The agri-food education system, also referred to as the green education system, in the Netherlands is often praised for its role in the success of the agri-food sector. For this reason, for colleagues interested in innovation in agri-food education, Hendrik Kupper, Ramona Laurentzen and I wrote a piece called ‘Recent Policy Developments in Green Education in the Netherlands’. It is published in the Journal of Agricultural Education and Extension, Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 121-139. Enjoy. Download the paper from: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1389224X.2012.655966

Traditionally there is a lot of attention for the involvement of stakeholders in educational development, especially when it comes to vocational and professional education and training. At the European level, this principle is also observed. To what is extent were social partners in the agri-sector  involved in all kinds or educational issues. Read about that in Mulder, M. (2006). EU-level competence development projects in agri-food-environment: the involvement of sectoral social partners. Journal of European Industrial Training, 30, 2, 80-99.

Many publications in the field of competence-based education and training are conceptual of nature. There is little practical work which is based on empirical research. Therefore I wrote a piece with an applied nature which is based on the research we have been doing at ECS. The full reference to the article is: Martin Mulder (2012). Competence-based Education and Training. Journal of Agricultural Education and Extension, Vol. 18, No. 3, pp. 305-314, June 2012. Link to the article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1389224X.2012.670048 As editor of the JAEE I hope to see more of these evidence-based practical pieces. Potential authors are invited to submit such work to the journal (angela.pachuau@wur.nl).

The article of Ester Alake-Tuenter, Harm J.A. Biemans, Hilde Tobi, Arjen E.J. Wals, Ida Oosterheert & Martin Mulder (2012): Inquiry-Based Science Education Competencies of Primary School Teachers: A literature study and critical review of the American National Science Education Standards is published in the International Journal of Science Education, DOI:10.1080/09500693.2012.669076

Today I visited the former Indan Residential School in Kaloops, British Columbia, Canada. It is now being used by first nations for various purposes. This school, and other residential schools, for aboriginal children were a tragedy for the first nations culture. Children were taken from there families and put together in the residential schools were they had to assimilate in the Canadian (western christian) culture. Residential schools were created at the end of the 19th century and existed until the 1970s. Various first nations people are actively working on retaining their cultures and are negotiating terms for self-determination, land rights and natural resource ownership. It is a harsh struggle that cannot be missed when visiting beautiful British Columbia.

Dr Renate Wesselink of ECS presented the ProDo program (on Professional Development of Teachers in Green Education) at the Annual Convention of the AERA (American Educational Research Association) in Vancouver, Canada. The emphasis in the presentation was on demand articulation, which was done using a Group Decision Room. Representatives of the green knowledge system were invited to suggest research themes, and a set of pre-defined research themes was rated and discussed. A distinction was made between representatives of green education institutions and knowledge centers which offer consultancy to these institutions. Based on the qualitative and quantitative results priorities were set for the research programme, which is now being implemented.

On April 3, 9:00-10:00hrs Jifke Soll will present the results of a three year programme on Biodiversity. She will also elaborate the research methodology. Special attention will be given to the role of reflexive monitoring as a way of learning in transition experiments. The foundation ‘Echte Welvaart’ will present a special game they developed on the basis of the programme and the research. The presentation will be in Dutch. It will take place in the Leeuwenborch, Hollandseweg 1, Wageningen, room  V72.

On March 28 and 29 I discussed the concept of competence with Jonathan Winterton (in Toulouse) in the perspective of composing a book together with invited chapters. Jonathan shared his recent article ‘Competence in European Policy Instruments: A Moving Target for Developing a National Qualifications Framework?’ in the Journal of Contemporary Educational Studies (5/2011, p. 72ff.). That is an interesting piece of work that meticulously analyses the development of the concept of competence in the European VET and HE debates and instrument creation for raising opportunities for mobility and related qualification comparison. The article shows in an excellent way the many inconsistencies and unclarities in the way European policymakers have defined and used the concept of competence, making it thus practically impossible to say anything consistent over the last decade in the direction of practice. It is therefore not a miracle that EU member states  have difficulties in developing or matching their national qualification framework with the EQF which is meant to be the EU reference model for all national qualification frameworks in the EU. A lot of intelligence is needed to reach more convergence in the common understanding of the central concepts used in the European VET and HE policy development agenda.

Today a small group of representatives of HRM departments in vocational and professional colleges and staff of ECS have discusses various issues in HRM and professional development of teaching staff.  Competence and performance based management, results and development assessments, control and commitment models, regional learning roles and competencies of mid-career teaching staff, and team approaches in education and learning suppport were discussed in a lively manner. This was truly an interactive session, which took from 13:15-17:15hrs, which went by like a minute. I am sure ECS staff learned as much as our guests. The atmosphere was so positive that is has been decided to have a similar meeting again in the Fall of 2012. In that meeting the overall results of the ProDo-project (on professional development of teachers in green education) and the AOC-Council project ‘Proud of our teacher’ will be presented at large. This may well be a crowded meeting.

Just published: Popov, V., D. Brinkman, H.J.A. Biemans, M. Mulder, A. Kuznetsov, O. Noroozi (2012). Multicultural student group work in higher education. An explorative case study on challenges as perceived by students. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 36, p.p. 302– 317 .