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Kennedy Tielman successfully defended his PhD thesis on May 16th, in the Omnia Auditorium of Wageningen University.
Kennedy Tielman successfully defended his PhD thesis “Diversity related (compe)tensions. A study into teachers’ self-perceived multicultural competence and experienced culturally loaden value-based tensions in Senior Secondary Vocational Education and Training” on May 16th, in the Omnia Auditorium of Wageningen University.
His study involved 900 teachers from 20 different Senior Secondary Vocational Education and Training (SSVET) schools across the country. His study showed that two-thirds of teachers experience occasional to regular tensions as a result of teaching multicultural SSVET classes. The perceived tensions were value-based in the areas of professional ethics and stance,respect,justice,personal autonomy, anddiversity and communality.Professional ethics and stanceappeared to be most prevalent as a tension, underscoring the importance and role of the professional field in the SSVET. His study also found that increasing multicultural knowledge helps to reduce these tensions, as does having an open attitude and engaging in activities to create more contact with/between students.Skills, on the other hand, appeared to correlate positively with experiencing tension. As teachers reported having more skills, they experienced more tension. This was also true for teachers who had had more training in multicultural education. One of the articles from this PhD research received an award from an international research journal for the most downloaded article in the first year after publication.
The thesis received a lot of attention in newspapers (Trouw,Telegraaf ,Extra Curaçao) and trough other media (NOS newssite,Radio 1 broadcast(from min. 28 onwards) Journaal Curaçao, Resource WUR. Articles on this research are also in preparation for various professional education journals and results of his study were also used in drafting new legislation on dealing with diversity in vocational education. Currently, many schools, universities and other institutes invite Kennedy to present his results and/or train teachers.
Kennedy currently works as a teacher educator of Chemistry at Fontys Hogeschool Tilburg. His promotor at ELS was Perry den Brok and copromotor was Renate Wesselink.
For more information on his research: www.kennedytielman.nl
