Texte de A. Holla et B. Van Oers. Pays : Pays-Bas. Thème : Egalité des chances. Texte intégral Descripteurs :

1. Historical background	2. Innovative approach
3. Appropriating a developmental teaching strategy	4. " De Mijlpaal ", a school-based innovation for developmental teaching
5. Outcomes of this case-study

                                                               

1. Historical background :

The innovation of the Dutch educational system since the late sixties is strongly dominated by the objective of maximizing developmental potentials and providing equal chances to all pupils, regardless their cultural, ethnic or economic background. In order to achieve this goal, several point of view were taken into consideration. One of them resulted in a generaly accepted and long lasting effort to improve the quality education as a basic system for the struggle against inequality. Since the last five years emphasis is especialy put on the improvement of preschool education and on the early grades of primary education (grades 4-8).

2. Innovative approach :

One of the attempts at innovating primary school in the Netherlands is based on a Vygotskian approach to learning and development. This approach holds that children’s development can be deliberately promoted towards culturally valuable goals by getting the children involved in sociocultural activities, and helping them within these activities in a meaningful way to expand their repertory of actions, motives and interests. A basic tenet of this approach is that children’s development depends on interactions with adults and more capable peers. Moreover, it is assumed that promoted learning activities should be developmentaly adequate, i. e it should be compatible with the child’s appropriate style of acting in a certain stage of development. Following Vygotsky and his colleagues, these developmental periods are called " leading activities ". The leading activity for children in the assumed to be play activity.

This Vygotskian approach to education is now generally called developmental education (" Ontwikkelingsgericht onderwijs ", in Dutch). Within this perspective, a play-based curriculum strategy is developed during the last 10 years by a Dutch innovation istitute (The Non-denominatieal Educational Advisory Centre/APS, in Ultrecht), in cooperation with several other institutes (Teacher Training, University) in the Netherlands. This curriculum strategy (called " Basinsontwikkeling ") is one of the main approaches now in use for the innovation in many Dutch primary schools.

3. Appropriating a developmental teaching strategy :

One of the starting points of this innovative approach to primary school practice, is that the teachers should be assisted to improve their way of teaching. This approach does not provide a ready-made curriculum, that the teachers have to carry lesson-by-lesson basis. Instead, the approach tries to improve the teachers’ interactive abilities: teachers should appropriate abilities and attitudes to set up and elaborate attractive and developmentally productive sociocultural activities for pupils taking into account each pupil’s capabilities and interests. They must collaborate in those activities teaching opportunities, suggesting new modes of action and means for acting, providing assistance, and offering new follow-up activities if necessary. This turns out to be demanding job for teachers. In order to reach these innovative goals, teachers should be assisted in their attempts to appropriate these qualities.

4. " De Mijlpaal ", a school-based innovation for developmental teaching :

One of the authors of this report (A. Holla) is teacher and internal counsellor at a Dutch primary school " De Mijlpaal " (the Milestone). This school adopted the concept of developmental education as its leading educational concept. It her work as internal counsellor she assists her colleague-teachers in the process of acquiring proficiency in applying the concept of developmental educational/developmental teaching in their own class-room practices. In order to evaluate the ongoing innovation process at her school, she conducted a study to explore the development of a teachers in using the concept of developmental education for their daily classroom practices with children.

In her study she invited her colleague teachers working in the lower grades of the school (N=5) to participate as a co-researcher in this investigation. The aim was to investigate the classroom practices of the individual teachers, reflect on it and find points for improvement, taking the participants’ interpretations of the developmental education concept as a starting point. All the participation teachers kept logbooks of their daily activities, recording which activities were undertaken, how they were carried out, which were the main observations regarding the children, etc. These logbooks were also used by the teachers in their preparations for the next day and for reflection on the general course of their teaching. Moreover, analyses of the daily used logbooks of the teachers were taken as a starting point for the joint reflective activity between researcher and teacher. These discussions were weekly basis during a period of twelve weeks.

The reflective conversations between teacher and researcher were focused on several points in the development of the teachers :

finding motives and interests of individual children, and trying to determine the child’s stage of development as precisely as possible ;

thinking about good activities conected with the data found in the logbook analysis, and translating them into real classroom activities ;

exploring and improving the role of the teacher within the activities analysed in the logbooks ;

finding points of improvement in the organisation of classroom practice.

The internal counsellor assisted the teachers in implementing the results of the logbook analyses into their practices.

5. Outcomes of this case-study :

On the basis of a comparison of initial teaching activities after twelve weeks of guided reflection, conclusions could be drawn with regard to the development of teachers’ developmental teaching abilities. Consideration the nature of the data and the number of teachers involved, the conclusions are based on qualitative analyses.

The outcomes of the investigation were positive as to the development of the teachers. It turned out that the use of a logbook as a mediational means in the dicussion between researcher and teachers was very productive in promotiving changes in teachers, both with regard to the conceptual development of the teachers and their teaching practices, as could be seen in their ability to take individual differences among pupils into account, to construct developmentally adequate learning environments (activities), and to promote the development of each pupil. The teachers’ development was reflected in their writing in the logbook which became more balanced, better turned in at the individual development of pupils, and more productive as to the follow-up activities.

In addition, it can be concluded that for the innovation of teaching according to the concept of developmental education, teachers need to develop new abilities, as well as confidence in their possibilities to teach from the concept of developmental education. It is important, then that they get close and immediate support from a supervisor, and get convniced that they do share their responsibility for good education with their colleagues and supervisor. It may be assumed, that the empowerment of the teachers will eventualy be reflected in an improvement of the system from which all pupils get an equal chance to learn and optimize the developmental potentials.

© Innova : Observatoire européen des innovations en éducation et en formation / European Observatory for Innovation in Education and Training, juin 1998.