The State of Educational Research in the Netherlands

Theo Wubbels
President Netherlands Educational Research Association (Vereniging voor Onderwijs Research, VOR)
Spring 2011

Educational research in the Netherlands is conducted in many different institutions, in fact one could say it is scattered over too many. About 20% is financed directly by the universities and only 5% by the Netherland Organisation for Scientific Research. These funds are used by universities for conducting primarily fundamental research. This leaves 75% of the funds for educational research coming directly or indirectly (e.g. via schools) from the Ministry of Education. These last funds mostly are used for applied research by institutions for teacher education, for educational development and consultancy, and for higher education, and by schools, private companies, etc.

There is a continued debate about the usefulness of educational research for practice especially, although not exclusively, for the fundamental research. On the other hand frequently complaints about the control of quality of research are heard among others because of a lack of transparency in criteria for funding applied research by the Ministry. Recently a committee installed by the Minister of Education and Sciences has evaluated this state of affairs and concluded that educational research is under threat because of the diminishing numbers of students in educational sciences, insufficient interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary work in educational research and lack of coherence and continuity in the content and funding of educational research. The committee further asserted that in educational research insights from cognitive and neuroscience are not used sufficiently. Finally they concluded that knowledge developed in educational research doesn’t reach practice despite the existence of special institutions with the task to help disseminate results of educational research to schools and policy makers. This gap between educational research and practice is not only a result of lack of good dissemination activities but also of the pressure on university staff to publish internationally and of insufficient knowledge in practice to articulate good research questions and use insights available from research.

The Minister of Education has accepted not only the conclusions of the committee about the state of affairs of educational research and the gap between research and practice, but also has adopted the plan of action the committee proposed based on a paper produced by among others the Netherlands Educational Research Association (VOR). The plan of action includes among others to establish an organisation that will allocate and monitor all funds for educational research mainly on the basis of criteria employed in open competition for research funds. This organisation will be governed together by practitioners and researchers and will be responsible for both educational research activities and all actions needed to get a good chain from research to practice and vice versa. Two persons have started in June 2011 to build this organisation. Other activities to be started are the development of nationwide and university specific policy plans for educational research and plans for professional development of teachers in order for them to become better able to conduct and use educational research and to articulate researchable questions.