‘Universities should deliver more well-qualified teachers’

In his letter to the editor, Tom Vroegrijk argues that universities can and should take responsibility in offering equal opportunities, remediating students with ‘inadequate prior education’. But at least one important responsibility of universities seems to be missing: educating a sufficient number of well-qualified teachers.

Both the number of students entering our university and their knowledge level are strongly influenced by their secondary school teachers. This implies, at the very least, the necessity for an adequate number of teachers, all with an outstanding teaching qualities.

Limited number of students

The teacher education program (in Dutch) at TU Delft does the latter extremely well. Our graduates are voted ‘Teacher of the Year’, are involved in writing schoolbooks, participate in curriculum development, create open teaching materials, and some are even involved in scientific research into teaching methodologies (often through specific research grants for teachers).

‘Upcoming semester, only two students will pursue the chemistry teacher program’

However, the number of students opting for the teacher education program is very limited. In the past six months, only three physics teachers were trained. Upcoming semester, only two students will pursue the chemistry teacher program. Percentage-wise, this is alarming: only 1% of the Applied Physics students opt for the teacher education program. These numbers starkly contrast with the number of secondary schools (1,450) in the Netherlands.

Several initiatives are developed to attract more teachers. One of these is the recently established Co-Teach (in Dutch) project. This programme offers the opportunity to teach some lessons without a qualification. While this is a wonderful TU Delft initiative, it is not a systematic solution to the shortage of teachers. The participants may only give a handful of lessons under the supervision of an experienced and certified teacher.

Minor

Tom Vroegrijk argues, then, for mandatory remediation for first-year students who are risk of dropping out. But it is important to remember that remediation will only impact the students at our university, while the responsibility of universities with teacher education programs reaches much further. If we want to improve the decreasing performance in mathematics and ensure the knowledge level of our incoming students, TU Delft will have to safeguard both the number of teachers and their educational qualities.

A straightforward initial measure could involve informing all first- and second-year students about the option to obtain a teaching qualification during their minor, granting them to independently teach in lower secondary education and VMBO (pre-vocational education). Informing them can already be done by sharing this interview (in Dutch) with Vice-Rector Magnificus Rob Mudde on Brightspace.

There may be other ideas to increase enrolment in the teacher education program and thereby ensure that we attract enough students with high knowledge levels. We, from the teacher education program, welcome those ideas!