changed role of teachers as mentors

The use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in Dutch education is lagging behind expectation and desire. Hence, the advisory ‘Commitee On Multimedia In Teacher Training’ (COMMITT, at present PROMMITT), established by the Dutch Minister of Education, has drawn up recommendations on the design of the learning process in the future and the role of ICT to support this process, with a focus on teacher training. The committee argues for a powerful role of teacher training in the process of educational innovation and the implementation of ICT. The teacher training institutes are providing the teachers of the future and the committee assumes that teachers are the keyfigures in arranging learning processes. The institutes, therefore, have to anticipate new developments and prepare prospective teachers for their future role. The nature and extent to which ICT is being used in education is considered to be a result of synergy between ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom up’ processes. In the latter especially, a contribution of the teacher training institutes can be expected. According to commit, teacher training institutes therefore have to shift their focus from dealing with present education to that of ‘future education’.

Within the PROMMITT action-programme, Stoas Research analyses the future educational practices of the vet-professional. Accordingly, teachers can be as much as possible prepared and thus, can encourage the implementation of ICT in secondary vocational education.
The main research question is: What is the teachers’ prospective role in a richly ICT-designed learning environment and what competences are required for this role?