Over the last two decades, institutions for higher education such as universities and colleges have rapidly expanded and as a result have experienced profound changes in processes of research and organization. However, the rapid expansion and change has fuelled concerns about issues such as educators' technology professional development. Despite the educational value of emerging technologies in schools, the introduction has not yet enjoyed much success. Effective use of information and communication technologies requires a substantial change in pedagogical practice. Traditional training and learning approaches cannot cope with the rising demand on educators to make use of innovative technologies in their teaching. As a result, educational institutions as well as the public are more and more aware of the need for adequate technology professional development. The focus of this paper is to look at action research as a qualitative research methodology for studying technology professional development in HE in order to improve teaching and learning with ICTs at the tertiary level. The data discussed in this paper have been drawn from a cross institutional setting at Fontys University of Applied Sciences, The Netherlands. The data were collected and analysed according to a qualitative approach.
Over the last two decades, institutions for higher education such as universities and colleges have rapidly expanded and as a result have experienced profound changes in processes of research and organization. However, the rapid expansion and change has fuelled concerns about issues such as educators' technology professional development. Despite the educational value of emerging technologies in schools, the introduction has not yet enjoyed much success. Effective use of information and communication technologies requires a substantial change in pedagogical practice. Traditional training and learning approaches cannot cope with the rising demand on educators to make use of innovative technologies in their teaching. As a result, educational institutions as well as the public are more and more aware of the need for adequate technology professional development. The focus of this paper is to look at action research as a qualitative research methodology for studying technology professional development in HE in order to improve teaching and learning with ICTs at the tertiary level. The data discussed in this paper have been drawn from a cross institutional setting at Fontys University of Applied Sciences, The Netherlands. The data were collected and analysed according to a qualitative approach.
Since 2000, all Dutch Universities of Professional Education are confronted with three major renewals. The first was the European agreement to implement the Bachelor-Master system in Higher Education. The second was the strong tendence to renew eduction towards Competence Based Education. The third renewal came from the decision of the ministery of Education to contract lectures (lectoren) and research networks (kenniskringen) to improve research competences among students. Basic idea behind the latest renewal was that if students from Universities of Professional Education bring in more knowledge in companies, during and after their study, this will stimulate the innovative power of Dutch small and medium enterprices (SME’s). Educational developers have been very bussy with these renewals. Under the cloak of national assurance guidelines and external panels of inspection many educational developers automatically tended to use the instrumental paradigm for many design contexts. In accordance with the research of Gustafson (1993) and Richey (1993) we raised questions about the relevance of the instrumental paradigm for educational design contexts, because often the means-end thinking of the instrumental approach have seemed to be out of place. This research project by Lappia, De Boer & Van Rennes took place in 2006 at INHOLLAND university of professional education in the western part of The Netherlands with four pilots at School of Technology, Social Work, Education and Economics. The researchers started from the assumption that improving competence-based internships could not been based on an instrumental paradigma, because of the lack of absolute standards and the need to support deliberation among stakeholders. The Design Science Approach of Van Aken (2004) and Andriessen (2004) was been used to reveal field-tested and grounded technological rules as design specifications for improvement tools. Beside that the research project used the communicative paradigm (Visscher-Voerman & Gustafson, 2004) to reach consensus among the practitioners, who accompanion students during their internships in organisations in order to achieve a growth of competences in the choosen working field. Participants in the research project were employees of the School of Education, The School of Technology and the School of Economics, the department of Education, Quality, Research and development (OKR). Conditions for participating in the project were that the Schools recognized the problems with implementing Competence Based Internship and the School had to set the employees whe participated in the project free for half a day during the project. The Schools as stakeholders in the project were primary interested in solution of their practical problem (practical stream). The department of Education, Quality, Research and development was interested in solution of the pratical problem for dissemination reasons, but would also learn new strategies for implementation (knowledge stream). Therefore was choosen to follow the Design Science Research Approach.
The impacts of tourism on destinations and the perceptions of local communities have been a major concern both for the industry and research in the past decades. However, tourism planning has been mainly focused on traditions that promote the increase of tourism without taking under consideration the wellbeing of both residents and visitors. To develop a more sustainable tourism model, the inclusion of local residents in tourism decision-making is vital. However, this is not always possible due to structural, economic and socio-cultural restrictions that residents face resulting to their disempowerment. This study aims to explore and interpret the formal processes around tourism decision-making and community empowerment in urban settings. The research proposes a comparative study of three urban destinations in Europe (The Hague in the Netherlands, San Sebastian in Spain and, Ioannina in Greece) that experience similar degree of tourism growth. The proposed study will use a design-based approach in order to understand tourism decision-making and what empowers or disempowers community participation within the destinations. Based on the findings of primary and secondary data, a community empowerment model will be applied in one the destinations as a pilot for resident engagement in tourism planning. The evaluation of the pilot will allow for an optimized model to be created with implications for tourism planning at a local level that can contribute to sustainable destinations that safeguard the interests of local residents and tourists.
Het onderzoeksvoorstel richt zich op het verkennen en verbeteren van de veerkracht van Generatie Z (Gen Z) medewerkers binnen de hospitalitysector. Dit onderzoek is gemotiveerd door de waargenomen mentale gezondheidsproblemen waarmee Gen Z te maken heeft, zoals hoge niveaus van stress, angst en burn-out, vooral in dynamische omgevingen zoals de hospitalitysector. Deze uitdagingen beïnvloeden niet alleen het welzijn van individuen, maar verergeren ook problemen zoals hoog personeelsverloop, ziekteverzuim en verminderde betrokkenheid, wat de dienstverlening en efficiëntie in de sector onder druk zet. Het onderzoek heeft tot doel veerkracht opnieuw te definiëren in de context van de hospitalitysector. Het onderzoek zal onderzoeken hoe individuele, organisatorische en maatschappelijke factoren veerkracht beïnvloeden en zal manieren verkennen waarop hotels actief kunnen bijdragen aan het versterken van de veerkracht van hun (jonge) medewerkers. De aanpak omvat een Design-Based Research (DBR) methodologie, die samenwerking tussen academici en de industrie benadrukt om praktische, op bewijs gebaseerde interventies te ontwikkelen. Het onderzoek zal in fasen worden uitgevoerd, te beginnen met een conceptuele studie om een basisbegrip van veerkracht vast te stellen, gevolgd door een uitgebreide analyse door middel van enquêtes en interviews, en uiteindelijk uitmondend in de ontwikkeling en het testen van strategieën om veerkracht op te bouwen. Het uiteindelijke doel is om een genuanceerd kader voor veerkracht te ontwikkelen dat niet alleen het welzijn van individuele medewerkers verbetert, maar ook bijdraagt aan de algehele duurzaamheid en het succes van de hospitalitysector. Het onderzoek zal naar verwachting bruikbare inzichten opleveren voor hotelmanagers en opleiders, zodat zij Gen Z-medewerkers beter kunnen ondersteunen en hun betrokkenheid en retentie binnen de sector kunnen verbeteren.
The tourism strategy of the municipality of Amsterdam and the Destination Management Organisation stress the importance of increasing liveabilty and enhancing a sense of unity through, also by connecting with residents. An important area in which they would like to achieve this, is Amsterdam Noord, a neighbourhood that was historically on the fringe of the city but is now appointed as one of the (to be further developed) multi-cores of the city. As such it is facing a rapid transformation on a social, cultural, economic and infrastructural level with an increasing leisure and tourism offer. The idea is to apply principles of regenerative tourism and community capacity building to ensure a sustainable tourism development, although it remains unclear how to do this in in practice. The current PD addresses this issue by investigating possible regenerative urban tourism principles and practices (here: collaborative interventions) that can be designed to increase local community building capacities, using a living lab setting in Amsterdam-Noord. It follows a participatory action research approach where the researcher is part of a living lab team and local eco system. By participating in local meet-ups as well as desk research and (group)interviews a further contextual understanding of how regenerative tourism can be conceptualised in an urban context is gained. Next, workshops, experiments and design-based interventions with local stakeholders will be done to construct different stories of place and new ways of performing tourism. The PD will contribute to knowledge development creating a conceptual framework for regenerative urban tourism. It will also provide academic and practical insights on with regards to stimulating capacity building and how to measure this within a tourism context (also in relation to co-creation and placemaking practices), what potentials can be tapped into and how small-scall collaborative interventions can influence wider system change.
