Education for the Future: Innovative Gazes across the Borders – An International Cooperation Programme for Education Professionals: Holland, Switzerland and Liechtenstein

Author(s):

Frank Brückel(presenting / submitting)Rachel Guerra(presenting)Enikö Zala Marco Snoek Bert van Veldhuizen

Conference:

ECER 2013

Network:

22. Research in Higher Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

22 SES 13 A, Teaching, Learning and Assessment in Higher Education

Paper Session

Time:

2013-09-13

11:00-12:30

Room:

STD-301

Chair:

Jani Petri Ursin

Contribution

In the last few years transnational interest in school improvement has greatly increased. Professionals involved in everyday school affairs – principals and teachers – make more use to participate in the EU exchange and education development programmes. Many of the programmes have seemed highly successful, however, it is unclear whether they actually had significant effects on actual everyday schooling. They often are not designed based on latest findings nor thoroughly evaluated for effectiveness.

For this reason, the Zurich University of Teacher Education, the Hogeschool van Amsterdam and the Department of Education of the Principality of Liechtenstein designed a Certificate of Advanced Studies programme (CAS-Programme) accompanied by research. It offers a unique collaboration of Dutch, Swiss and Liechtenstein teachers and educational specialists (Brückel & Schildknecht 2011) and a research based evaluation.

In designing the qualification programme, we used effective training elements (Lipowsky 2010) and chose a specific focus: understanding the relationship between changes and challenges in society and education. We chose to focus on trends in education in an international dimension and on local solutions to these challenges.

The programme combines content, setting (exchange between participants), practice transfer, and expert feedback in a format that is most beneficial to provide participants with a deeper understanding of school systems and educational change. Besides understanding the different school systems, participants are able to recognize specific needs for school developments in their own school. Gaining the know-how to successfully introduce and manage a transfer process (Jäger, 2004) is also part of the CAS-Programme. Finally, a further innovation of this programme is the elaborated evaluation as described below.

The whole programme will be conducted and evaluated by researchers of the Zurich University of Teacher Education. The aim of the evaluation is to gain information about «successful transfer» (Lipowsky, 2010). For that, the evaluation examines two main questions:

Does the programme meet the aims? Do the participants find the combination of content, setting (exchange between participants), practice transfer, and expert feedback helpful?
Do the participants succeed in implementing a small-sized change projects in their local schools?

Method

To answer these questions we defined different phases of data collection: before the start of the programme each participant was interviewed about his/her expectations. During and after the end of the programme our interest was to find out which contents of the programme were considered most important by the participants. For this we asked the participants to write individual and open reflections after each module. In a later period of the programme, when the participants already had planned their change process in their local school, we evaluated the success of this process. This data gives us some insights into the change processes occurring in schools. One year after the programme the participants will be interviewed again in order for us to gain more knowledge about their subjective assessment of the usefulness of content and setting. The data is analysed qualitatively (open coding according to Strauss & Corbin, 1996). The data gives feedback about the participants` perception of how useful they find the combination of content and setting. Furthermore we hope to have some more information about how successful the programme can support the participants as change agents in their schools.

Expected Outcomes

Some elements of the programme were presented at the last year`s conference in Cadiz. This year however, the paper focuses on the first findings which show the design of the programme is highly stimulating. Especially the lecture of the ‘future trends’ (OECD 2010) and the school visits were rated as highly relevant by the participants. Some organisational issues arose due to the international setting (arranging study leave from regular teaching tasks in their schools for the joint meetings as well as some language barriers). The next realization of the programme will consider these issues.

References

Brückel, F. & Schildknecht, J. (2011). Education for the future: an International Cooperation Programme for Education Professionals. In Phillippe Masson, Kathrin Otrel-Cass & Vivienne Baumfeld, Miranda Pilo (ed.), (Re)thinking Partnership in Education. Lille: TheBookEdition, S. 19 - 29 Jäger, M. (2004): Transfer in Schulentwicklungsprojekten. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften Lipowsky, F. (2010). Lernen im Beruf – Empirische Befunde zur Wirksamkeit von Lehrerfort-bildung. In F. Müller, A. Eichenberger, M. Lüders & J. Mayr, Lehrerinnen und Lehrer lernen. Konzepte und Befunde zur Lehrerfortbildung. Münster: Waxmann, S. 51 – 70 Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) (2010). Trends Shaping Education. Paris: OECD Publications Strauss, A. L., & Corbin, J. M. (1996). Grounded theory : Grundlagen qualitativer Sozialforschung. Weinheim: Beltz Psychologie Verlags

Author Information

Frank Brückel (presenting / submitting)

Zurich University of Teacher Education

Department of Continuing Professional Development and

Zürich

Rachel Guerra (presenting)

Schulamt des Fürstentum Liechtenstein, Principality of Liechtenstein

Enikö Zala

Zurich University of Teacher Education, Switzerland

Marco Snoek

Hogeschool van Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Bert van Veldhuizen