PROFF – Professionalisation of VET teachers for the future - Europa

with different skills and organisational roles and different work backgrounds made it possiblefor them to make continuous comparisons on various subjects and thus develop a networkbasedculture.8. Dual trajecten bve, the NetherlandsIn 1997, the teacher training college of Fontys teacher training institutes was approached byseveral institutes for vocational training and adult education (ROCs) with a request tocooperate with them in setting up a teacher education programme. During the firstdevelopment phase, three problem areas arose.The first was the collective labour agreements in VET and adult education which allow forfunction differentiation. In these agreements teacher training colleges with ‘traditional’teacher education are not sufficiently considered. They educate their students as second-gradeteachers and there are no possibilities to anticipate the new functions mentioned in thecollective ROC labour agreement.Further, ROCs fear a large exodus of their teaching staff in the coming 10 years, mainly due toretirement. Finally, it was felt that educational innovation would be encouraged if ROCsstarted educating whole groups of teachers and trainers together.The programme has a dual approach; it is not only about teacher training, but about a systemof training for different jobs for the differentiated job profiles at ROCs, i.e. educationalassistants, trainers, coaches and teachers. Educational assistants, trainers, coaches and teachersall coach, train or teach students on different levels and with different tasks. For instance aneducational assistant works in an open learning centre, a trainer in practical instruction, acoach in learning at the workplace and a teacher in theoretical instruction. However, theirtheoretical background and experience from the world of work is mostly different.The 13 different ROCs and a teacher training college cooperated in developing andimplementing the programme and the evaluations. The ROCs as well as the teacher trainingcollege are both responsible for the quality and organisation of the dual course.The ideology underlying the programme, its content and methodology are innovative. It is adual route for educational staff with emphasis on learning at the workplace, i.e. integratingworking and learning. It is competence-based instead of curriculum-orientated and itemphasises learning-by-doing. Teachers can develop their competences in a dual way oflearning, coached by the coach from the institute for teacher training as well as by the coach inthe workplace at the ROC. For every level (educational assistant, trainer, coach, and teacher)sets of competences were developed:54