’s misdeeds at school
were caused by factors outside the educational process. Within the education
system professionals dedicated to addressing children's problems began to
appear. However, this was experimental, rather than a general trend. In
Russian academic and practical educational fields, the work with children's
82
problems in education is called ‘pedagogical support’. The essence of
pedagogical support is a joint understanding of an issue which is emerging or
has already happened and which disrupts either a child or other participants
in the educational process. A pedagogue then assists the child to understand
the causes which have lead to these problems, as well as encourages the child
to plan how his/her behaviour could be changed.
Collaborative analysis of and research into experiences in different countries,
as well as joint and constructive discussions of those experiences, helped
researchers to understand the importance of each country's own experience. It
should again be noted that this collaboration has been achieved largely thanks
to Petra Ponte. This was an active and face-to-face collaboration, as researchers
and educators from all four countries have been meeting regularly at the
conferences.
One of the most important conditions for ensuring the quality of the project
was the objective to provide further training for teachers. This is why the next
project, ARTE, which was a logical continuation of the TRIO project, was
devoted to cross-cultural study of the content and system of training and
retraining of professionals working in the educational field. The professional
support services in education have different names in different countries; in
Russia they are called ‘pedagogical support’. In order to propose actions to
change and improve the system of educational support, we had to analyze the
experience of each country, and then hold constructive discussions. That was
done during the first phase of the project. Analysis of the situation became an
essential step in the course of the project.
As a result of discussions between the partners, ‘action research’ was chosen to
be the main method of research and project experiments. In Western countries,
action research had its own history and practical application. However, in
early discussions, it became clear that there are different interpretations and
accents within Western academic culture. Another aspect of the discussion was
related to the fact that in Russian educational practice (which emerged while
developing a system of training and retraining for professionals working with
children's problems in education), the technological approach was based on a
83
reflexive awareness of practice. However, in Russia no correlation between the
reflexive approach and action research was found.
As a first step of the ARTE project, the scholars from the four countries tried to
compare their approaches to training and retraining educational professionals,
and they also tried to consider their experience in the context of action
research. Action research went on to become a key method and form of
research in the ARTE project. Petra Ponte played a major role in the
organization of these studies, as well as in combining the results of the crosscultural research. Our collaboration in the project was constructive, with
elements of friendly criticism.
The project resulted in several publications in Dutch (Ponte & Zwaal, 1997), as
well as in an international edition of Educational Action Research which included
amongst other a description of the experiences of the Dutch and Russian
partners (Michailova, Yusfin, & Polyakov, 2002; Ponte, 2002). This can be
regarded as a significant achievement of the professionals in both countries.
Petra Ponte was always ready for open discussions, both during the
implementation of international projects (ARTE and TRIO) and in the informal
discussions and correspondence. And this, in our opinion, is a characteristic of
a modern social scholar.
We believe that our collaboration has allowed us to gain a better
understanding of Russian educational practices. We hope that it was also
beneficial to the development of Dutch educational theory and practice.
References
Ponte, P., & Zwaal, P. C. (Eds.) (1997). Over grenzen. Een nieuwe manier van werken aan
leerlingbegeleiding in Nederland, Rusland, Amerika en Engeland [Crossing borders: A
different way of working in the field of pupil guidance in The Netherlands, Russia,
the USA and England] Apeldoorn: Garant.
Michailova, N., Yusfin, S., & Polyakov, S. (2002). Using action research in current conditions
of Russian Teacher Education. Educational Action Research Journal, 10(3), 423-449
Ponte, P. (2002). How teachers become action researchers and how teacher educators
become their facilitators. Educational Action Research Journal, 10(3), 399-423.
84
23 Epilogue: just education as an unending
project
Petra Ponte
In In the prelude to the professoriate – my inaugural lecture (Ponte, 2009) – I
tried to make clear that we wanted to address the question of how to do justice
to the uniqueness and potential of individual pupils through interaction and
communication processes in day-to-day educational practice. In my essay at
the beginning of this closing act (Chapter 1), I argued that it is not possible to
give answers to fundamental questions about just education which apply to
everyone at all times but that, for this reason, it is all the more important to
keep asking those questions. That demands the courage to adopt positions and
enter into critical debate at a time when, as Susan Neiman (2008) tells us, many
feel uncomfortable with these kind of questions. When they are asked, then
they are:
. . . subject to quotation marks — sometimes called scare quotes — that express
the speaker’s discomfort in the ultimate postmodern gesture, fingers wiggling
beside ears in a little dance that says: I can use it, but I don’t go so far as to mean it,
and it all matters so little anyway I can make myself look silly to boot. What matters is
putting distance between you and your beliefs. (p. 18)
Well then, the essays in this volume show that there is no lack of professionals
willing to adopt challenging positions and they therefore invite professional
criticism and debate about research and education. The essays offer a palette of
perspectives and positions but they are all inspired by the same commitment,
as Gadotti (1996) put it:
. . . a commitment to educate individuals as a point on the horizon but never a
finished process because education is really an unending process. . . . Education
is at the same time promise and project. (p. 7)
‘Promise and project’ – that expresses the hope that it can become more just,
without the certainty that we will ever achieve what we would like to achieve,
85
without even knowing exactly what just education looks like. Just education is
not a closed ideology and it will never be finished; it is an unending project. I
would like, in this epilogue, to confine myself to a couple of themes relating to
this project which I believe have emerged from the positions adopted. In doing
so I will refer to the essays in this volume.
Commitment with respect to content
First of all, just education requires commitment and knowledge with respect to
content from everyone who works in or for the education system. My answer
to Nijs Lagerweij's question at the end of his essay points in that direction:
people learn and change when they have an emotional commitment to content.
We need, as Ben Smit puts it following Susan Neiman (2008), ‘grown up
idealists’ who keep the critical engine running. Willingness to learn and
change goes hand-in-hand with criticism but only if that change represents not
only an economic, but above all an educational and pedagogische improvement,
as Leon Plomp observes. Stephen Kemmis argues that we need education:
that educates, that aims to do more than inform. We need to revive the idea of
education conducted as dialogue, not as monologue. We need to recognise that
in our times, as in times past, the institution of schooling may threaten the
possibility of education, and that we, too, have a role in remaking the institution
so it can nurture and protect a practice of education worthy of the name:
education for living well in a world worth living in.
Joining forces
This kind of commitment to content is not voluntary; it demands critical
reflection on the educational and pedagogische intentions and consequences of
our actions, our work and our praxis. That applies to administrators and
managers just as much as it does to professionals, to researchers just as much
as it does to teachers and other school staff. There are different fields of play,
according to Renny Beers, but stakeholders are all part of the same praxis. In
other words, just education can ultimately only be achieved if we join forces.
‘A Malone note for everyone’, Ton Notten would say. Kyla Wahlstrom refers to
the need for ‘shared leadership’ in this context. Carlos van Kan (‘The teacher's
contribution matters’) and Karin Rönnerman (‘Relying on teachers' decisions to
act for an education based on democratic values’) rightly plead for the
86
professional to be given more say. Dubravka Knezic denounces the current
competence-thinking, setting a more holistic concept against it: ‘The
competence of the teacher should not been seen as a goal, but rather as a
process . . . an inherently personal and professional process’.
Intellectual competence and historic awareness
Personal commitment is part of the picture, therefore, but a discussion about
just education is not a licence for what Van Stokkum (2011, p. 29) calls
‘emotional democracy’, where ‘autonomy becomes an ultimatum or an
argument stopper, where the silent assumption is that a decision is good
because it was taken subjectively, not because it is based on good arguments.’
Just education requires more than purely subjective judgments, intellectual
competencies are also necessary, according to Piet-Hein van de Ven. Historic
awareness (where do our ideas come from, how will we look back on today
and what does that tell us about the near future?) is an essential part of this.
Nico Verloop mentions in this connection misunderstandings in the debate
about ‘evidence-based practice’ due to a lack of historical understanding.
Critical reflection, imagination and broad orientation
Just education exists by the grace of multiple judgements (empirical and
moral) about multiple educational praxis, according to Jan Ax. This means that
we have to try to understand our reality from different perspectives and that
we have to use our imagination to think about how things could be different.
In this way, in the words of Luc Stevens, we can avoid becoming accustomed
to a reality that we do not want. International collaboration with colleagues
working in different social and political circumstances is an essential part of
this. This cooperation helps us not only to understand the social and political
context of others, but also our own, according to Semyon Yusfin and Nina
Michailova. The search for and familiarisation with alternative perspectives
applies not only to professionals in the field but also to researchers, regardless
of whether they agree with others or not. A broad orientation, in other words.
Gijs Verbeek pleads for a synergy between the Western external-objective
science traditions and internal-subjective science traditions based on Eastern
philosophies.
87
Guaranteeing quality in research as an ethical responsibility
Good arguments are more than just opinions. Good arguments have to be
based on knowledge and for that we need research. Good research, according
to Theo Wubbels, can help education to improve, which is not to say that the
research must produce knowledge that is ready for immediate use or
application. Research has to help us to understand the world we live in.
The ‘usefulness’ rhetoric, unfortunately, comes up in many discussions about
the research groups. This rhetoric can lead to research being interpreted and
implemented in a one-sided and often 'demand-led' way, ignoring more
fundamental questions about just education. A ‘you ask, we run it model’ can
prolong undesirable practices. That is why the research in our research group
was geared to developing knowledge in the form of verifiable descriptions and
interpretations of reality which can be reproduced, with the aim of making a
contribution to transparent, verifiable and publicly accessible knowledge about
and development of educational praxis. We sought a combination of what
Cochran Smith and Lytle (1993) call research from an insider's perspective
(research with and by teachers) and research from an outsider's perspective, that
is where the researchers study the practice of others from the outside.
Action and research
The tendency to narrow research down in an instrumental way also applies to
action research. This research strategy is often wrongly reduced to ‘a simple
reflection method’, a ‘handy method to solve problems’ or ‘an efficient way to
implement a programme’ but action research is about far more than that.
Action research is literally a combination of ‘action ’ and ‘research’ and rules
apply to both components, which should guarantee their quality. These rules
should ensure that justice is done to what is being studied and a proper
account of it is given. A discussion of action research based on experience, as
Mieke Lunenberg indicates, is very important to this. In the completely revised
edition of Onderwijs van eigen makelij [Education of our own making] (under
the new title Onderzoek en onderwijs van eigen makelij. Actieonderzoek met en door
leraren. [Research and education of our own making. Action research with and
by teachers] Ponte, 2012), I explain this as follows:
Reflection is an important part of action research but that does not mean that all
reflection is research. We can only speak of research if, at the very least, data are
88
systematically gathered and processed. Specific methodological rules apply to
this which should ensure that justice is done to the subject of study. Teachers-asresearchers use the data not only to make claims about themselves, but also
about others (pupils, colleagues, parents, etc.) and that must be done with care.
(p. 24)
The duty to realise a fundamental right
Commitment with respect to content, critical reflection, joining forces,
intellectual competence, historic awareness, imagination, a broad orientation,
guaranteeing quality as an ethical responsibility are, in fact, the prelude to
realising children's fundamental right to education. Jan Ax has argued that this
right is based on ‘substantial principles such as maximum individual freedom
and increasing human happiness and well-being in combination with the
requirement that one person's happiness may never be gained at the expense
of another. That is to safeguard individual integrity.' The child's right to
education was enshrined on 20 November 1989, when the General Assembly of
the United Nations ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. All
countries have ratified the Convention, except the USA (because the death
penalty for minors is prohibited) and Somalia (because that country had no
government to sign it). Since the ratification all countries have had a duty to
implement the Convention. The most important principles of the rights of the
child are (Unicef/Unesco, 2007, p. 8):
1. The principle of non-discrimination, in the sense that all of the rights
are applicable to all children without any form of discrimination
whatsoever, regardless of race, skin colour, sex, language, religion,
political or other convictions, national, ethnic or social origin, financial
resources, disability, birth or other circumstance of the child or of his or
her parents or legal guardians.
2. The principle that the best interests of the child must guide any
decision taken in connection with the education of children.
3. The principle that every child has the right to life, survival and
development to its maximum potential.
4. The principle that children have the right to express their views in all
matters affecting them and for their views to be given due weight in
accordance with their age and maturity.
89
At the World Conference in Jomtien, Thailand in 1990, a start was made with
the Education for All (EFA) movement. Representatives of 155 countries and
150 organisations agreed to achieve education for all by the year 2000. This
intention was recorded in the EFA Fast Track initiative and Unesco was given
the mandate to lead and coordinate this movement. In the text of ‘Education
for All: Meeting our collective commitments’, adopted by the World Education
Forum in Dakar (Senegal) in 2000, the aim of Education for All was reaffirmed:
We re-affirm the vision of the World Declaration on Education for All (Jomtien
1990), supported by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the
Convention on the Rights of the Child, that all children, young people and
adults have the human right to benefit from an education that will meet their
basic learning needs in the best and fullest sense of the term, an education that
includes learning to know, to do, to live together and to be. It is an education
geared to tapping each individual’s talents and potential, and developing
learners’ personalities, so that they can improve their lives and transform their
societies. (Unicef/Unesco, 2007, p. 8)
The right to education is therefore necessarily accompanied by the formal duty
to do justice to the uniqueness and potential of individual pupils. A
commitment to just education, which I spoke of earlier, should therefore be
taken for granted. A number of the essays in this volume cast doubt on this.
Hanne Touw, for instance, points to the intractable tendency to ignore
differences between pupils (‘On average the mediocre eel was the best. He
could do a little bit of everything’) and Kees van der Wolf points to the
persistence with which differences between pupils are labelled as ‘problems’
which are usually addressed by organisational rather than educationalpedagogische measures. Susan Groundwater-Smith (‘Young people as active
and imaginative agents’) and Ben Smit (‘Within the space of a few years there
should be no teacher education programme in the Netherlands without pupil
participation’) consider the subject of pupil participation in the shaping of their
learning world and their life world. Since 1989 that has been a fundamental
right that all states must observe. Despite this it is hardly considered in Dutch
research and educational practice.
90
Broad curriculum
Finally, several essays denounce the limited nature of the curricula in both
schools and training courses. The concept of Bildung is frequently mentioned.
Piet-Hein van de Ven emphasises the need to educate teachers in Jensen's
(1987) humane competencies, namely the historic, communicative, creative and
critical competencies. “That” he believes “is not likely to be profitable in an
economic sense but it will probably lead to the creation of gentle, kind people
who are ‘understanding’ in more than one sense: intellectuals with ideals, even
if these ideals do not gain them any concrete benefit.”
In conclusion
Many of the teachers, educationalists and researchers with whom I have had
the pleasure of working have been just that – ‘intellectuals with ideals’. The
members of the research team of the Professoriate in Behaviour and Research
in Educational Praxis are a shining example of that. It has been a privilege to
work with them. I have enjoyed every moment of my discussions with them
and learned so much, as I have from all the other people who have been
involved in our projects – people who are so diverse and yet so single-minded
in their pursuit of just education.
References
Cochran-Smith, M. & Lytle, S. L. (1993). Inside outside: Teacher research and knowledge. New
York: Teachers College Press.
Gadotti, M. (1996). Pedagogy of Praxis: A dialectical philosophy of education. New York: State
University of New York Press.
Jensen, J. F. (1987). Det tredje: Den postmoderne udfordring. København: Valby.
Neiman, S. (2008). Moral clarity: A guide for grown-up idealists (1st ed.). Orlando: Harcourt.
Ponte, P. (2009). Gedrag en onderzoek in de educatieve praxis: plaatsbepaling [lecture]. Utrecht:
Hogeschool Utrecht. (http://www.educatie.onderzoek.hu.nl/Data/Press/gedragen-onderzoek-in-de-educatieve-praxis, download d.d. 1 June 2012).
Ponte, P. (2012). Onderwijs en onderzoek van eigen makelij: Onderzoek met en door leraren. Den
Haag: Boom Lemma Uitgevers.
Unicef/Unesco (2007). A human rights-based approach to Education for All. New York/Paris:
United Nations.
Van Stokkum, B. (2011). Revitalisering van informeel gezag: Gezag en vrijheid verzoend.
Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte, 1(103), 21-35.
91
About the authors
Dr. J. Ax
Jan Ax taught educational sciences at the University of Amsterdam until
recently. He did research and published in the fields of educational policy and
school organisation. More recently he has published jointly with Petra Ponte
on research into and characteristics of the teaching profession as praxis. Since
his retirement he has been involved in the academic primary school teacher
training programme at the University of Amsterdam as an evaluator.
R. H. Beers
Leidinggeven aan Leren, Mook
Renny Beers is an independent consultant associated with Leidinggeven aan
Leren [Leadership for Learning], an education management consultancy. She was
involved in the ‘Pupils as co-researchers’ project of Petra Ponte's research
group as an external consultant.
Professor S. Groundwater-Smith
University of Sydney, Australia
Susan Groundwater-Smith is Honorary Professor of Education in the Faculty
of Education and Social Work at the University of Sydney. She is the convenor
of the Coalition of Knowledge Building Schools, a network in which all
institutions work together with a shared belief in providing young people with
an opportunity to be heard and for their ideas to be honoured. Susan has
published extensively about practitioner research and student voice.
C. A. van Kan
Centre for Expertise in VET (ECBO), Utrecht
Carlos van Kan is a researcher in education at ECBO and was a member of the
research team in Petra Ponte's research group. His PhD research project
addresses the question of what pedagogic meanings teachers give to their daily
interactions with their pupils in class. One area he is researching at ECBO is
the educational philosophies of teachers in the senior secondary vocational
sector. He is especially interested in the normative dimension of teachers'
professional practice.
93
Professor S. Kemmis
Charles Sturt University, Australia
Stephen Kemmis is Professor of Education at Charles Sturt University in
Wagga Wagga, Australia. He has published extensively about the theory and
practice of educational action research and, more recently, about practice theory.
Stephen is co-founder of the Pedagogy, Education and Praxis (PEP) Research
Program, a collaborative international research community that studies
educational praxis and praxis development throughout the teaching career.
Dr. D. Knezic
Utrecht University
Dubravka Knezic is an assistant professor and teacher educator at Utrecht
University. Her fields of interest are teacher-student interaction, the role of
language in learning and teacher learning.
Emeritus Professor N. A. J. Lagerweij
Nijs Lagerweij is Emeritus Professor in Educational Sciences. He worked in the
field of educational innovation at Utrecht University.
Dr. M. L. Lunenberg
VU University Amsterdam
Mieke Lunenberg is an associate professor at the VU University Amsterdam.
The focus of her research is on promoting the professional development of
teacher educators. Like Petra Ponte she believes that research by teachers and
teacher educators offers a fruitful opportunity for professional development
and knowledge construction.
N. Michailova, PhD
Russian Academy of Education, Moscow
Nina Michailova is a senior researcher at the Institute of Psychological and
Pedagogical Problems of Children of the Russian Academy of Education. Since
1990, she has collaborated with Petra Ponte in international research projects
TRIO and ARTE.
Professor A. L. T. Notten
Rotterdam University
Ton Notten's career as a specialist in adult education has alternated between
higher vocational education (HvA, HR) and university (UvA and the VU) since
1974. He is particularly interested in growing up in the city or urban education.
94
Since he retired he has continued working part-time as a senior lecturer:
teaching, doing his own research and supervising a number of PhD candidates.
L. Plomp MEd
Utrecht University of Applied Sciences
Leon Plomp teaches on the Master in Special Educational Needs course and is
a PhD candidate at the University of Gothenburg. He was a member of the
research team in Petra Ponte's research group, where he was involved in the
‘Pupils as co-researchers’ project. That project also provided the research
domain for his doctoral research. He is especially interested in how pupil and
teacher participation can be designed and implemented in an educational
context.
Professor P. Ponte
Utrecht University of Applied Sciences
Petra Ponte is professor at the Faculty of Education of Utrecht University of
Applied Sciences until 1 July 2012. She plans to continue her work as an
independent consultant and researcher. She will also remain an Honorary
Professor of Education at the Faculty of Education and Social Work of the
University of Sydney, Australia and Adjunct Professor at the RIPPLE Research
Centre at Charles Sturt University, also in Australia.
Professor K. Rönnerman
University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Karin Rönnerman is a professor at the Department of Education and Special
Education at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. She has co-authored an
international article with Petra Ponte about continental traditions. Karin and
Petra are both coordinators of the international network Pedagogy, Education &
Praxis (PEP).
B. H. J. Smit
Leiden University
Ben Smit is a consultant in educational research at ICLON, Leiden University
Graduate School of Teaching and was a member of the research team in
Petra Ponte's research group, where he led the ‘Pupils as co-researchers’
project. He is especially interested in action research (including participative
action research) by and with teachers and pupils in relation to teachers'
professional development.
95
Emeritus Professor L. M. Stevens
NIVOZ, Driebergen
Luc Stevens was Professor of Special Education at Utrecht University. He is
especially interested in the human condition in education as a condition for
school development and the pupil playing a new full role in this context. With
a number of kindred spirits, Luc founded the NIVOZ foundation (Netherlands
Institute for Educational Matters).
J. M. F. Touw
Utrecht University of Applied Sciences
Hanne Touw is an educationalist. She was a member of the research team in
Petra Ponte's research group. She works at the Seminarium voor Orthopedagogiek
(training academy for special education teaching which comes under the
Education Faculty of Utrecht University of Applied Sciences) on school
advisory services and school development. For her doctorate she is researching
teachers' thinking and their interactions with pupils who they consider to have
behavioural problems, supervised by Professor Theo Wubbels and Dr. Paulien
Meijer of Utrecht University.
Dr. P. H. M. van de Ven
Radboud University Nijmegen
Piet-Hein van de Ven worked in university teacher training for years as a
specialist in the teaching of Dutch language. His research centred around the
history and practice of language teaching from an international comparative
perspective. Since his retirement he has had a part-time position at ILS (teacher
education institute of Radboud University Nijmegen) supervising a number of
PhD programmes. He coaches teachers and pupils at a secondary school in
Nijmegen on a voluntary basis.
G. Verbeek BEd
Gijs Verbeek worked as a second level qualified biology teacher in secondary
education, mainly in vocational schools, and is currently writing up his thesis
for a Master in Instructional Design at Utrecht University. Gijs worked at
Utrecht University of Applied Sciences from 2008 to 2011. In his final year he
was working as a teacher educator and research assistant in Petra Ponte's
research group.
96
Professor N. Verloop
Leiden University
Nico Verloop is Professor of Educational Sciences at ICLON, Leiden University
Graduate School of Teaching, the teacher education institute of Leiden
University, where he was head of department until 2010. Since ICLON was
founded, he has participated in around 40 research projects, mostly in the field
of teachers' general or subject-specific practical knowledge.
K. L. Wahlstrom, PhD
University of Minnesota, USA
Kyla Wahlstrom is the Director of the Center for Applied Research and
Educational Improvement (CAREI), and a faculty member of the Department
of Educational Policy and Administration. She has been conducting research
on leadership in schools for 22 years. Her interest in that topic emerged from
the 19 years she spent prior to that as a regular and a special education teacher,
and as a school principal.
Professor K. van der Wolf
Anton de Kom University, Suriname
Kees van der Wolf held an endowed chair at the University of Amsterdam and
was a professor at Utrecht University of Applied Sciences. He is now a parttime professor at the Anton de Kom University of Suriname. He also works at
the Van der Wolf & Van Beukering educational consultancy as a researcher,
trainer and consultant.
Professor T. Wubbels
Utrecht University
Theo Wubbels is Vice-dean of the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences
and Professor of Educational Sciences at Utrecht University. He was Petra
Ponte's PhD supervisor. His research has been concerned with teachers,
teacher education and the learning environment.
S. Yusfin, PhD
Russian Academy of Education, Moscow
Semyon Yusfin is a senior researcher at the Institute of Psychological and
Pedagogical Problems of Children of the Russian Academy of Education. Since
1990, he has collaborated with Petra Ponte in international research projects
TRIO and ARTE.
97
Information and contact
Professoriate Behaviour and Research in Educational Praxis (until July 1,
2012)
Faculty of Education, Utrecht University of Applied Sciences (UUAS)
Information about the professoriate will remain available after July 1, 2012
through the UUAS website:
www.educatie.onderzoek.hu.nl/Data/Press/gedrag-en-onderzoek-in-de-educatieve-praxis
Research group - Contact information
Petra Ponte
[email protected]
Joke Alink
[email protected]
Carlos van Kan
[email protected]
Leon Plomp
[email protected]
Ben Smit
[email protected]
Hanne Touw
[email protected]
Gijs Verbeek
[email protected]
99