On May 5th, I will be a guest during the International Seminar on Competence-based Education and the Skills Revolution, organized under the auspices of the Università degli studi Roma Tre, the Ministero dell’ Istruzione dell’ Università e Ricerca, and the Università Ca’Foscari Venezia. I have the privilige to give an intervention about the book Competence-based Vocational and Professional Education (Springer, 2017). There is a good number of esteemed speakers with whom I look forward to interact. See the programme flyer for more details here: Loc_5_Maggio_2017

 

Schools have been – and in many cases still are – systems in which tasks are distributed to individual teachers. HR management in education was therefore primarily focused on individual teacher performance. However, the responsibility for education is more and more a team effort. Think of accreditation of educational programs: in that case whole program teams are involved. Or think of educational innovation, which also necessitates team work ever more, as teachers need to collectively work on those innovations to get them aligned. HR-policies and practices are therefore gradually being redirected to promote teamwork. Large scale research of Machiel Bouwmans et al (N =70 teacher teams and 704 team members), showed positive relationships between team-oriented HR practices (such as recruitment, team development, team evaluation and teamwork facilitation) and team performance indicators innovation and (partly) team efficiency. The relationships between these HR practices and team performance were often partly or even fully mediated by affective team commitment and information processing. These are important findings for HR and innovation professionals in education and teacher teams themselves. Continue reading Machiel Bouwmans et al show positive relationships between team-oriented HR practices and team performance indicators.

In educational practice, much design is going on, such as for lesson plans, lesson series, courses or complete educational programs. Much of this design is based on personal experience or political agreement. This approach does not always pay off, as it lacks a solid foundation in tested design principles. A scientific foundation is needed.

Continue reading Research of Petra Cremers et al published on designing hybrid learning configurations