The ‘Responsive education and knowledge creation’ professorship researches the creation and using existing knowledge in a collective learning in relation to the social, cultural and natural context. It also researches how we can connect the worlds of the learner, the school and professional practice in a responsive manner.
From 2014 to 2018, in the context of a second so-called ‘responsive education impact professorship’, the professorship also researched transitions in the green domain. How can education facilitate and contribute to transitions in the green domain, based on the global food problem? Solutions to this problem require different production methods and use of raw materials. They require a different organization and different business models. Most of all, they requirea different way of learning and thinking e.g. knowledge building, in order to deal with 'ill define', open ended problems in a different way. This has serious impact on the way students are educated and the way education is organized. The professorship researches how the education sector should support the develoipment of students' knowledge building capacity, so that they can (cognitively) act in often ill-defined, complex, open ended work, societal and life problems and transitional contexts. What thinking skills and collective learning competences do professionals need, what kind of thinking tools do support them?In 2019, the professor held his inaugural speech as an extraordinary professor at the Open University supported by Aeres. The speech was entitled ‘Kennis in-(ter)-actie’ (2018) (translation: knowledge in-(ter)-action’).
Research areas
The professorship has three research foci:
- Which kind of thinking is needed in transition contexts
- What is the potential of knowledge building approach for the development of eco-wisdom,, e.g. the analysis of co-creation, collective knowledge building discourse.
- How can teachers, social and visual media, semantic learning analytics support students’ knowledge building discourse responsive to what is going on in the world.
The professor
Frank de Jong has been a professor at Aeres University of Applied Sciences Wageningen since 2006 and holds the position of professor at the Open University, in the endowed professorship of ‘Responsive learning’.
