Enhancing Teaching and Learning in the Dutch Vocational Education System

This book discusses how the Dutch vocational education system has undergone significant waves of reform driven by global imperatives, national concerns and governmental policy goals. Like elsewhere, the impetuses for these reforms are directed to generating a more industry-responsive, locally-accountable and competence-based vocational education system. Each wave of reforms, however, has had particular emphases, and directed to achieve particular policy outcomes. Yet, they are more than mere versions of what had or is occurring elsewhere. They are shaped by specific national imperatives, sentiments and localised concerns. Consequently, whilst this book elaborate what constitutes the contemporary provision of vocational education in the Netherlands also addresses a broader concern of how vocational education systems become formed, manifested within nation states, and then are transformed through particular imperatives, institutional arrangement and localised factors. So, the readersof this book whilst learning much about the Dutch vocational education system will also come to identify and engage with a selection of contributions that inform factors that situate, shape and transform vocational education systems. Such a focus seems important given an era when there are concerns to standardise and make uniform educational provisions, often for administrative or political imperatives. As such, this book will be of interest not only to those who are engaged in the field of vocational education, but those with an interest in educational policy, practice and comparative studies.

Elly de Bruijn is chair of the Research Group Vocational Education at HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht and professor of Vocational Education in the Welten Institute of the Open University of the Netherlands

Stephen Billett is Professor of Adult and Vocational Education in the School of Education and Professional Studies, Griffith University, Brisbane, Queensland Australia

Jeroen Onstenk has the chair of Didactic and Pedagogic Activity in Education at Inholland University of Applied Sciences, School of Education, The Hague, The Netherlands

1. Vocational education in the Netherlands, Elly de Bruijn, Stephen Billett and Jeroen Onstenk.- Section A - Policies and organizations.- 2. Vocational and professional education and lifelong learning, Jeroen Onstenk and Ruud Duvekot.- 3. Transforming vocational education: encouraging innovation via public private partnerships, Marc van der Meer, Jan Peter Toren and Tammy Lie.- 4. Great expectations: VETs meaning for Dutch local industry, Anneke Westerhuis and Marc van der Meer.- 5. Improvement of educational quality in VET: Who is next? Louise van de Venne, Marlies Honingh and Marieke van Genugten.- 6. Professional development of teachers in vocational education, Marcel van der Klink and Jan Streumer.- Section B - Educational programmes: teaching and learning.- 7. A dialogue worth having: vocational competence, career identity and a learning environment for 21st century success at work, Frans Meijers, Marinka Kuijpers, Reinekke Lengelle and Annemie Winters.- 8. The role and nature ofknowledge in vocational programmes, Elly de Bruijn and Arthur Bakker.- 9. Designing competence-based vocational curricula at the school-work boundary, Renate Wesselink and Ilya Zitter.- 10. Pedagogic Strategies for Improving Students Engagement and Development, Truus Harms, Aimée Hoeve, and Peter den Boer.- 11. Work-based learning (WBL) in Dutch Vocational Education: connecting learning places, learning content and learning processes, Jeroen Onstenk.- 12. Assessment in Dutch vocational education: Overview and tensions of the past 15 years, Liesbeth Baartman and Judith Gulikers.- 13. The Dutch vocational education system: Institutional focus and transformations, Stephen Billett.