Laboratories for Educational Innovation: Honors Programs in the Netherlands

In Dutch universities, honors programs are a fast growing development. The first such programs started in 1993. Twenty years later a large number of programs are implemented at nearly all research universities and also at many universities of applied sciences in the Netherlands. Recent data have revealed significant diversity in the types and structures of honors programs, many of which have functioned as laboratories of educational innovation within university- wide curricula and had positive spin-off effects on the regular curriculum and also on the transfer of talented students from secondary into higher education. Especially in the last decade, these spin-offs have had a strong influence on educational policy in the Netherlands at the primary and secondary as well as university levels

Good practices in honors education with examples to follow

Honors education offers students challenging experiences and teachers a laboratory for educational innovation. Successful innovations can stimulate other teachers to experiment and improve their educational practice. This requires that innovations become known to other teachers. For this reason, a project on good practices in honors education has been started in The Netherlands, where good practices in honors education of universities were described and published on a website of the Dutch Honors Network. Until now, 19 good practices are described, 17 from The Netherlands and two from the United States. Nine are selected for this issue. In this introductory paper, the good practice project and research about good practices are described. Different views and principles about honors education are discussed. A series of keywords to bridge the different views and the principles with the nine good practices published in this issue are presented. An analysis of the collected data of the good practices is carried out, followed by conclusions, discussions, and reflections. It appears that six good practices already led to innovations elsewhere in curricula

Honours Programmes as Laboratories of Innovation: A Perspective from the Netherlands

Honors programs are a recent and fast growing development in Dutch universities. The first such programs started in 1993. Ten years later 25 programs have been launched at ten universities. Significant are the diversity in the type of programs, their length, and their positioning in the curriculum. In this study we describe the types of programs, the certificates involved, the procedures for selection of the students, and the factors that influence their functioning as experiments for educational innovations. We also present a typology of honors programs in The Netherlands and describe their spin-off effects in the regular programs. At least 16 of the 25 programs did indeed have the function of a living laboratory for educational innovations in the regular programs. We indicate key issues in understanding spin-off effects. Our main question whether honors programs have innovative capacities for the normal curriculum is answered positively. After proven success, many innovations of the honours programs are indeed implemented in the regular curriculum

From honors education to regular education: learning from the content of innovations

At the introduction of honors programs in Dutch higher education, stakeholders assumed that honors education could stimulate innovation in regular education. Whether this assumption holds was researched in the ‘Transfer of honors education to regular education’ project. This article focuses on the question of whether teachers’ experiences with honors education stimulated innovations in regular education and about structural characteristics in relation to the content, teaching formats, and pedagogics of the innovations. Interviews were conducted with teachers from four universities of applied sciences in the Netherlands. The results show that teachers in regular education found honors programs to provide them an opportunity to work with content, teaching formats, and pedagogics that they were unfamiliar with. Through these teachers, the honors approach inspired innovation in regular programs. Strikingly, these innovations contain to some degree all 14 structural characteristics of honors education distinguished in this study. The findings indicate the great innovative potential of honors education for regular education

Highflyers Development towards Professional Excellence : Education for Professional Excellence, synopsis of the book Hoogvliegers, naar professionele excellentie

In higher education in the Netherlands, many educational programmes have been developed in recent years for 'highflyers', students who wish to achieve more and are able to achieve more than regular programmes offer them. At the beginning of the 1990s, the universities of Utrecht and Leiden started so-called honours programmes and many other institutions for higher education followed suit with similar programmes. In the last decade, numerous honours programmes have emerged, each with its own character. Some programmes focus on the characteristics of excellent professionals within a professional domain. Since the latter are relatively new, their contents, structure and pedagogical approach are undergoing a rapid development. To stimulate this development, the experience of a number of universities of applied sciences and research universities with honours programmes with a specific focus on professional excellence have been combined in this book. By providing background information and the results of scientific research, we have tried to add more depth to thinking about honours education and to make the experience acquired accessible to a larger group of interested parties. A large group of teachers in honours education have been willing to to make a contribution to this book as authors. This has resulted in diverse examples with a wide variety of aspects of honours programmes which focus on the development of professional excellence

Different views on assuring the quality of honours programmes

Can we match formal procedures for quality assurance with the creativity and individuality that defines honours? In a session at the Utrecht Honours Conference 2016: Honours Futures we discussed experiences in quality assurance of honours programmes in the United States of America, the Netherlands and Belgium. To illustrate the possibilities, a case study of using an external audit for honours education and two case studies of the use of internal quality assurance tools in an honours programme were presented. It is concluded that a form of quality assurance is needed to continuously improve. So honours educators must at least care for internal quality control. Student involvement is stimulating for the engagement of all participants in the process of quality control. Internal quality control may result in an annual report. Annual reports can be used both internally and in external quality control

Highflyers Development towards Professional Excellence : Education for Professional Excellence, synopsis of the book Hoogvliegers, naar professionele excellentie

In higher education in the Netherlands, many educational programmes have been developed in recent years for 'highflyers', students who wish to achieve more and are able to achieve more than regular programmes offer them. At the beginning of the 1990s, the universities of Utrecht and Leiden started so-called honours programmes and many other institutions for higher education followed suit with similar programmes. In the last decade, numerous honours programmes have emerged, each with its own character. Some programmes focus on the characteristics of excellent professionals within a professional domain. Since the latter are relatively new, their contents, structure and pedagogical approach are undergoing a rapid development. To stimulate this development, the experience of a number of universities of applied sciences and research universities with honours programmes with a specific focus on professional excellence have been combined in this book. By providing background information and the results of scientific research, we have tried to add more depth to thinking about honours education and to make the experience acquired accessible to a larger group of interested parties. A large group of teachers in honours education have been willing to to make a contribution to this book as authors. This has resulted in diverse examples with a wide variety of aspects of honours programmes which focus on the development of professional excellence

Latent talent ontdekken en betrekken bij honoursonderwijs

Hoofdstuk 3 uit: Coppoolse, R., Van Eijl, P.J. & Pilot, A. (Red.) Hoogvliegers. Ontwikkeling naar professionele excellentie (pp 35-55). Rotterdam: University Press, Hogeschool van Rotterdam. (2013