Pedagogisch-didactisch handelen van docenten in het voortgezet onderwijs

Abstract

School leaders in Dutch secondary education feel themselves increasingly forced to initiate innovations, which often have consequences for teachers’ pedagogical behaviour. This dissertation reports on the design and main results of six studies concerning current and desired teachers’ pedagogical behaviour. In the first study an instrument was developed for measuring teachers’ pedagogical behaviour. The concepts “behaviour” and “pedagogical” were delineated and their internal structure was specified. Based on scientific literature, national policy documents, the educational visions of six schools, and input from teachers, teachers’ pedagogical behaviour could be classified into a number of task domains. Form this a questionaire was made, for both teachers and their students. Additionally in a second study a shorted version of this instrument was made and validated, resulting in 22 tasks (with 5 statements per task). Analyses showed that teachers’ pedagogical behaviour varies individually to a high extent, also within the schools, and is not related with personal characteristics such as gender, age and experience. A third study was conducted into one task domain, namely giving feedback to students. The teachers showed to dispose of a broad repertoire and their behaviour was highly appreciated by their students. Their beliefs and intentions largely corresponded with recommendations in the literature but comparing students’ performance with a standard got less attention. The fourth study was focussed on the task domain of assessing and marking students’ work and the question was how such assessments might be instructive for the students. Again teachers’ cognitions corresponded with the literature but in this case the teachers did not much involve their students in the assessment. The goal the fifth study was to map the similarities and differences between directions for desirable teacher behaviour from four sources: scientific literature, national policy documents, educational visions of four schools, and the beliefs and priorities of the different stakeholders at these schools. The visions showed to be not highly connected with scientific insights. The schools’ visions were combinations of diverse concepts and were not very integrated and focused. From experiences with discussing the results of these studies on the schools, literature about innovation processes in schools, and a sixth study within one school, three important conditions for change and innovation came to the forefront and were elaborated: having a clear vision on the desired development, leading the change process, and being able to interpret and use data feedback. Dominating are three conclusions. First, the pedagogical behaviour varied highly individually between teachers and was not clearly related to their gender, age and experience. Second, teachers’ cognitions and behaviour did not clearly differ between the participating more traditional and more innovative schools. Third, teachers made connections between tasks to a lesser extent than might be expected. For instance, for them feedback and assessment are different tasks and the summative aspect of the former (relating to standards) and the formative aspect of the latter (involving students) could not be observed often. This is not surprising because of the still less integrated character of the educational visions of the schools.