This study explores educators' reflections on professional childcare practice in different national contexts. The data were collected by showing video clips of classroom activities in Japanese, Dutch and German pre-schools to experienced German and Dutch pre-school teachers. The clips were used to elicit their opinions on playing and learning in…

Surveyed Dutch secondary teachers to investigate their professional orientations, assuming that professionalism was socially defined and thus constructed by all involved. Overall, teachers differed in their orientations and in combinations of their orientations toward instruction, educational goals, and role in the school organization. Teachers…

Virtual environments are able to extend the space of interaction beyond the classroom. In order to analyze how distributed cognition functions in such an extended space, we suggest focusing on the architecture of intersubjectivity. The Euroland project--a virtual land created and populated by seven classrooms supported by a team of…

The European Community's EUROPROF project seeks to improve the skills of vocational education and training professionals through collaborative research across regions and countries. The Netherlands and Germany have begun cross-border collaboration. (SK)

Examines Dutch teachers' views of their teaching responsibilities. Data from interviews with elementary and secondary teachers indicate that many teachers are fearful of moral issues that can arise in their classes, and they avoid situations in which they must settle disputes, handle inappropriate behavior, settle moral dilemmas, and judge what…

Several factors have been identified that influence a teachers' use of curriculum materials. This paper focuses on the development of materials as a key factor in this process. Clarification is given on how a sophisticated design of curriculum materials can improve curricular implementation processes and outcomes. An overview of the implementation…

The Dutch Association of Teacher Educators developed a standard for teacher educators. This article places the development in a wider context, discussing the role of teacher educators and five important starting points used in developing the standard. Dilemmas encountered during the development of the standard and plans for the future are noted.…

This article presents a new classification scheme for learning environments in secondary education, based on a review of recent literature on new learning and a review of existing classification schemes. This new classification scheme emphasizes new forms of learning and is organized around three main aspects of learning environments that may be…

Expressing the desire that geography should be a more challenging subject that helps pupils to become better learners, a group of academic geographers and geography teachers from northeast England developed teaching strategies to stimulate pupils to think through geography. Teachers in England and the Netherlands report that these strategies are…

The need for reorganization of the university and vocational school system is becoming more urgent as the demand for higher education increases. Article emphasizes greater flexibility in facilities, scheduling, and curriculum as a necessary basis for change. Suggestions of activities for establishing such a basis are presented. (RW)

Includes "Introduction" (Chitty, Lawn); "Curriculum in New Zealand" (Jesson); "Curriculum Knowledge" (Cornbleth); "Promised Land" (Lima, Afonso); "Defining and Re-defining the Teacher in the Swedish Comprehensive School" (Kallos, Nilsson); "What's Happening to Teachers' Work in…

Examined teaching behavior in Dutch secondary schools in the early phase of an innovation promoting self-directed learning. Observation data indicated that teachers did not spend much time teaching students how to learn. Activating features of teaching were more predominant than the mere transmission of knowledge, but process-oriented teaching…

In the Dutch Vocational Education and Training (VET) system, competence-based education is the leading paradigm for innovation, both at the system level and at the level of learning environments. This article provides an historical analysis of the development of competence-based education in various countries and explores the concept of competence…

Although self-regulated learning is considered as a characteristic of individual students, the question may be raised as to whether a community of learners with its emphasis on inquiry learning in teams of students provides an appropriate environment to acquire and develop active and dynamic self-regulation strategies. Two cases of communities of…

One of the goals of Project Onderbouw in the Netherlands is to develop an educational concept and curricula to be used in primary education. The educational concept adopted for the project is termed "developmental education." Based on neo-Vygotskian principles and other theoretical approaches, "developmental education"…