Project

Adapt at Work

Adaptive Expertise (AE) and flexibility are important competences for higher education graduates, as the professions are constantly changing. Professionals are continuously confronted with changing working conditions and be able to shape those changes.

The development of AE requires innovative work-based learning environments in which students can practice with 'ill-structured' assignments, in addition to more traditional master-apprentice learning environments and theory-driven lectures. Educational institutions experiment with integrative teaching methods such as challenge-based education, case-based reasoning and inter-professional assignments and with innovative workbased learning environments like e.g. Living Labs and real life workplaces.

Consortium partners, 5 universities and 6 universities of applied sciences, bring educational innovation into Adapt at Work. The project purposely covers a wide range of professional domains (including (para) medical, social, engineering, teaching, and entrepreneurship). The core of the project consists of comparative and thematic case studies, which describe and explain how these innovations contribute to the development of AE. The project starts with three preparatory studies: a review study into concepts and operationalisations of AE; a review study of active ingredients of learning environments for stimulating AE, and a methodological study to support realistic, comparative case studies.

The project constantly shuttles between theory development and practical testing. As a result, (preliminary) results can already be presented to colleagues from the professional fields, educational practice and educational research during the project.