Course Objectives

• describe and analyse the goals and philosophies of (a part of) the Dutch national system for secondary education and use generic criteria to compare this with the educational system of the country visited.
• describe the cultural norms and values of a foreign context and explain why the foreign educational system reflects  these values.
• relate theoretical concepts to practice
• independently carry out a small scale qualitative research on one or more educational aspects
• reflect on differences between two educational systems and one or more educational aspects and indicate the relevance of the findings for his/her own teaching practice

Contents

In this course you will start with studying some general literature on comparing educational systems and the Dutch National curriculum and that of the country you will visit during this course. Based on this first exploration of educational systems, you will choose a topic that you would like to focus on and submit a research proposal for a small scale comparative study. You can either choose a topic yourself or use one of the dossiers specifically designed for this course. A dossier is a pre-structured proposal about a topic which includes possible research questions, relevant Literature and instruments for data collection. At the moment three dossiers –focusing on comparing the foreign and Dutch systems - are available: ‘Classroom interaction’, ‘Multi-cultural teaching’, and ‘Pedagogical Climate at school’. More dossiers may follow.
 
After your proposal has been approved, you will visit a country abroad where you will collect data by means of classroom observations at one or more schools and interviews with members of staff of a school and/or teacher trainers. You will organise and finance the trip yourself. At present, the Graduate School of Teaching has contacts in Konstanz (Germany), Thurgau (Switzerland) and Singapore. Our partner institutes abroad will help you in making contacts with the schools and other people you would like to interview.  Other contacts are being explored. The stay abroad is expected to last between three days and max two weeks. You are free to choose dates for you visit and align these with the receiving institution. Please note that the receiving institution needs to be informed about your visit at least 6 weeks prior to your visit and that certain dates are more convenient than other dates (schoolholidays, study periods at the university, etc. Please contact course coordinator for details.
After your stay abroad you write a short report about your experiences. As there are no classes and no time slots for this course, you will use online materials and formats, and during the course there will be two individual tutorials with the instructor of the course. One to discuss your tentative plans and a second one to discuss your research proposal. You will be assessed on your paper on comparing educational studies and the final report of your findings.