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Despite our deeply rooted belief that education should be changed, the diffusion of well-intended initiatives for change within the Dutch national educational system, and even within individual schools, appears to be rather problematical. The argument, stated in the introduction and developed further in this thesis, is that this problem is caused by a neglect of both content and context. Chapter 1 substantiates this argument by analysing current academic discourse about new public management, an ideology that has influenced educational change heavily until now. This discourse can be characterized by a lack of concreteness in combination with an often missing focus on the work practices of executive professionals in organisations. A number of explanatory models within the organizational sciences, despite their – mostly – implicit use of causality, have a weak or missing link with the observable reality. As a result, these models are of limited use for predicting the success of educational change efforts. We need a rethinking of educational change. The CC approach, developed in Chapter 2, may be useful for this rethinking. It rests heavily on the work of the cognitive anthropologist Dan Sperber’s Explaining Culture: A Naturalistic Approach, as he states that any domain within social sciences should be naturalized by establishing connections with one or several neighbouring natural sciences. Applied to educational change – and organizational sciences in general ‒ change should be naturalized in order to establish causality, by creating connections with cognitive science. The cognitive-contextual approach to educational change, developed in this thesis, is an attempt to do so. In this thesis this approach is elaborated into an implementation test: the CC method. Preliminary versions of the CC method have been used in two case studies, undertaken in Dutch schools of secondary and vocational education. The CC approach gives both content and context an important place in educational change processes, in at least two ways. Firstly, the CC approach requires an elaboration of the abstract terms in which many change initiatives, centrally defined changes in particular, are normally described. The results are concrete prescriptions on the level of concrete teacher practices. Secondly, teachers have often developed practices that they value positively, reflecting their idiosyncratic and convenient way of dealing with the challenges of teaching. These practices are burned into a partially automatic whole of actions and reactions. As a consequence, even with their active support and cooperation it is questionable whether experienced teachers will change their work practices as long as the cognitive relevance of their current context is not decreased. In order to increase the chance of success in these cases, not only should the relevance of the change content be sufficiently high, but the relevance of current practices should be decreased deliberately and simultaneously as well. The CC approach provides an analytic framework to estimate this cognitive relevance of both change content and teachers' current workings practices. The CC approach has consequences for NPM-inspired initiatives, including in areas other than education, such as youth care and various government institutions. I would suggest that NPM reformers use the CC approach to get to grips with the complexity of both the initial situation (context) and the future situation (content). I invite NPM researchers to leave behind the world of abstractions and to embark on this fundamental return to the observable reality, in order to really improve public services.

Een van de belangrijkste oorzaken van problemen bij landverhuizen is culture shock. We laten zien dat in de literatuur vooral aandacht is voor de praktische en psychologische factoren die een rol spelen wanneer iemand van land wisselt. De aandacht voor de invloed van landverhuizen op relaties is relatief onderbelicht gebleven, terwijl er zowel in het land waaruit men vertrekt als in het land waar men naartoe verhuist veel mensen geraakt worden door de verhuizing. We laten zien hoe ontwikkelingswerkers die van land verhuizen, omgaan met culture shock die dat teweeg brengt en wat zij zeggen (in retrospectie) nodig te hebben. Tenslotte beschouwen we deze ervaringen vanuit de contextuele benadering

Dit artikel beschrijft de resultaten van een empirisch praktijkonderzoek naar de effecten van kanker in het gezin en de meerwaarde van de contextuele benadering door de professional. Er wordt uitleg gegeven over het begrip contextuele benadering en handvatten om dit in de dagelijkse praktijk toe te passen in gesprekken met patiënten en naasten.

Een van de belangrijkste oorzaken van problemen bij landverhuizen is culture shock. We laten zien dat in de literatuur vooral aandacht is voor de praktische en psychologische factoren die een rol spelen wanneer iemand van land wisselt. De aandacht voor de invloed van landverhuizen op relaties is relatief onderbelicht gebleven, terwijl er zowel in het land waaruit men vertrekt als in het land waar men naartoe verhuist veel mensen geraakt worden door de verhuizing. We laten zien hoe ontwikkelingswerkers die van land verhuizen, omgaan met culture shock die dat teweeg brengt en wat zij zeggen (in retrospectie) nodig te hebben. Tenslotte beschouwen we deze ervaringen vanuit de contextuele benadering

Dit artikel beschrijft de resultaten van een empirisch praktijkonderzoek naar de effecten van kanker in het gezin en de meerwaarde van de contextuele benadering door de professional. Er wordt uitleg gegeven over het begrip contextuele benadering en handvatten om dit in de dagelijkse praktijk toe te passen in gesprekken met patiënten en naasten.