About the Expedition

NL | EN

The Expedition team first started the project Adaptive capacity in navigation toward future-proof teaching in April 2020.

The team’s task is to investigate the professional quality of the teacher of today and tomorrow. We consider teaching as a system of individuals and organisations in which we connect the seven themes of the Teaching agenda 2013-2020 (in Dutch: Lerarenagenda 2013-2020) of the Dutch government. Within the teaching agenda, the Dutch government provides policies for the professional development of teachers. Our research is innovative, boundary crossing and searches for unexpected connections.

The focus of the research is the professional quality of the teacher. However, the teacher no longer exists: a multiformity and versatility in the professional image of the teacher has emerged. Teachers, schools, teacher training institutes and policy organisations are looking to navigate this multiformity and versatility in pursuit of ‘eligible futures’, and therefore require adaptive capacity: ‘the capacity to relate to changes in order to be able to make at a certain moment reasoned choices’. Future-proof teaching asks for adaptive capacity in all educational sectors (primary, secondary and vocational education) and at all levels of the educational organisation: teacher (teams)(micro), schools (meso) and teacher training institutes and policy organisations (macro). We will investigate what this adaptive capacity looks like in the Dutch field of education.

We are studying adaptive capacity in the context of two current issues:

Year 1: (2020-2021): The changing professional image
Year 2 (2021-2023): Educational equity

We use seven building blocks that are aimed at obtaining overview (what is already happening?), insight (how and what works?) and perspective (does it work everywhere?). Each building block approaches the issue for research in its own way.