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Long live education!

Aquestion havo and vwo teachers are frequently asked is whether it is boring to explain the same story in class every year. Apparently, the questioners assume that a teacher mainly explains and that little or nothing changes in terms of subject matter. Admittedly, there are teachers who do not stop talking throughout the entire class, adhere strictly to a teaching method, and do not change their examples. But it can be done differently. A teacher’s task is to help students learn.

They must ensure that students receive accurate information about the subject matter. But they also have to judge whether the students meet the learning objectives, so that they can make changes if this is not the case. In order to do so, they must be able to assess the value of their students’ learning performance in written or spoken form. Boring? Far from it. Unwittingly, students unfailingly show you where you’re not clear enough. My first experience (as a teacher without any teacher training) was a textbook example of what to expect. The subject in a fifth-grade business economics class was the final value of capital. I asked students the following question: “In three years, you want to take a long trip. You want to have €10,000 in your savings account. Your account balance is now zero. The bank pays you 1 percent interest per year. Do you have to put more or less than €10,000 in that savings account now? A simple question, in my opinion. A student said: “More, because I sometimes take money out of an account.” At the time, I thought that training as a teacher was not such a crazy idea, especially since there were still subjects like costs and reserves to come. Tilburg University, in collaboration with school umbrella organization OMO, offers a master’s program Teacher Higher Preparatory Education in the field of economics or business economics. With this master’s degree, a first-degree teaching qualification can be obtained, which can be used to teach at vmbo, mbo, havo, and vwo. (There is no qualification for higher professional education and university education.) The master’s program focusses on teaching methodology, education studies, and didactic research. Of course, internships at schools are an important part of the master’s program. Between 2014 and 2019, 54 students completed one or two of these master’s programs. 43 of them then went on to work as teachers, mainly at havo and/or vwo, but also in higher professional education and university education. All 43 are still working as teachers.

Henri van den Hout is academic director of the University Teacher Training Center Tilburg TiSEM