Education has something magical

Interview with Janneke Waelen, director VU Centre for Teaching & Learning (CTL)

On the first, sixth, and seventh floors of the New University Building (NU VU), you'll find the Centre for Teaching and Learning (CTL), a breeding ground for educational innovation and teacher professionalization. Janneke Waelen, the director, passionately contributes to its growth. In this interview, 'tireless activist' Janneke shares her vision on education, what drives her, and how CTL contributes to strengthening education. "The teacher makes the difference."

Collaborative Strengths

On May 1, 2023, LEARN! Academy and the VU Educational Workshop joined forces. Together, they form the Centre for Teaching and Learning, the expertise center for exchanging knowledge, ideas, and experiences related to educational development and innovation at VU Amsterdam. Their goal? To strengthen and support teachers, educational leaders, and all other stakeholders in education, so they can collectively build an even stronger, passionate educational community.

Education Has Something Magical

Where did your love for education originate?
At home. Growing up with a brother with a disability, I saw how challenging learning can be. The willingness or reluctance to start, the ups and downs, the conscious and subconscious learning moments. And then the moment when it succeeds, the moment when something new is learned. That has something magical, especially when you experience it up close.

That's why I've always been involved in teaching. During my journey through various educational institutions, from primary and higher education to academic education, as a learner, teacher, and educational leader, I've seen different forms of education. I know what it's like to stand in front of a class, I've seen how beautiful education can be, and how it's a way to provide equal opportunities.

"The teacher makes the difference."
I want to make it more visible in the academic context that the teacher truly makes the difference, standing up for the value of education. That's what I do with passion.

So your team members rightly call you a tireless activist.
One of the things I try to do is create awareness about what teaching is. It's not just an instrumental skill that you can learn "quickly." On the other hand, that's also the beauty of the profession. The adaptive expertise required to create a rich learning environment for students is what passionate teachers strive for. They invest in the interaction because learning happens there. And that's when you experience the magic.

"For improving and innovating education, collaboration is crucial," Mariska Min, Head of Teaching and Learning Centre UvA, also emphasized. "Our collaboration with VU's CTL is a great example. We can find each other and share expertise. We consider each other as partners and can learn a lot from each other: we learned a lot from VU about teacher development and brought new input on driving educational innovations to VU."

The Honeycomb Model: Empowering the teacher

Team members mentioned that you believe it's important to teach education professionals to do it themselves.
That's correct, we don't want to be consultants who come back year after year to help with the same problem. We are collaborative partners. We help you do it yourself.

For example, by working as customized as possible. Education is highly situational: every faculty, program, and teacher is different. So, as CTL, we ask, 'What is exactly needed here?'. Sometimes it's advice, sometimes it's training, sometimes it's just brainstorming. Often, people already have the answers themselves.

We also do this through the continuous development path we created for education professionals: the 'honeycomb model.' Teachers build their own development path, giving them autonomy and space to shape their professional and personal development. This continuous development path starts with a start-to-teach day and continues even after the Educational Leadership Course. We encourage teachers to keep learning and evolving into specialists.

The Old Story vs. The New Story

The VU strategy talks about 'future-proof education,' how do you view this?
We are actually 'in between stories,' the world is in transition. On one hand, we have the old story about academic education, where research and knowledge transfer are central. But that old story doesn't quite fit into today's world anymore. Think about the rise of generative AI and major societal challenges. How do we adapt our education to this changing world?

As Arjen Wals, Professor of Transformative Learning for Social-Ecological Sustainability, beautifully describes it: 'business as usual' is no longer possible, so 'education as usual' isn't either. That's what I find challenging about our role at CTL: we are faced with the task of developing a new story for education in this current landscape.

But how do you do that exactly as an educational institution and as a teacher? CTL wants to be a leader in all these changes and innovations. We do this in continuous collaboration with all education stakeholders.

Because the magic of education is created together.

VU Centre for Teaching & Learning

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