During the last week two members of my chair group have been working on a project pre-proposal on human capital development in organisations. While working with them on this proposal, I had to think back of my research on corporate training in the 1980s and 1990s. One of my studies was for the private training industry, who was interested in the results of tailor-made in-company training projects. We made a standardized questionnaire to enable large-scale surveys on this issue. We were able to analyze the results with a Lisrel-analysis, and could show relationships between the preparation of training projects, the implementation of them and the results at various levels. We distinguished training projects which were aimed at establishing 1. learning results; 2. job performance results; 3. organisational results. The Lisrel model we developed was adequate for training projects which were aimed at establishing learning results and job performance results. For training projects which were aimed at establishing organisational results the model was not appropriate. Thinking about further programming of our future research, I would be pleased if we can find an excellent quantitative researcher who is interested in doing a follow-up project in the field of the effectiveness of corporate training. Download the article here: 2001 Mulder – Customer Satisfaction with training programs – JEIT

This week I borrowed a book of Jonathan Winterton edited by John Raven and John Stephenson, called ‘Competence in the Learning Society’, published in 2001 by Lang, in the ‘Studies in the Postmodern Theory of Education’, with contributions of George O. Klemp, Donald Schön, Richard E. Boyatzis, and David C. McClelland and many others. The book comprises 28 chapters. As far as I can see, there are 76 citations to the book in Publish or Perish. The conclusion at the end of the book may be a bit simple. It blames universities, university management, polititians and public servants for not having established a competent society. One may agree with this, but in my opinion and experience the ‘technology’ of competence modelling and measurement is by no means easy.

New publication (in press):

Mulder, M. and D.K. Kintu (2013). Curriculum Development in the Floriculture Sector in Uganda: a Design-Based Validation-Research Study. In: T. Plomp and N. Nieveen (Eds.). Educational Design Research: Introduction and Illustrative Cases. Enschede: Netherlands Institute for Curriculum Development.

Continue reading Validation of Principles for Alignment of a Curriculum and Labour Market Needs

Dr Omid Noroozi has won the ‘Most Promising Publication Award 2012’ of the Wageningen Graduate School of Social Sciences (WASS) for the article Noroozi, O., Weinberger, A., Biemans, H.J.A., Mulder, M., & Chizari, M. (2012). Argumentation-based computer supported collaborative learning (ABCSCL). A systematic review and synthesis of fifteen years of research. Educational Research Review, 7(2), 79-106. This publication can be found at:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1747938X11000522
Congratulations to Omid and other co-authors!
Other publications of Omid Noroozi Continue reading Omid Noroozi wins Most Promising Publication Award of WASS

The article of Ester Alake-Tuenter, Harm J.A. Biemans, Hilde Tobi and Martin Mulder, titled ‘Inquiry-based Science Teaching Competence of Primary School Teachers: A Delphi Study’, is now published online by the journal Teaching and Teacher Education. Full bibliographic details: Teaching and Teacher Education  (2013), pp. 13-24 DOI information: 10.1016/j.tate.2013.04.013.

Agricultural cooperatives in the Netherlands are not very active in supporting the competence development of members. That is one of the conclusions of the paper Dorine Orbons and I wrote on the basis of a small-scale and explorative study of representatives of cooperatives. Members may also not expect that or even would want the cooperative to stay away of that. On the other hand, cooperatives are very active in supporting the competence development of their elected board members. The support of competence development of employees of cooperatives seems not to be different from that within non-cooperative companies. Read more about this research in the AERA-paper which can be downloaded from this site (see Downloads button).

Dear website visitor. I have been a bit slow with uploading papers of the years 2011, 2012 and 2013. I have added a series of papers, many of which have made it to book or journal publications. If you are going to download and use the papers, please keep in mind that the versions in the books and journals count as the final publication. So for exact quotations, consult the final publication. Thanks.