Dutch Higher Education Research Articles

Interview with Rens Bod

In this interview, Rens Bod, historian of the Humanities, guides us through the recent reforms in Dutch higher education and tells us about the role academics’ activism has had in budgetary policy in the last decade. Bod is also the founder of WO in Actie (Higher Education in Action), a movement of Dutch academics that started advocating for adequate funding of universities in 2017. Since then, the movement has grown through various actions, targeted first and foremost at improving working conditions in Dutch academia. An increase in university funding has been achieved in 2021, after years of activism and contacts with the ministry. But the movement also raised awareness around other problematic issues in Dutch universities that impinge on working conditions: social safety, the amount of pressure on academics’ careers and their evaluation, the lack of time dedicated to research in some academic positions, and the lack of democracy in decision making inside universities.

Belonging in Online Synchronous Classrooms: Experiences of Minoritized Students in Dutch Higher Education during the COVID-19 Pandemic

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, higher education in many countries suddenly moved online. The sudden move to online education forced teachers to adapt their teaching to an online context. The concept of belonging has been described as the next evolution of, and a characteristic that is central to, inclusion. Many have argued that inclusion can never be truly achieved without the presence of belonging. In this paper we ask important questions, such as how does the move to online education, with its lack of personal cues and heightened anonymity, influence minoritized students’ sense of belonging? What is the role of the sense of belonging for inclusion in education? From our data about the minoritized student experiences of belonging in online classrooms, three patterns emerged. (1) The most dominant experience was that the lack of connection in online classrooms reduced students’ sense of belonging. (2) In a few instances, however, the lack of connection and the heightened anonymity of online classrooms led to an increased sense of belonging and safety in online classrooms. (3) However, not all students experienced the switch to online education as a major change.

Cultural intelligence and the role of international classroom composition: Insights from Dutch higher education

This paper reports on a study that looked into the relationship between the composition of the international classroom (a classroom composed of students from multiple nationalities), educational interventions aimed at intercultural learning, and domestic students’ levels of Cultural Intelligence (CQ). Using cross-sectional data from 10,243 students enrolled in eleven different higher educational institutions in the Netherlands, we applied multilevel analyses to examine whether the composition of an international classroom, internationalization at home activities and the interaction between the two were related to students’ levels of CQ. Results show that Dutch domestic students who are members of a class with a higher number of international students reported higher levels of motivational CQ, but not of the other three dimensions of CQ. Educational interventions aimed at intercultural learning were reported as being positively related to all dimensions of CQ. The findings underscore that when it comes to students’ overall CQ, the international composition of their classroom is not enough to explain differences in CQ levels. Therefore, this study advocates the use of intentionally designed educational interventions next to the informal interactions in a diverse classroom when it comes to fostering cultural intelligence among domestic students.

From honors education to regular education: learning from the content of innovations

At the introduction of honors programs in Dutch higher education, stakeholders assumed that honors education could stimulate innovation in regular education. Whether this assumption holds was researched in the ‘Transfer of honors education to regular education’ project. This article focuses on the question of whether teachers’ experiences with honors education stimulated innovations in regular education and about structural characteristics in relation to the content, teaching formats, and pedagogics of the innovations. Interviews were conducted with teachers from four universities of applied sciences in the Netherlands. The results show that teachers in regular education found honors programs to provide them an opportunity to work with content, teaching formats, and pedagogics that they were unfamiliar with. Through these teachers, the honors approach inspired innovation in regular programs. Strikingly, these innovations contain to some degree all 14 structural characteristics of honors education distinguished in this study. The findings indicate the great innovative potential of honors education for regular education.

Male ‘play-garden’ versus female ‘tightrope walking’: an exploration of gendered embodiment in Dutch higher education

ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to gain a deeper understanding of gendered practices in academia by further exploring the embodiment of gender; we do so by comparing these practices between the experiences of female and male respondents concerning gender stereotypes and the individual embodiment thereof in academics within research universities in the Netherlands. Our analysis includes interviews with 26 female and male associate professors – thirteen pairs matched at the department and discipline levels – which enabled us to compare academic experiences of each gender. A significant proportion of the interviewed academics perceived the Dutch academic context as a gendered and embodied professional setting and implied women are not only considered less eligible for promotion because of their gender; notably, some male respondents were blind to these stereotypes. Several of the reported stereotypes refer to the appearance of the female body and the behaviour of women and provided clarification of different career progressions.

A multi-layered comparative analysis of English-medium instruction in the Netherlands

AbstractThe rise of English in Dutch higher education has been accompanied by a language ideological debate that affects students’ and lecturers’ lives at the micro level, policy and planning at the meso (institutional) level and is related to the macro perspective (national political agenda). This study explores how language ideologies and attitudes play a role in this debate by comparing lecturers’ perceptions of the use of English in higher education to general language ideologies reflected in the Dutch printed press. A thematic analysis was conducted, including a three-dimensional investigation incorporating a vertical approach (macro, meso, micro) combined with a horizontal approach focusing on ideological themes present at the vertical level. Our data consist of 151 news items and 20 interviews with lecturers in higher education. Results show that monolingual language ideologies are the norm in both the perceptions of teaching staff and the Dutch media. Lecturers were generally more positive towards the exclusive use of English than the printed media. The study suggests that the Dutch/English dichotomy and accompanying persistence of a monolingual language ideology contrast with the reality of the Netherlands as a multilingual community. Implications for language policy and practice within EMI are presented.

Translanguaging pathways to higher education: a transition program for highly educated refugees

Abstract The paper focuses on translanguaging practices of highly skilled refugees in a transition program in Dutch higher education. The pathways for refugees to enter higher education are full of obstacles. Acquiring the new language at a university level is one of the biggest challenges. Many institutions offer ‘transition programs’ to prepare refugees for their studies. These are mostly focused on acquiring language skills and general basic skills in subjects such as Mathematics and Cultural Diversity. The Dutch transition program described in this paper was specifically developed to make use of students’ multilingual repertoires. The resource-oriented pedagogy of translanguaging is used to give space to all languages, leverage students’ resources and contribute to their academic and language development. In this research, data from one year of the Dutch transition program was collected to study a) how teachers engage in official translanguaging practices during instruction and b) to what extent teachers develop other practices to engage with their students’ multilingual repertoires. Results from interaction analysis show that the teachers, although mainly using the language of instruction (Dutch), did use a variety of translanguaging practices, and created other ways to encourage students’ multilingualism, such as engaging in language comparisons and raising language awareness.

Accreditation in European higher education from the comparative perspective: Slovenia and the Netherlands

ABSTRACT This article addresses quality assurance in European higher education from the perspective of accreditation. To reduce the bias in favour of comparative research of Western (European) countries, it investigates which practices are attached to accreditation in Slovenian and Dutch higher education and identifies on this basis key similarities and differences in its development and implementation. First, it explores accreditation procedures in national steering documents of each country. Second, it addresses its implementation in practice with the support from results obtained with interviews. Results showcase that in the past five years, both countries made significant changes to the accreditation framework to increase institutional responsibility for quality assurance procedures. However, accreditation also became an efficient tool for national (political) actors, to guide the development of higher education systems in the direction of more or less control and, hence, to challenge the promotion of institutional quality culture in both cases examined.

Lecturing in L1 Dutch and in L2 English. A pairwise comparison of speech samples of three HE lecturers

This paper investigates how the language of instruction in Dutch higher education (Dutch versus English) affects speech production by L1 Dutch-speaking lecturers. In a pairwise design, three young lecturers that were highly proficient in English gave two comparable lectures each (L1 Dutch and L2 English). Results show that the L1 Dutch lectures were consistently given at slightly higher syllabic speech and articulation rates and that filled pauses were shorter and occurred less often in Dutch than in English lectures. In addition, L1 Dutch lectures contained a more diverse vocabulary and showed pitch patterns which have been shown to be associated with greater liveliness and higher perceived charisma of the speakers. We discuss possible reasons for the observed acoustic differences and the potential impact of our findings in the light of the ongoing transition from Dutch-medium instruction to English-medium instruction in Dutch higher education.

What About Reuse? A Study on the Use of Open Educational Resources in Dutch Higher Education

Extensive research has taken place over the years to examine the barriers of OER adoption, but little empirical studies has been undertaken to map the amount of OER reuse. The discussion around the actual use of OER, outside the context in which they were developed, remains ongoing. Previous studies have already shown that searching and evaluating resources are barriers for actual reuse. Hence, in this quantitative survey study we explored teachers’ practices with resources in Higher Education Institutes in the Netherlands. The survey had three runs, each in a different context, with a total of 439 respondents. The results show that resources that are hard or time-consuming to develop are most often reused from third parties without adaptations. Resources that need to be more context specific are often created by teachers themselves. To improve our understanding of reuse, follow-up studies must explore reuse with a more qualitative research design in order to explore how these hidden practices of dark reuse look like and how teachers and students benefit of it.

COVID-19 in Dutch higher education

ABSTRACT In this contribution to the Special Issue of Studies in Higher Education, I describe developments during the COVID-19 pandemic in Dutch higher education along three lines. First, the context is outlined in chronological order. It concerns the evolution of the pandemic in the Netherlands, complemented by the general situation at my own university – the University of Twente (UT). The UT has almost 12,000 students, about 30% of whom come from abroad. 1 Many of the foreign students come from neighbouring country Germany (12% of the total number of students). The university is located in the east of the Netherlands, close to the border with Germany, and has a beautiful spacious campus. The nickname of the university is the Entrepreneurial University, which underlines its character. The second part of my contribution gives an overview of a number of measures and issues that were taken during the COVID-19 outbreak in the Dutch higher education sector. The third part contains a number of personal perceptions and gives an impression of my state of mind in recent months. 2

The effects of implementation barriers in virtually proctored examination: A randomised field experiment in Dutch higher education

AbstractVirtual proctoring technology is credited with increasing the accessibility of exams by enabling students to participate in exams at any time and place. In this field experiment, students were randomly assigned to virtual proctoring or traditional on‐campus examination to evaluate the effect, nature and timing of implementation barriers for online proctoring in higher education. The results show that the uptake in the traditional examination setting in this study was six times higher due to technical hurdles that students experienced with the virtual proctoring software. When alleviating these implementation barriers by offering all students the chance to participate in an unproctored retake, students initially assigned to virtual proctoring still showed a significantly lower uptake rate. Uptake could not be related to student characteristics, such as performance levels and motivation.

Educational innovation projects in Dutch higher education: bottom-up contextual coping to deal with organizational challenges

Understanding the process of initiation, design, implementation and embedding of educational innovations in higher education is necessary to develop better strategies for sustainable, large-scale educational innovation. Often early initiated educational innovation projects are not evaluated well enough, making it hard to identify lessons learned. The aim of this study is to investigate how project leaders of innovation projects in Dutch higher education institutions are coping with organizational challenges. To address this we analysed qualitative focus group data with innovators that run projects at Dutch higher education institutions through the lens of contextual coping theory. Results show that the innovators identified challenges (primary appraisal), proposed possible solutions (secondary appraisal) and also were able to take concrete steps (coping efforts) to overcome challenges to design and implement open online educational innovations. From these findings it can be concluded that bottom-up initiatives can create awareness and are capable of finding local resources to establish support for embedding innovations locally, yet, appropriate, synchronized and timely top-down action is needed in order to create a sustainable and institution wide support system for experimentation and embedding of educational innovations. These findings will contribute towards developing better strategies to develop innovative educational practices and quality education.

Improving study success and diversity in Dutch higher education using performance agreements

More and more governments have started to introduce elements of performance in the funding mechanisms for their higher education institutions. An example is a performance agreement: a contract signed between the funding authority and an individual higher education provider. In the Netherlands, a policy experiment involving performance agreements was concluded in 2016. We analyse whether the agreements actually have helped achieve the goals of improving student completion rates, educational quality and increasing the diversity in educational offerings. We present some indicators relating to these goals and discuss what can be learned from the performance agreements experiment in the Netherlands.

Acculturative Experiences Among Indonesian Graduate Students in Dutch Higher Education

The intent of this enquiry was to describe the results from research on the lived experiences of Indonesian international graduate students at two Dutch public research universities in the northern part of the Netherlands. The students came from diverse backgrounds and experiences in search of quality education for their future career development. The data collection was conducted from 24 Indonesian students on their experiences from their earliest term throughout their education in the Netherlands. Data were gathered through a demographic profile survey and audio recorded in exhaustive interviews. An analysis of the data revealed common issues—unanticipated educational stressors, unimagined social stressors, language issues, and loneliness/isolation. The participants also described potential strategies for coping with these stressors. The common themes symbolize everyday experiences that Indonesian master’s students faced throughout their acculturative process from the earliest term and over time. Implications, future research, and limitations are discussed.

How can universities align bricks with modern learning?

PurposeThis study aims to explore modern learning (ML) scenarios in Dutch higher education towards 2030 and corresponding consequences for facility management (FM) and corporate real estate strategies (CRES) of universities of applied sciences (UAS).Design/methodology/approachThe designing an accommodation strategy model is used to retrieve the match between demand and supply in real estate of Dutch UAS for both present and future. Application of this model resulted in a scenario-planning session with six education experts to determine future demand in education towards 2030. Subsequently, corporate real estate (CRE) managers of nine Dutch UAS were interviewed concerning this subject (one per UAS).FindingsThe results show that CRES of Dutch UAS is only partly aligned to consequences of ML scenarios towards 2030. Most UAS have real estate portfolios that are only partially flexible, so changes in qualitative and quantitative demand due to ML scenarios are not easy to adapt to. The consequences for FM and real estate of the ML scenarios “institute learning” and “mass customization” seem manageable for Dutch UAS, whereas the other ML scenarios, namely, “navigator” and “natural learning”, would create major portfolio problems.Originality/valueThere is an ongoing interest in developments in higher education combined with FM and CRES and its alignment with the corporate vision. Previous studies into modern ways of learning mainly focused on the past and present. However, this study is explorative and explores possible future ML scenarios. These scenarios can contribute to awareness amongst UAS in The Netherlands and abroad regarding their long-term vision. Moreover, these scenarios will help Dutch UAS facility and CRE managers to develop a more future-proof strategic real estate strategy aligned with the corporate vision.

English-medium instruction in Dutch higher education: a policy reconstruction and impact study

English-medium instruction in Dutch higher education: a policy reconstruction and impact study

Do parents of intending 'first generation' students in higher education differ in their need for school support to help their child's career development?

About 40% of the first-year enrolment in Dutch higher education (HE) are ‘first-generation’ HE students. Career education and guidance (CEG) can make a difference for their parents who have not experienced HE themselves. This article reports on the outcomes of a research project which explores the impacts of a school-initiated career intervention for parents, both those with and without HE qualifications. The results for parents without HE qualifications showed different patterns in their knowledge, self-efficacy and role definition.

Quality assurance of internationalisation and internationalisation of quality assurance in Slovenian and Dutch higher education

ABSTRACTIncreasing attention devoted to internationalisation and quality assurance of higher education reinforced the need to analyse their interdependent relationship, known as quality assurance of internationalisation and internationalisation of quality assurance in higher education. On this basis, the present article exposes the development and implementation of different initiatives for assessing and measuring the quality of internationalisation and for internationalising external and internal quality assurance systems in European higher education. Its specific focus is on Slovenian and Dutch experiences in this field, which are also comparatively analysed. Various documentary sources are supported with findings from semi-structured interviews, which were conducted as part of the PhD research on this theme. By focusing on supranational, national and institutional level of higher education, the article acknowledges the limits of comparative studies that rely exclusively on the national dimension as the main methodological unit of analysis. The results of research indicate that if quality is understood as ‘value for money’ [Harvey and Green 1993. ‘Defining Quality.’ Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education 18 (1): 9–34] and/or internationalisation driven predominantly by economic rationales, then the quality of higher education (systems and institutions) cannot be assured or improved by internationalisation, neither in Slovenia and the Netherlands nor in any other country.

Do parents of intending ‘first generation’ students in higher education differ in their need for school support to help their child’s career development?

About 40% of the first-year enrolment in Dutch higher education (HE) are ‘first-generation’ HE students. Career education and guidance (CEG) can make a difference for their parents who have not experienced HE themselves. This article reports on the outcomes of a research project which explores the impacts of a school-initiated career intervention for parents, both those with and without HE qualifications. The results for parents without HE qualifications showed different patterns in their knowledge, self-efficacy and role definition.