Zoekresultaten

Does excellence matter?

Professional excellence

PurposeHonours programs prepare talented students to become future excellent professionals . However, competences defining an excellent professional have not been elucidated yet. We investigated how professionals characterize an excellent communication professional, aiming to develop a competence profile to guide honours education at Communication Institute of Hanze University of Applied Sciences.Conceptual frameworkThe amount of freedom in honours education is an important aspect distinguishing honours from regular programms. However, also for honoursstudents an amount of structure is needed. Explicit learning goals are an effective way to offer structure and enhance performance (Locke & Latham, 2006). Competence profiles can direct these learning goals in honours education. Research questions and designWe performed empiric research to understand how professionals characterize an excellent communication professional and implemented this competence profile in honours education. One year after implementation, perceptions of students and staff on the profile and its implementation were analysed.Using a mixed-method approach, three focus group discussions were conducted with communication professionals (N=16), followed by a Delphi panel with experts (N=30). In each focus group, professionals discussed competences and behaviors characterizing an excellent communication professional. After validation, the profile was implemented in the honours programme. One year after implementation, students and staff evaluated the use of the profile.Data collection and analysisAll focus group sessions were recorded and transcribed. Analysis was done by two researches independently, using open coding on ATLAS ti., based on the grounded theory method. In a consensus meeting, a concept profile was developed. This concept profile was validated through a Delphi survey with Dutch experts to achieve a quantifiable consensus. One year after implementation, perceptions of students and staff on the profile and its implementation were collected and analysed.Results Data clarify that in addition to possessing solid technical skills and practical knowledge, excellent communication professionals are differentiated by their capacity to be strategic, empathic, expressive, decisive and to see patterns and interrelationships. In a second phase, honours faculty used the excellent professional profile as a benchmark to develop a set of six undergraduate level learning outcomes to structure the honours programme and assessment standards. For each of these learning outcomes, smaller developmental milestones were defined to help students gauge their development and reflect on their progress during three honours years. A digital assessment tool was created to monitor student growth and structure annual summative assessment processes. One year following creation and application, students and staff were asked to evaluate the implementation of the excellence profile and learning outcomes. Results are discussed in terms of implications for both curriculum design, operational effects and assessment quality.  Conclusions This research promotes an connection between the professional field and educators, resulting in curricular changes. The implemmentation of competence profiles of excellent professionals in honours curricula offer clear learing goals to guide student’s development and, furhtermore, improves the transition from educational programs to professional practice, allowing students to develop (or strengthen) competences and behaviors which are, according to professionals themselves, essential for that profession. This exchange between professional field and educators can lead to new standards needed to face future challenges.Theoretical/Practical implications This is the first empiric study profiling the excellent communication professional. Practical relevance of this profile is twofold. For the work field, it describes competences which could be used for strategic selection of high potential candidates. For educators, it offers guidelines for assessment and curricular development, especially in honours education. In this presentation we explain 1) the research conducted to develop a competence profile for the excellent communication professional, 2) how it was subsequently used to guide curricular development and 3) the experiences concerning implementation by staff and students one year following implementation.

Food for thought

The focus of the thesis is an exploration into students’ vocational knowledge in the context of Dutch vocational education and training (VET). The reason students’ vocational knowledge requires exploration is because there is no consensus among scholars in the field of VET about how to theorise the nature of students’ vocational knowledge; most (not all) scholars rely on dichotomous conceptualisations, such as theory versus practice, general versus specific or explicit versus implicit. However, such commonly used dichotomies are not very helpful to understand the complex nature of vocational knowledge. Vocational knowledge is more than putting bits of theoretical and practical knowledge together, it is characterised by sometimes-intimate relationships between knowledge and actions. As a result of the above-mentioned gap in the VET literature, there is little empirical research on how VET students develop vocational knowledge and the extent to which this is occupation-specific knowledge. To understand students’ vocational knowledge, four different aims are formulated and carried out in four studies. The aim of the first study is to identify powerful vocational learning environments to enable the selection of a case that represents high quality vocational learning and teaching. With an eye on analysing students’ vocational knowledge, the second study aims to conceptualise the nature of vocational knowledge that avoids dichotomies. Therefore, two conceptual frameworks are integrated; the idea of contextualising is introduced which is based on cultural-historical theory to highlight the crucial role activity plays in knowledge development and to understand the relationships between the mind (i.e., what people think (and feel)), and action (i.e., what people do). Secondly, the theory is supplemented with ideas from inferentialism, a philosophical semantic theory of meaning to provide a useful way to focus on students’ processes of knowing and to reveal students’ vocational knowledge in terms of ongoing reasoning processes. The third study uses the conceptualisation of vocational knowledge to explore how students develop vocational knowledge in occupational practice, and to illustrate the process of contextualising. The forth study aims to describe what characterises students’ vocational knowledge using an analytic framework that distinguishes between occupation-specific knowledge components and qualities. This thesis contributes to research scholarship in the field of VET and an understanding of students’ vocational knowledge in practice. The theoretical framework of contextualising supplemented with inferentialism provides an alternative way to focus on students’ processes of knowing and helps to reveal students’ vocational knowledge in terms of reasoning processes. The empirical explorations and illustrations of students’ vocational knowledge contribute to the scholarly literature and practice on understanding the nature of vocational knowledge, how students develop vocational knowledge and what characterises their vocational knowledge. The intention to introduce the idea of contextualising is not about reinventing the wheel but rather an attempt to understand how it turns and how it functions. The intention of this thesis is to encourage dialogue and move the debate about the nature of vocational knowledge further, and hence, to provide some “food for thought”.