Across Europe, teacher education faces a double layer of complexity in preparing a new generation of teachers: programmes must deal with pressures within their own curricula and institutions (e.g., inclusion agendas, accountability demands, and limited curriculum time), while simultaneously preparing student teachers for the complex realities of contemporary classrooms, where classroom discipline and teacher well-being remain persistent concerns. International survey evidence shows that establishing a supportive and engaging learning environment continues to be a substantial demand for teachers and that classroom-management self-efficacy is systematically related to teachers’ stress experiences (OECD, 2025). Classroom management is therefore not a peripheral topic in initial teacher education: it is repeatedly reported as a core challenge for student teachers, particularly during workplace learning, yet it often receives limited and implicit curricular attention (Adams et al., 2020; Oldeboom, 2024). This emphasis is consistent with earlier international evidence that classroom discipline is among the most frequently reported problems of beginning teachers (Kwok, 2021).

In essence, classroom management can be viewed as a form of complex work. Rather than a set of isolated behaviours to control, classroom management involves coordinating an ecological and social system in which learning, relationships, norms, tasks, space, and time continuously interact, producing non-linear and sometimes emergent patterns (Cochran-Smith et al., 2014; Martin et al., 2019).

Importantly, the way classroom management is conceptualised in initial teacher education provides a foundational frame for how student teachers first encounter the field: it shapes what is made visible as “classroom management,” which elements are treated as central versus peripheral, and what kinds of problems student teachers learn to notice, name and act upon. In that sense, conceptualisations in teacher education do not merely describe classroom management; they also configure the learning opportunities through which student teachers develop early professional judgement, what counts as a relevant cue, what explanations are considered plausible, and which intervention repertoires are legitimised. When teacher education presents classroom management primarily as a linear toolbox of techniques, novices may be inclined to search for deterministic “if X, then Y” solutions; when it presents classroom management as complexity work, novices are more likely to develop adaptive sensemaking and responsive decision-making under uncertainty, capabilities that are essential for European classrooms characterised by diversity, competing demands, and rapidly shifting dynamics.

The main research question in this paper therefore asks: How is classroom management conceptualised across curriculum layers (intended, implemented, attained) in Dutch teacher education, and what could this imply for designing complexity-responsive teacher education for European classrooms? 

This paper builds on a multi-source curriculum study that examines how classroom management is conceptualised across curriculum layers—intended, implemented, and attained—in Dutch teacher education (secondary education). In the dissertation, this layering is grounded in Van den Akker’s curriculum representations, which allows the attained curriculum to be related to intended aims via the implemented curriculum. Phase 1 – Grounded Theory Approach (GTA) to develop an analytic definition To construct a robust analytic framework, the dissertation first developed an operational definition of classroom management using a Grounded Theory Approach (GTA), drawing on classic and constructivist grounded theory traditions (Glaser & Strauss; Charmaz). Three iterative GTA cycles were conducted—exploration, broadening, and deepening—using constant comparison, memoing, and a saturation logic to stabilise the conceptualisation. This resulted in an integrative concept of classroom management consisting of five interrelated characteristics: Rules, Organisation, Relationships, Content, and Physical factors (the five-feature model served as the analytical codebook for the empirical studies). Phase 2 – Empirical analyses across curriculum layers (interviews + written curricula) Using the five-feature definition as an analytic lens, the dissertation analysed multiple data sources aligned with the curriculum layers: • Attained curriculum: semi-structured interviews with student teachers (what they perceive they learned about classroom management). • Implemented curriculum: semi-structured interviews with workplace mentors and teacher educators (how classroom management is interpreted and enacted in practice). • Intended curriculum: analysis of publicly available study guides (as representative documents of the written intended curriculum) and programme literature/textbooks. Analysis strategy and quality procedures Data were analysed through a mixed-methods logic: (1) deductive qualitative coding using the five-feature coding scheme and (2) semantic network analysis with KBDeX (Matsuzaw et al., 2011) to examine how characteristics co-occur and which characteristics function as “centrality” connectors in participants’ conceptualisations. For document coding, reliability was strengthened through independent coding by multiple researchers and consensus-building procedures.

Drawing on a multi-source curriculum analysis across intended, implemented, and attained curriculum layers in Dutch teacher education, this study concludes that classroom management is widely recognised as important, yet it is typically conceptualised in a selective rather than integrative manner. Across data sources, relationships, content, and rules emerge as the most dominant and semantically connective features in how classroom management is described and learned, whereas organisation and physical factors are consistently less central. Moreover, there are limited indications that programmes systematically support student teachers in building an explicit understanding of the interdependence among these features, even though classroom practice requires teachers to coordinate them simultaneously. This matters because classroom management can be interpreted as complexity work: classroom dynamics are shaped by multiple interacting variables, shifting conditions, and non-linear effects, meaning that effective action depends on situated judgement rather than applying isolated techniques. The findings suggest that, in the Dutch context, there is reason to suspect that student teachers are not being prepared to become sufficiently complexity-responsive in their classroom management. Taken together, the findings raise a substantive question for the European teacher-education agenda: to what extent are teacher education programmes themselves sufficiently complexity-responsive in preparing novices for contemporary classrooms? Discussion & Implications For design implications and usability in teacher education, the dissertation also develops an experimental four-feature model by merging Rules and Organisation into Structure, resulting in FRIS: Physical factors (in Dutch: Fysieke Factoren), Relationships (in Dutch: Relatie), Content (in Dutch: Inhoud), and Structure (in Dutch Structuur). The FRIS-model uses the Dutch acronym FRIS — literally meaning “fresh” — to highlight the four interrelated dimensions of teaching. In English publications, the acronym is retained to preserve both its conceptual coherence and its metaphorical connotation of freshness and balance in teaching design. Make your lessons FRIS!

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