Have I Become a Better Teacher? Teaching Dutch in Upper Secondary School (1970–2015)

Abstract

In my contribution I give an account of my teaching based on my own memories and those of former students. I rely on reports from my present students, remarks by colleagues and my own reflections. My memories as well as my present reflections are doubtlessly coloured by my growing awareness of the relationships between micro and macro levels of education and educational policy. So I try to illuminate my teaching as well as the topics I taught and teach against the background of the schools and the schools’ cultures, the paradigmatic debate on the school subject Dutch, changes in Dutch teacher education and the arena of ‘rationalities’: meta-discourses on education and society. In short, I started in the context of a rising communicative-emancipatory paradigm, in the societal context of a developing social rationality, striving for ‘empowerment’. I now am more or less forced to teach topics that fit in a communicative-utilitarian paradigm, in the context of a technocratic-economic rationality characterised by among other things the disputable concept of ‘knowledge society’. During my reflections I wondered if I have become a better teacher. I discovered that I cannot answer this question. A teacher’s professional development appears not to be a smooth linear process, but a process of trying out, failures and successes, steps backwards and forwards, questions and insights based upon experiences. And above all, a teacher’s qualities are to a large extent co-constructed by the institutional context of school, colleagues and students.

Keywords:

• Memory as construction
• reflection
• professional development
• professional practice
• meta-discourses on education

Notes

1. The Netherlands do not have a national curriculum, but the examination requirements for upper secondary education function as such.