Effects of a Master's programme on teachers and their environment

In this second intermediate report is determined what the provisional effects are of Master’s programmes at HBO level (higher professional education) on teachers and their environment during and after following such a programme. In addition to a quantitative assessment of the effects, a qualitative study into possible explanations and additional benefits of Master’s programmes was performed.

Two effects were found during the second year that teachers follow an HBO Master’s programme, which are independent of the type of Master’s programme. On the one hand their professional knowledge clearly improves, an effect that remains intact after teachers have successfully completed the programme. On the other hand we see reduced satisfaction with the support from the school in the form of available (working) time to follow a Master’s programme. Possibly the Master’s programme takes up (much) more of the time of the teachers concerned than the schools are able and willing to facilitate, or the teachers’ need for support increases during the course of the Master’s programme or the actual support by schools decreases.

In addition to these general effects, specific effects were found for each type of Master’s programme. Based on interviews with teachers these effects could sometimes be explained whereas in other cases no explanation was found. This is partly due to the different contexts and conditions under which teachers follow a Master’s programme. A realistic evaluation reveals that the occurrence of effects is influenced by the manner in which the programme and school practice are interconnected, by the type of educational sector, school policy, the number of colleagues following a Master’s programme, the attitude of the management towards Master’s programmes, school culture, school structure and the available amount of time for teachers to put the acquired knowledge into practice.