Teachers as brokers: adding a university-society perspective to higher education teacher competence profiles

Higher education institutions are increasingly engaged with society but contemporary higher education teacher competence profiles do not include university-society oriented responsibilities of teachers. Consequently, comprehensive insights in university-society collaborative performance of higher education teachers are not availab

Learning and teaching in the regional learning environment : enabling students and teachers to cross boundaries in multi-stakeholder practices

Finding solutions for complex societal problems requires cross-boundary collaboration between multiple stakeholders who represent various practices, disciplines and perspectives. The authentic, multi-stakeholder Regional Learning Environment (RLE) is expected to develop higher education students’ capabilities for working in multi-stakeholder settings. However, the effectiveness of the RLE, including its typical cross-boundary learning environment characteristics, has not been investigated. This thesis shows that the RLE develops students’ domain specific expertise and various generic competencies. The learning environment characteristics of working in multi-disciplinary student groups, working highly intensive with stakeholders, and a high coaching intensity strengthen competence development. Explicit workshop-based support of students’ boundary crossing working and learning stimulates the amount of student-stakeholder collaborative activities, and activates students’ boundary crossing learning. Teachers fulfil new out-of-school oriented roles and tasks in the RLE and should master new boundary crossing competencies. Existing higher education teacher profiles should be adapted to become out-of-school proof

Towards a Rubric for Stimulating and Evaluating Sustainable Learning

Preparing students for dealing with sustainability issues is a challenge in the field of education. This is a challenge because we don't know exactly what we are educating for, as there are no defined answers or outcomes to the issues; the future is unpredictable. Dealing with these issues requires crossing boundaries between people coming from different 'practices', e.g., disciplines, cultures, academia versus society, thereby making the learning and working process a challenging but critical learning experience in itself. We argue that education for sustainability should not primarily focus on student content knowledge or development of certain products or answers. It should focus on stimulating students to go through boundary-crossing learning processes critical for getting a grip on the unpredictable future. This allows students to learn to work with 'others' around the boundaries, and thereby to develop the ability to co-create new knowledge and work towards innovation or transformation for sustainable practice. Building on the boundary crossing theory and using mixed methods and interventions, this design-based study iteratively develops a boundary crossing rubric as an instrument to operationalise student learning in transdisciplinary projects into concrete student behaviour. This rubric in turn can explicate, stimulate and assess student learning and development in transdisciplinary sustainability projects.</p

Eindrapport Regionale Verankering: Sturing geven aan een duurzame relatie met de regio

De transities naar een regionaal kenniscentrum (RKC) zijn te kenmerken als lokale chaotische processen, die moeilijk te plannen zijn. Hoe kun je hier als bestuur grip op krijgen? Hoe kun je iets structureren wat in essentie veelvormig is (de toekomst voor (v)mbo–studenten), en hoe daarmee om te gaan in de dagelijkse onderwijspraktijk? Dit onderzoek geeft daar handvatten voor.