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Global environmental change problems due to their unstructured characteristics, being marked by great uncertainties and a big number of stakeholders, prove to be too difficult to solve in a traditional way alone. They call for a more proactive approach. One of them advocates systems change driven by technological innovations accompanied by institutional and sociocultural transformations. Transition management is a new policy strategy based on this philosophy. It has recently emerged in the Netherlands and has been adopted by the Dutch government as a relevant framework for shaping its policy towards sustainability. The transition management writings emphasise the importance of 'learning' in the process of induced change towards sustainability. Although this can indeed be quite a significant means for inducing change, the literature on transition management is not explicit enough about the methodological organisation of the learning process. Since transition management has become an important approach in the Netherlands, we consider it relevant to deploy some learning insights and experience gained in the Dutch Climate OptiOns for the Long-term (COOL) project to analyse and improve the process of transition management. In particular, we look into the first two steps of transition management, i.e., organising a transition arena and making visions.

Teachers are expected to build strong relationships with their students' parents, but little is known about the way they develop their perspectives on parent involvement and their competences in relating to parents. To gain insight in these developments, a survey study was conducted about the content of the curricula of three teacher training institutes in the Netherlands and the impact of teacher training on preservice teachers' attitudes and competences. Surveys were administered to a total of 545 preservice teachers from all grades of their training. Overall, it seemed that levels of competence of Dutch student teachers were quite low, despite the fact that teacher training programmes provided many curricular components on this issue. Some positive though small effects of teacher training programmes have been observed. In general, however, students don't feel well prepared to communicate with parents when starting their teaching career. Although some differences between teacher training institutes exist, the effectiveness of teacher training programmes did not appear to differ across institutes. Student teachers' attitudes towards parents were nevertheless very positive. These attitudes, however, were not related to their teacher training experiences, but seemed to be founded in their personal biography.

International audience ; Environmental pollution, animal diseases, and food scandals have marked the agricultural sector in the Netherlands and elsewhere in the 1990s. The sector was high on the political and societal agenda and plans were developed to redesign the sector into a more sustainable direction. Generally, monitoring of the agricultural sector is done by means of quantitative indicators to measure social, ecological, and economic performance. To give more attention to the normative character of sustainable development, the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature, and Food Quality requested for a participatory approach to evaluate Dutch agriculture, which was characterized by stakeholder workshops, dialogue, and learning. This article describes and reflects on this approach, using the Fourth Generation Evaluation framework developed by Guba and Lincoln (Fourth generation evaluation, 1989). Although there are several improvements to be made, the evaluation approach was successful in the way that it gave insight into perceptions, visions, and ambitions of agricultural stakeholders with regard to sustainability. It also encouraged learning about ways to make the agricultural sector more sustainable. And it contributed to the development of a monitoring approach that is complementary to the quantitative, indicator-based, evaluation approach that is generally used and that can be used every few years to see how perceptions and ambitions of stakeholders have developed.

Environmental pollution, animal diseases, and food scandals have marked the agricultural sector in the Netherlands and elsewhere in the 1990s. The sector was high on the political and societal agenda and plans were developed to redesign the sector into a more sustainable direction. Generally, monitoring of the agricultural sector is done by means of quantitative indicators to measure social, ecological, and economic performance. To give more attention to the normative character of sustainable development, the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature, and Food Quality requested for a participatory approach to evaluate Dutch agriculture, which was characterized by stakeholder workshops, dialogue, and learning. This article describes and reflects on this approach, using the Fourth Generation Evaluation framework developed by Guba and Lincoln (Fourth generation evaluation, 1989). Although there are several improvements to be made, the evaluation approach was successful in the way that it gave insight into perceptions, visions, and ambitions of agricultural stakeholders with regard to sustainability. It also encouraged learning about ways to make the agricultural sector more sustainable. And it contributed to the development of a monitoring approach that is complementary to the quantitative, indicator-based, evaluation approach that is generally used and that can be used every few years to see how perceptions and ambitions of stakeholders have developed.