The Gelderse Onderwijs Vallei: promising joint education

To do something about this, a new partnership has been established in the Ede-Wageningen region. Yvonne van Hoeckel, project leader, talks about the challenges and benefits.

It all started in a classroom at Utrecht University of Applied Sciences. Yvonne took a course there, just like Mirjam van Putten. The two classmates clicked and delved into regional secondary education partnerships for their final paper. Yvonne: “They simply weren't there in the Gelderse Vallei. We only found nationally operating partnerships that are also active in our region. But no organization with a purely regional 'association' with a teacher training course. So we decided to change that.”

CSG Het Streek and RSG Pantarijn, the schools where Yvonne and Mirjam worked, were interested in such a partnership. All locations were enthusiastic. Other secondary schools in the region decided not to join in yet. We formed a club of school trainers from our two schools and institute trainers from the Arnhem Nijmegen University of Applied Sciences (HAN), Wageningen University (WUR) and the Radboud Teachers Academy (RDA). WUR became the secretary, and Piety Runhaar and Harm Biemans wrote the project plan together with us. We jointly submitted this to the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, were invited for an audit and on December 1 last year were given the status of an aspiring partnership for Samen Opleiden: the Gelderse OnderwijsVallei (GOV) was a fact.

Training teachers together is important for two reasons. And those two reasons are intertwined. First of all, you want students and starters to receive good guidance. That they become familiar with all facets of education and can connect theory and practice. You need both the training and the internship schools for that. If young (prospective) professionals feel well supported, they can develop into even better teachers who enjoy their profession and are therefore retained in education. We all know how much that is needed.”

The GOV partnership is still young. However, much has already been achieved. The school trainers of Het Streek and Pantarijn are facilitated in time and space to support students and workplace supervisors and to professionalize themselves by working together. Furthermore, job descriptions have been written so that both school trainers and workplace supervisors know exactly what is expected of them.

The school educators have also put together a program with varying activities. Time has been set aside for this on Thursday morning. Sometimes it concerns intervision, other times students go to the other school to take a look behind the scenes. Or we organize a theme meeting. We ensure that starters are also covered; good guidance is so important in your first years as a teacher.

Furthermore, a GOV day is organized three times a year for all students and workplace supervisors. The institute trainers from HAN, RDA and WUR (Renske and Rodney) are involved in the organization and implementation of these meetings. The first was recently. An informative and interactive program. It is mandatory for students. There are now about 50 - in various phases of their training. We want them to meet each other and work together in the workshops; that helps you find your way, also to each other. There is a separate program for workplace supervisors, tailored to their role: How do you fill in forms? What do you do if you have problems? What do the different courses expect from their students, and what does that mean for the guidance?

The school trainers from Het Streek and Pantarijn and the institute trainers from HAN, WUR and RDA work together in various focus groups. For example, they would like to dedicate part of their curricula to a uniform theme within workplace learning. That's quite a challenge! This challenge is so great because the three training institutes have very different programs for students who want to obtain a teaching certificate. The lead time varies from 6 months to 4 years. “So look for the red line of togetherness!”

Within a year, the combined number of students must grow from 50 to 150. Almost impossible, but we can do this!

Yvonne van Hoeckel is project leader of the Gelderse OnderwijsVallei (GOV). She is also a teacher trainer at Wageningen University and a biology teacher at CSG Het Streek in Ede.