Four Dutch teachers spent a whole day at Forth Valley College’s Falkirk Campus recently to find out about vocational education.
Bjorn van Eeuwijk, an Information Technology teacher and Student Coordinator at Helicon, Femke Spoeltman, a Project Leader (connecting education and student career guidance) and teacher at ROC Nijmegen, Helga van den Enk, a staff member Education and Innovation at Graafschap College and Marieke van Veghel a teacher and member of Bullying Committee at Koning Willem I College, all spent the day job shadowing FVC staff at the Falkirk Campus and at Forth Valley Royal Hospital observing the Project Search internship in action on Friday 15 November.
Organised by the Holland based Consortium for Innovation which specialises in providing unorthodox activities for teachers to observe vocational education best practice in action, the group was inspired by shadowing their FVC peers to see if they could adapt any processes in their own teaching.
These ‘Field Expeditions’ as they are called, have also been organised in Toronto, Florida, Gent, Leuven, Tallinn, Edinburgh, Manchester, and Birmingham.
Jacqui McArthur, Director of the Department of Business and Communities, said: “We were more than happy to welcome our colleagues from the Netherlands to our Falkirk Campus, to spend the day with some of our lecturers as they work with our students. The feedback was very positive and I am sure they will have taken note of how we teach vocational education and the techniques that we use and maybe incorporate them into their own lessons back home. We look forward to working with them again soon and building a relationship that will benefit us all.”