Pressure to perform harms well-being and leads to drop-out
About fifty per cent of all Dutch students experience some form of anxiety or depression. They feel burned out and mentally and emotionally drained, mostly because of the heavy pressure to perform. They feel they have to pick the right study in one go and should not be delayed in their studies. Moreover, they have to safeguard their social status and their success outside of academia in order to gain employment after their graduation. They experience difficulties in dividing their attention, which is exacerbated by social media use, leading to feelings of failure, insufficiency, anxiety, and fear of missing out. Eventually, their studies suffer and they feel even more incompetent. As a result PTE-institutes are confronted with study delay and dropout which is especially worrying in light of the growing need for qualified teachers. Therefore student welfare is a main topic for these institutions.
Learning networks to improve involvement, motivation and well-being
The students in the four PTE-institutes involved – especially those who are enrolled in third and fourth year and whose study programme contains a large amount of individual work – indicate that they miss the connection with their PTE-institute and their peers. In order to enhance student engagement these institutions have formed learning networks on various topics relevant for (preservice) teachers, consisting of students of different years, teacher trainers, and in-service teachers. This new small-scale educational setting is expected to offer students room for informal learning and agency, stimulating their involvement and motivation. And involvement and motivation increase the changes of study success.
How to design succesfull learning networks?
Do these learning networks live up to these expectations? That is the what the Welten Institute investigate the next three years. Necessary conditions and success factors when it comes to student participation in networks will be identified: what does students' role entail? How can the obstacles students encounter be circumvented? How can teacher trainers prepare their students more adequately for participation in networks? How does student participation in networks effect their involvement and motivation for learning? And, more generally, how can insights into student involvement, motivation, agency, and informal learning be translated into guidelines for designing learning networks as an educational setting?
The three-year research project Student welfare through involvement and networked learning in primary teacher training is financed by NRO, Netherlands Initiative for Education Research. The research consortium consists of the Welten Institute of the Open University and for teacher training institutions: Iselinge Hogeschool, Marnix Academie, iPabo en Thomas More Hogeschool
