Professor Emeritus Theo Wubbels, Author at EERA Blog

Educational research for the benefit of education and society – A Dutch perspective

by Professor Emeritus Theo Wubbels | VOR (Netherlands)

“Educational research fails to impact practice.”

“Teachers do not feel supported by educational research.”

These are examples of complaints or judgments on the relationship between educational research and educational practice, that can be heard again and again. In this blog, I want to share the activities that the funding organization for educational research in the Netherlands (NRO: The Netherlands Initiative for Education Research) uses to advance the support of research in practice. It is an example of the way EERA’s mission – Educational research for the benefit of education and society – can be concretized. NRO has a fixed yearly budget of about 15 M€ and considerable amounts of money (over 20M€) for specific purposes, e.g., research and innovation scholarships for teachers in higher education. A substantial amount is used to strengthen the relationship between research and practice.

The most obvious, but perhaps also least effective, practice regards the dissemination of research results from research funded by NRO. To foster dissemination, researchers are encouraged to work together with practitioners, such as teachers, teacher educators, school principals or policy makers during all stages of research. Communication advisors provide support in developing effective dissemination strategies, and help with writing, visualization, and so on. In addition, all kinds of conferences and meetings, where practitioners and researchers jointly participate, are organized. Awards are presented to researchers who significantly connected research and practice.

Another more provocative measure is the participation of practitioners in the assessment for funding of research proposals. Whereas peers evaluate the scientific merit of proposals, practitioners have a say regarding the societal relevance of a proposal.

NRO offers three much more solid and specific ways for supporting practice:

The Educational Knowledge website – which makes knowledge available to practitioners
The Knowledge Roundabout website – which provides answers to practitioners’ questions
The National Education Cohort Study (NCO).

The Educational Knowledge website

The ‘Educational Knowledge‘ website systematically makes knowledge about several topics available for practitioners. For every topic, information is presented in five categories

What is known from research?
What practical tools does research provide?
Examples for practice
Answers to questions from practice
Further information

I provide an example for “vocabulary”, one of the over 25 topics. The topic starts with some practical guidelines as follows:

A rich language learning environment in which a lot of reading is done is a requirement for developing a good vocabulary.

What is known about vocabulary?

Words are the basis of our language. Developing a good vocabulary is therefore important for functioning both at school and in society. Several things are important when increasing vocabulary through teaching:

Offer students a rich language learning environment in which students both read and are read to. In addition, have students talk and write about what they read.
Focus on both broad vocabulary (the number of words a student knows) and deep vocabulary (how well students know words).
When learning new words, pay attention not only to the meaning but also to the way you write and pronounce the word.
In teaching, focus on the words that appear in written texts. Students often learn words that occur in spoken language outside of school.

Where possible, use the dominant home language of multilingual students to increase Dutch vocabulary.

Then, under the tab “What is known from research,” a wealth of information is provided on themes such as:

Learning new words
Importance of a good vocabulary
Word knowledge in memory
Classification of words in the vocabulary
Vocabulary and multilingualism

The information is presented in reports, infographics, and so on.

An example of an answer to a question on the vocabulary topic is as follows:

What is the relationship between passive vocabulary and technical reading?

Technical reading skills and passive vocabulary, together with comprehension skills, are essential parts of learning to read. That relationship is reciprocal. Both the number of words a student knows and what they know about a word (form, meaning and use) contribute to learning to read words quickly and accurately. In addition, a student can learn new words through technical reading, and space is created in the student’s working memory for the meaning of words and text comprehension.

Some examples of other topics that are on the website are social-emotional development and wellbeing, professional development of teachers, learning in internships, student school careers, digital literacy, tests and evaluations.

The Knowledge Roundabout website

Named after the ubiquitous traffic cirlcle of the Netherlands, the ‘Knowledge Roundabout’ website kennisrotonde.nl takes the approach of the Educational Knowledge website a step further. Practitioners can ask a question for which the answers can be found in research. So far, nearly 800 such questions have been asked and answered over the last eight years. These answers are provided by researchers, and most are based on research that has already been undertaken. Occasionally, a question might prompt a research study. Two examples:

How can students take control of their own learning process, so that their learning performance increases?

There are strong indications that students can achieve better learning performance if they can take good control of their own learning process. To do this, they must consciously combine different learning strategies, such as relating, analyzing, structuring, orienting, planning and evaluating. Learning to use these strategies requires support from teachers, for example, by continually asking specific questions after modeling (demonstrating or showing).

What is the effect of classroom characteristics on the development of students in secondary education?

Classroom characteristics, such as temperature and light, influence the cognitive development of secondary school students. It seems that these students are less sensitive to certain environmental stimuli than students in primary education. High school classrooms are usually designed for specific subject areas. Students often change classrooms every lesson and therefore experience more variation in their physical learning environment. It is not known whether this is significant for their development.

For the first example, a five-page report with an executive summary provides more information on such issues as: What are important elements in controlling learning? How do you show students that these elements are important? The seven-page report on the second question covers environmental characteristics, such as temperature, color, light, sound, natural environment, air quality and decoration.

National Education Cohort Study

In the Netherlands, a wealth of data on student performance is collected. The National Education Cohort Study (NCO) coordinates this data collection and, more importantly, makes various statistical data available to schools and policy makers. First, the data collected in the context of the NCO is used to provide answers to various educational questions. For example, about the effects of homeschooling on students during the COVID-19 crisis. These answers are clearly published in various fact sheets. Second, the data collected by the NCO is processed into reports that provide schools in primary, secondary and special education with insight into their students’ performance. The purpose of the school reports is to support educational practice by providing input for the direction of educational policy.

We cannot say that all these activities solve the problem of the gap between research and practice, but these certainly help diminish this gap. One indication is that several hundred teachers and school principals attend the annual conference of NRO where practitioners and researchers discuss research results and ideas for research.

Key Messages

Dutch Strategies to Enhance Relevance of Educational Research

• Funding of collaboration between researchers and practitioners.
• Practitioners participate in evaluating research proposals to assess societal relevance.
• Awards and events recognize efforts to connect research and practical applications.
• The Educational Knowledge website organizes research findings into practical categories, such as tools, examples, and answers to common questions.
• The Knowledge Roundabout website allows educators to submit specific questions, providing research-based answers or occasionally prompting new research.

Emeritus Professor Theo Wubbels

Theo Wubbels is emeritus professor of Educational Sciences at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. His research interests developed in his career from the pedagogy of physics education, via problems and supervision of beginning teachers and teaching and learning in higher education to studies of learning environments and especially interpersonal relationships in education. During his career among others he was a physics teacher in a Montessori High school, and served as Director of Teacher Education, Dean of the Graduate School of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Admissions Dean and Vice-rector for Teaching and Learning of Utrecht University. He was treasurer (2009 – 2013) and president of the European Educational Research Association (2014 – 2018). He published over 200 international journal articles and edited several books in Dutch and English. He is fellow of the American Educational Research Association.

Twenty years of participating in EERA’s 30 years

by Professor Emeritus Theo Wubbels | 30 Years of EERA, VOR (Netherlands)

EERA is celebrating 30 years in 2024, and as part of our anniversary celebrations, we have invited people who have been at the heart of the association to share their memories and reflections. In a series of blog posts, which will run throughout 2024, we will share those precious memories, from the people who helped foster the global EERA community.

In this blog post, Professor Emeritus of Educational Sciences at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, and previous EERA president, Dr Theo Wubbels reflects on his involvement in EERA over the years, and where the organisation’s future lies.

Memories

Thinking about what to write in an EERA 30^thanniversary blog, many memories of interesting, sometimes enjoyable and sometimes tricky, events pop up.

Mediating between rival associations.
Watching the recording of a popular television soap and then inspecting the grounds where our conference would have to take place in ten months while it was now a meadow.
Negotiating a text on fugitives being locked out, or demonstrators being shot at, in the country that hosted ECER.
Collaborating with many European organizations in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) to ensure the status of SSH research within the EC.
Sitting in the office with the ever active and cheerful staff (executives come and executives go, but fortunately the office always remains).
Meeting fruitfully with EERA Council in a far-too-small room; and meeting fruitfully with the Network Convenors in a nice large room.
Opening and closing ceremonies and panel discussions with keynote speakers in ECER.
Assisting national associations in statu nascendi.
Representing EERA in WERA council.
And many more.

And all these memories are embedded in friendships all over Europe, from Kazakhstan to Ireland and from Helsinki to Cadiz.

My first five years

My involvement in EERA started before it was founded, with my participation in the first ECER held in 1992 at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, organized in conjunction with the national Dutch educational conference; and I was co-organizer of the Dutch conference. As a rather novice educational researcher, I felt it was a kind of requirement of the profession to participate in such a European conference. It soon became evident that for ECER to become a regular event, an association was needed. Happily, several national European organizations, including the Dutch educational research association, invested in creating a European association; EERA in 1994, followed by the second ECER in 1995 in Bath.

I visited the following ECERs and these were a boost for my understanding of educational research and networking. As long as this was possible, I was an individual member of EERA. Meanwhile I became a loyal visitor of EARLI conferences where topics were closer than in EERA to the social psychological perspective of my research. I also frequented the ISATT conferences, that were well-aligned with my work on teaching and teacher education. The annual conference of the American Educational Research Association helped cater for my network in the USA. In my opinion, the quality of all these events outperformed ECERs and I felt that some of the following ECERs were rather badly organized. Therefore, after five years of participation, in 1998 I promised myself never to go to ECER again.

How things can change!

My further 15 years

Despite this promise, ten years later I got involved in EERA again, when I became president of the Dutch educational research association in 2008. This made me an ex officio member of the EERA council, and so a second period of involvement in EERA started. I visited ECERs again, and with much more joy and interest than in the nineties. At that time there was a saying; “the EERA treasurer can be of any nationality as long as it is Dutch”, and thus I started my four-year term as EERA treasurer in 2009. After being a treasurer, I became president-elect and president, completing together almost 10 years of executive roles. During my presidency, my involvement in AERA and EARLI helped to smoothen the relationships with these associations but unfortunately still EARLI and EERA were living too far apart.

Being deeply involved in EERA’s governance and scholarly activities, EERA broadened my perspective again toward more sociological, philosophical and policy aspects of educational research. This helped tremendously in the work I was involved in for research evaluation committees in several countries. Broadening my network through EERA was also very fruitful for my publication record. I became involved in writing papers on EERA with other former and present EERA Executives. I also got the opportunity to contribute chapters in books edited by EERA colleagues, in which I represented the Netherlands with my Dutch colleagues, for example on educational innovation and policy issues.

In addition to the scholarly benefits of participating in EERA, making lifelong friends was an essential and satisfying outcome of my time in EERA. Enjoying the council and executive dinners, coping together with the cold in Vienna and Helsinki and enjoying the warmth of Cadiz, Istanbul and Porto. It all was an enormous pleasure.

What about the future?

There are not many nations missing in EERA, but there are a few to be won over. I cannot wish more than that all European nations have a national educational research association or participate in a regional association. All these associations then hopefully are gathered around the EERA tree. For the European-wide collaboration, it might be needed to further reduce the North-Western dominance in EERA, without losing the strong points the North-Western associations bring to EERA.

EARLI and EERA both have broadened their perspectives, although in EERA the educational psychological perspective is still a bit weak. The broadened perspectives have led to considerable overlap in the activities of the two associations and sometimes even to unfruitful competition. So, I would be very pleased if the two associations in the near future were not so separate from each other. I hope the associations will join forces to help improve the quality and the impact of European education research.