This article describes the complex nature of collaborative relationships, the difficulties of conducting research with others, and the complications of partnerships in educational research. To create and sustain a communicative space in which participants can collaborate to innovate education and curriculum, time and opportunity to develop trust…

The network society has a major impact on knowledge systems, and in agricultural and rural development. It has changed relationships between actors such as farmers, extension workers, researchers, policy-makers, businessmen and consumers. These changes require different language, concepts and tools compared to the time that it was thought that…

Background/Context: Similar to the United States, government efforts to improve education in the Netherlands are focused on innovation and the development of collaborative structures to support the generation of new knowledge. However, empirical evidence of the relationship between social linkages and innovation in education is scarce. Objective:…

As cities across the country and globe continue to generate new solutions to a wide variety of vexing problems, sharing information about what works and what doesn't has become more important than ever. Yet, outside of a few prominent policies, the vast majority of successful municipal experiments never reach a national audience or, for that…

This study aimed to gain more insight into the way in which teachers' ideological identity and their perceptions of educational innovations come together and result in choices with regard to the arrangement of learning environments. Interviews held with six Dutch upper secondary school teachers from reformational schools illustrate that teachers…

The active participation of teachers in designing classroom learning experiences contributes to teacher abilities to facilitate learning. This paper reports on a case study of one Dutch teacher designing a technology-rich learning environment for emergent literacy. Data was collected to explore the design and implementation of the learning…

This article describes and reflects our experiences as researchers in a design-based research project on a curriculum innovation focused on meaningful, co-operative learning in vocational education in the Netherlands. The project was successful in gaining insights in possible practices for workplace learning but did only partly realize the…

Turkish as spoken in the Netherlands (NL-Turkish) sounds "different" (unconventional) to Turkish speakers in Turkey (TR-Turkish). We claim that this is due to structural contact-induced change that is, however, located within specific lexically complex units copied from Dutch. This article investigates structural change in NL-Turkish…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to evaluate and analyse the didactic model of a university course, which concerns an applied academic consultancy project and which focuses on skills related to crossing boundaries between disciplines and cultures, and between theory and practice. These boundary crossing skills are needed to develop…

Throughout the world, educational policy makers, practitioners, and scholars have acknowledged the importance of principal leadership in the generation and implementation of innovations. In many studies, transformational leadership has emerged as a promising approach in response to increasing demands to develop and implement innovations in…

The role of farming previously dedicated mainly to food production changed with an increasing recognition of the multifunctionality of agriculture and rural areas. It seems obvious to expect that farmers and rural actors adapt themselves to these new conditions, which are innovative and redefine their job. In many regions farmers can increase…

The aim of this study is to understand the design of professional development programmes in teacher-based and context-based chemistry curriculum innovations. Firstly, the goals of these programmes are discussed and related to the concept of empowerment. Next, in a selection of empirical studies, four general strategies for professional development…

Most university-level engineering studies produce technically skilled engineers. However, typically students face several difficulties when working in multidisciplinary teams when they initiate their industrial careers. In a globalised world, it becomes increasingly important that engineers are capable of collaborating across disciplinary…

In the context of educational innovation, it is important to investigate how in-service teachers learn and adapt their knowledge to changing professional circumstances. The authors investigated the informal learning of a small number of experienced science teachers in their first few years of teaching a new science syllabus in secondary education…

In November, 2009 The Consortium of School Networking (CoSN) led a United States (US) "Senior Delegation" to the Netherlands and Scotland as part of its ongoing efforts to facilitate a global conversation on the use of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) in education. Building upon the experiences of three previous…