Youth Education & Life Skills
An interview with Pomme from the YELS funded project ‘Equality and Opportunity in the Dutch Educational System’
September 2024
Pomme van de Weerd, Lotte Henrichs and Floris Burgers were granted funding from YELS during the second round of funding for their project “Equality of opportunity in the Dutch educational system: A research-policy network meeting”. In an earlier post, their project has already been introduced to the community. How are they doing now? YELS’s student assistant Bob sat down with Pomme to see what the project is up to.
Can you give us a quick recap of the project?
This part of the project consists of an event in the form of a working conference which aims to connect policy makers, professionals from the field and researchers around the central theme of “Equality of opportunity in the Dutch educational system”. Pomme and the team found that there is already a lot of work is being done on this theme, but that these innovations are all happening in separate “containers”. This event strives to connect all the different people in their respective fields and let knowledge flow to further stimulate transdisciplinary collaboration!
What stage is the project in right now?
In terms of the contents and planning of the day itself, almost everything is finished. The team is now mostly working on the practicalities of the organization like gathering materials for the various innovative methods that will be used during the day and of course, the catering for the borrel. This week, they will visit the location of the event – which is, naturally, a school – to explore different seating arrangements, discuss practicalities and get a feeling for what the day itself is going to be like!
What core values are important in your project?
For the team behind this event, the core values of the project are “understanding and connecting”. In her own research, Pomme spends a lot of her time exploring equality of opportunities in different educational systems, she investigates hierarchies between different levels of education, performance pressures and the way in which educational systems and their conventions seem to be set in stone. While conducting her research, she came across a report that pointed out that there seems to be an increasing amount of contact between researchers and educational professionals surrounding these themes, but that policy makers are still missing from this triangle in terms of contact. This project thus strives to connect these people, so that they can better understand each other and collaborate more intertwined.
The team hopes these values will contribute to progress in terms of equality of opportunities in education. The problem of educational inequality is not one that is fixed easily, and no one party can do it alone. Hopefully, the event will lead to more understanding, and more connections, between people working in educational practice, research and policy. Together, we can achieve more than we can while working in our individual contexts.
What has surprised you the most while working on the project?
Pomme is very excited about, proud of, but also surprised by the vast amount of enthusiasm and energy the project has already seemed to have created. Evidently, the theme of the event is very much alive within the different communities. She is happy to see there seems to be an actual need for a kickstarter for conversations on equality and opportunity within education systems, coming from all different actors in the field. A prime example of this is Floris, who works at the Radboud University in Nijmegen, immediately suggesting to join the project after he heard of it!
How has YELS helped your project?
The organization of events like this one are very important for research communities, but also to connect the progress that is made within research to the bigger societal picture. However, normally there would not be a lot of time and room for actually starting up initiatives. YELS provides a variety of ways to make this possible. The tight-knit community provides quick connections to knowledge, people and other instruments that aid in the organization of events. The support within the community also provides an additional push to think outside of the standard scientific norms and stimulate a certain kind of entrepreneurship!
The “Equality of opportunity in the Dutch educational system”-research-policy network meeting will take place on Friday October 11th. If you have any questions regarding this project, feel free to contact Pomme or Lotte. You might also be able to meet them during one of our DoY Meet-Ups, like the one on October 1st or November 5th!
