Developing competence profiles for educators in environmental education organisations in the Netherlands

Abstract

This qualitative study explores the meanings and possible merits of introducing competence profiles for enhancing professional development in the environmental education sector in the Netherlands. It presents the three most important environmental education jobs and their underlying competencies alongside their core professional challenges, as identified by environmental educators and experts in the Netherlands. The jobs are: education practitioner, programme leader, and organisational manager. The core professional challenges for the education practitioner entail: developing demand‐driven instructional programmes and spontaneous, ad‐hoc programmes, and addressing task and goal orientations. For the programme leader, they are acquisition of new projects, quality assurance, and project management; and for the organisational manager, they are human resource management, financial management, representing the organisation and showing its performance. The results of the study should inform educational institutions how to develop relevant programmes for future environmental educators, and for the professional development of environmental educators in environmental education organisations.

Keywords:

• environmental education
• professional development
• competence
• competence profiles
• the Netherlands

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank VEN for the opportunity to do the research. Furthermore, the authors would like to thank the referees of Environmental Education Research for their critical comments which improved the article.