School innovation in Europe: making students the owners of their learning process though teacher empowerment in the Tjotter school

In 2011/2012, the Dutch School Inspectorate concluded that student results in the Tjotter school were too low. The school used to have a negative pedagogical climate, and suffered from a loss of trust between school and parents. Eventually, the school staff lost confidence in the former school leader and requested the school board to appoint a new leader. With an arrival of the current school leader four years ago, innovative processes started. A common view of education and teacher mutual learning was established, in addition to the culture of continuous improvement. Key interventions: improvement of teachers’ pedagogical and didactical skills: team schooling with subsequent follow up and monitoring within the learning community of teachers, individual coaching and change of personnel creating student portfolios to make students the owners of their learning process while students were also encouraged to participate in its formation other approaches being used at school: positive behaviour support; encouraging student participation and (direct) feedback on student’s results; ‘Teach like a Champion’; and HGW (Action Oriented Approach) for student differentiation.