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On 12 October 2020, the Minister of Education, Culture and Science, together with the Association of Universities of Applied Sciences (Vereniging Hogescholen) and the Universities of the Netherlands (Universiteiten van Nederland), signed the Governance Agreement for the Flexibilization of Teacher Training Programmes. This agreement aims to tailor education for teachers more to their prior knowledge and experiences and to the professional practice. The focus is on actions for the target group of career changers, who benefit greatly from personalized education that takes into account their previous knowledge and competencies. Additionally, this group is relatively quickly available for the job market, with the underlying assumption that investing in career changers is a swift and effective measure in addressing the teacher shortage.
The Governance Agreement includes three 'categories' of ambitions: joint ambitions of the Association of Universities of Applied Sciences and the Universities of the Netherlands, ambitions for the higher professional education teacher training programmes and ambitions for the academic education teacher training programmes. The Association of Universities of Applied Sciences and the Universities of the Netherlands have chosen different approaches. The Association of Universities of Applied Sciences focuses on expanding the use of Learning Outcomes to all higher professional education teacher training programmes. The Universities of the Netherlands have opted for an approach with multiple projects involving various coalitions of academic teacher training programmes. The Governance Agreement comprises 10 different lines of action aiming towards 35 (fairly concrete) intended results.
The Ministry of Education, Culture and Science has commissioned Dialogic and Oberon to conduct an evaluative study on the Governance Agreement. This research will qualitatively examine the process and the (perceived) effects of the Governance Agreement. Additionally, the study will explore potential quantitative indicators to measure the impact of the Governance Agreement. The research will involve desk research, explorative interviews with umbrella organizations (n=10), in-depth interviews with teacher training programmes (n=50), and case studies of teacher training programmes involving teachers, students and representatives of internships and employers (n=4).
The research will result in two reports. An interim report will be completed by the end of 2022. The final report will be delivered by the beginning of 2024.
