Suchergebnisse

This article is a follow-up to, or even a sharpening of, a presentation I offered, three years ago, in this journal TPA, about the closely related research-and-innovation-enrichment of the profession of mid-career students within their two-year part-time master's course. I wrote then about my 12 years of experience at the Urban Education Masters Programme and about my research work at the Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences. At the end of that article I introduced a Möbius strip metaphor, which expresses a teaching-and-researching chain, a strip which keeps unclear when and where teaching comes to an end and researching starts (and the reverse), or: 'the conviction that a vivid and enriching two-way traffic offers good opportunities to strengthen both the students' research skills and their reflective and innovating capacities' (Notten, 2013a: 78–79). And then, in November 2013, a more than 'very interesting' advisory report was published by the Dutch Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR) which argues how dealing with dependencies, knowledge circulation and lifelong learning can be regulated better as they are vital preconditions for future sustainable competitiveness and for better results in the public sector. After summarising that very inspiratory WRR report, I will introduce another even more fruitful metaphor, I hope. A multi-levelled one about how to renew conditions for social intervention science.

Continuing adult education requires continuous education of the educators themselves - a highly self-referential issue. This article focuses on educating a group of 'urban educators' in the western part of the Netherlands who have been involved in broad urban educational programmes: school, parental education and participation, living environment, vocational preparation and the like. These contexts refer to plural and mutually connected ambitions: the necessity for more research in the broad field of urban renewal and its manifold domains; more focus on supporting the professionalisation of mid-career students engaged in Master of Public Administration (MPA) programmes, and in urban education (UrbEd) in particular, in order to build research, reflection and innovation into the course. Universities involved in professional education can make a major contribution to meeting this challenge when they arrange fruitful connections with a Research Centre like 'Growing up in the City'.