Simon Beausaert

• PhD in educational sciences
• Professor (Associate) at Maastricht University

The continuously evolving labor market increases the need to develop students’ employability competencies in higher education. Engaging in reflection is crucial for developing these competencies, as reflection supports students in learning from their experiences and identifying their skills gaps. Nevertheless, without guidance or structure, student...

Centers for Teaching and Learning (CTLs) are gaining visibility in the higher education landscape as key actors that support universities in providing high-quality education and fostering a culture that values teaching and learning. While existing research on CTLs typically focuses on evaluation, impact, or institutionally context-specific work, we...

Purpose Recent graduates are an important source of talent among hired employees as they bring up-to-date knowledge into the organisation. Yet, organisations have difficulties retaining them and recognizing factors influencing their voluntary turnover, which may differ from those influencing voluntary turnover among tenured employees. For example,...

Informal field-based learning (IFBL)—a subset of work-related learning that is informal, intentional, and self-directed—is a developmental process in which motivational, behavioral, and cognitive mechanisms interact. Despite the consensus on the role of cognitive processing in learning, research on informal learning is dominated by a behavioral foc...

Purpose To keep up with their changing environment, organizations are investing in continuous skills development of their employees and therefore implement personal development plans (PDPs). However, to be effective, PDPs require employees to show self-direction in learning (SDL). Autonomy-supportive supervisors can foster employees’ SDL. Therefore...

While society’s demand for creativity is echoed across the world, teachers in higher education often struggle to support students’ development of creative competencies. This transdisciplinary systematic literature review of 58 peer-reviewed empirical studies provides a comprehensive overview of creativity-fostering teacher behaviors identified acro...

Purpose Given the dynamic and fast-evolving labour market, developing students’ employability competences has become of utmost importance for higher education institutions. The ability to reflect is essential to develop these competences, as it helps students to identify their learning needs and make plans for further development. However, reflecti...

Purpose Employers increasingly require students to possess competences that go beyond theoretical knowledge and academic expertise, such as lifelong learning skills. To equip students with these competences, higher education institutes have introduced coaching as part of their teaching programs. The present study qualitatively evaluates a career co...

This study explores the potential of a new perspective on research into the impact higher education has on the civic engagement of students. We propose a shift from viewing engagement itself as the key dependent variable to two ‘fundamental constituents’, political interest and agency. Both constituents have been presented as either static or deter...

Graduates require employability competences, such as flexibility and team working skills, to gain and maintain employment. Online learning platforms (OLPs) can provide students with resources for reflection, which is a key competence for employability. However, little is known about the design of OLPs meant to provide reflective practices that fost...

The present study aims to develop, validate, and cross‐validate an instrument measuring three proactive social informal learning activities, namely feedback seeking, help seeking and information seeking. Prior research mainly focused on detecting or measuring the frequency of these seeking behaviours and did not consider whether the information, he...

To keep up with technological advances and macro-economic trends, higher education has increasingly focused on developing students’ employability competences through mentoring programs. However, measuring the effectiveness of such mentoring programs has remained difficult, because many mentoring measurements are not validated or grounded in theory....

Purpose This paper aims to measure the extent to which students possess the necessary competences of an employable graduate, the authors explored the development and validation of a questionnaire that measures employability competences of students in higher education through combining insights from higher education and workplace learning literature...

This qualitative research explores how the broader social context supports employees' self‐directed learning (SDL) when using a personal development plan (PDP), focusing especially on the people manager's role. Based on deductive and inductive analysis of verbatim transcripts from 28 semi‐structured interviews with employees and people managers in...

Two important and current trends in the domain of work are the aging workforce and the high and increasing requirement for work-related learning due to the rate of technological advancement and innovation. Together, they create a precarious situation, as many theories suggest a decline in motivation to learn as people age. This study investigates a...

Lifelong learning is crucial for professionals to continuously develop and update their knowledge and skills, and for organizations to create and sustain competitive advantage. In this regard, feedback seeking is a powerful vehicle to gain new knowledge and insights in one’s development and performance. The current research dives deeper in the conc...

Education is one sector being challenged by aging staff, as well as by increased pressure to innovate. In order to cope with these challenges, educational institutions require teaching staff members, who include teachers, support staff and managers, to show a high level of employability. In this survey-based study, the predictive value of quantitat...

This study goes beyond the classic paradigm that newly qualified teachers (NQTs) are in need of formal support in order to cope with the challenges they face during the early stages of their teaching career. The focus of this survey study with 443 NQTs in Flanders, Belgium is whether NSTs’ proactive seeking of feedback from the principal and from t...

Employability, defined as a set of competences that allow an individual to create and maintain a job, is pivotal for both organizations and employees. Organizations with an employable workforce remain competitive and individuals who are employable experience better career development. The present study investigates self‐directed learning orientatio...

Purpose The present study proposes coaching as a pedagogical intervention to prepare students for transitioning to the labour market. Taking a competence-based approach, the proposed coaching practice aims to enhance students' employability competences to facilitate a smoother school-to-work transition. However, what transition coaching looks like...

Purpose In a fast evolving labour market, higher education graduates need to develop employability competences. Key in becoming employable is the ability to reflect on learning experiences, both within a curriculum as well as extra-curricular and work placements. This paper wants to conceptualise how an online learning platform might entail a refle...

Employees' feedback-seeking networks at work are important for employees' learning and employability. Earlier studies often neglected the specific characteristics of the different relationships an individual employee has at work. We conduct social network analyses in seven samples to study inter-individual differences in feedback-seeking relationsh...

Purpose This study examines whether learning climate relates to employability competences through social informal learning (i.e. feedback, help and information seeking). Design/methodology/approach Multiple regression analyses and structural equation modeling were used to test direct and indirect effects in a sample of 372 employees working in two...

This research examines the social side of learning among professionals in the fast evolving and knowledge intense field of consultancy. Its first aim is to unravel social informal learning by proposing a new, integrated framework of workplace learning. Its second aim is to explore the role of learning climate for social informal learning behavior a...

The well-being and mental health of principals is being threatened by changing working conditions such as a broader variety of roles and tasks. In this article, we argue that social capital might buffer against declining (mental) health. The purpose of this study was to investigate the potential influence of social capital, including both internal...

High percentages of newly qualified teachers (NQTs) drop out during their first 5 years in the classroom. Often, formal support systems are put in place to overcome 'practice shock'. However, in this research, it was hypothesised that it is not the formal support structure put in place that determines whether starting teachers feel satisfied in the...

The aging workforce challenges companies to keep their aging employees employable in the workforce. This paper gives an indication as to which employees are more likely to be interested in further learning and employability. Specifically, the aim of this study was to investigate the role of chronological age and achievement goal orientations for in...

Our study aims to develop and validate a multidimensional Innovative Work Behaviour instrument to measure teachers IWB. Current IWB conceptualizations and operationalizations need further attention. Existing measurements miss empirical evidence of the construct validity and moreover do not include a sustainability dimension. Based on a thorough and...

The twenty‐first century labour market requires employees that proactively shape innovations and solve complex problems. Professionals in the education sector are expected to perform innovative behaviour that not only entails the generation, but also the realization and sustainable implementation of new ideas. In a sample of 458 employees in Dutch...

The article focuses on a review of the literature over the last twenty years on the concept of teachers' informal learning, how it is defined and measured. The jounal provide a free access until May 08, 2020. You can find the final version of the article on ScienceDirect, which you are welcome to read or download https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1a...

Highlights • Literature has been inconsistent in defining teachers' informal learning. • The present article suggest a theoretical common definition. • No best practice has been established for the measurement of informal learning. • The article give advice on measurements use and suggest some innovative methods.

In different streams of literature employability has been defined in different, often related ways. We take an interdisciplinary approach, combining insights from research on higher education and workplace learning, taking a Western perspective. In doing so we take a multi-dimensional, competence-based approach. Our approach to conceptualizing empl...

Fluctuating demands and fast changing job-requirements require organizations to invest in employees so that they are able to take up new tasks. In this respect, fostering employees’ employability is high on the agenda of many organizations. As a prerequisite for creating employability, many scholars have focused on the role of social informal learn...

This study examines primary and secondary school teachers’ professional development through informal learning activities and the reasons for undertaking these informal learning activities. For this purpose, 41 interviews were conducted and data were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Results highlight that the reasons or motiv...

High percentages of newly qualified teachers drop out during their first five years in the classroom. Often formal support systems are put in place to help newly qualified teachers overcome the ‘practice shock’. However, in this research it was hypothesized that it is not the formal support structure put in place that determines whether starting te...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of chronological age and formaland informal learning activities on employability. Furthermore, indirect effects of age on employabilityvia learning activities were tested.Design/methodology/approach – The authors conducted quantitative, cross-sectional surveyresearch (n¼780) in three Dut...

Today’s world of work is forcing companies to change their approach to learning. Their talent strategy needs to foster self-directed learning (SDL) as a process. SDL is an instructional process in which people take the primary responsibility in learning situations. To enhance job performance, their talent strategy must also include tools that suppo...

Teachers’ innovative work behavior and professional development is receiving more attention lately. More precisely, it is argued that teachers’ formal and informal learning is crucial to anticipate and deal with continuous changes and innovations in technology and didactics, for example. Therefore, this study researches the teachers’ innovative wor...

Ce texte met en avant un outil qui permet à chaque enseignant, qu’il soit débutant ou expérimenté, de signaler les atouts qu’il possède et qu’il peut offrir à ses collègues. Dans leur contribution, Sanne de Vos, Simon Beausaert, Johan De Wilde et Johan Lecot présentent la carte des talents. Il s’agit d’un outil d’échange de savoirs et de satisfacti...

Les écrits scientifiques étayent largement le rôle de l'accompagnement comme levier majeur dans la continuité d'un développement professionnel des enseignants. Cette dimension de temporalité liée à l'idée de parcours apparaît importante. L'accompa-gnement est dès lors envisagé en formation initiale, lors de l'insertion professionnelle et tout au lo...

Introduction de l'ouvrage. L’enseignement est une profession en constante évolution, pour laquelle les exi- gences du métier se complexi ent. Cela accroît les attentes à l’égard des ensei- gnants, qui doivent à la fois faire face aux transformations de la société et répondre aux nouvelles politiques de l’éducation ; prendre en considération l’ensei...

The current appreciation for the workplace as a learning environment has not always been present. Till the eighties, learning at the workplace was for those who could not successfully complete a school career. Training was considered as something that happened far away from the workplace (Van der Klink et al., 2004). Since the eighties a revaluatio...

Social approaches to work-related informal learning, such as proactive feedback-seeking, help-seeking and information-seeking, are important determinants of development in the workplace. Unfortunately, previous research has failed to clearly conceptualize these forms of learning and does not provide a validated and generally applicable measurement...

Aujourd’hui, les organisations sont à la recherche de façons de s’adapter aux changements massifs et rapides de leur environnement, notamment en soutenant leurs employés compétents et talentueux. Dans cette optique, elles investissent massivement dans des systèmes électroniques de gestion de talents, dont le Plan de Développement Personnel (PDP) fa...

Are our teachers able to develop and keep up with changing insights, innovative didactical approaches and technological innovations? According to Dirk van Damme, the Head of the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation of the OECD (2014) teachers in Europe do not show sufficient skills to cope with these challenges. It is assumed that teacher...

Organizations today are looking for ways to adapt to massive and rapid changes in their environment, for example by supporting their competent and talented employees. For that purpose, they heavily invest in electronic talent management systems, such as Personal Development Plans (PDPs). While existing research has explored PDP effectiveness - i.e....

Background: More than ever before, school principals are dealing with stress and burnout, resulting from increasing role demands and decreasing decision latitude and autonomy. Following the Demand–Support–Constraints model, reasons for stress and burnout can be found in the lack of social support in the environment. Purpose: This longitudinal study...

Due to developments in the current dynamic business environment which is more global and competitive than ever, employees’ lifelong learning and the way organizations support their continuous development is pivotal. Many organizations introduce personal development plans (PDPs) to support employees’ learning, however, not always taking into account...

Personality, emotional intelligence, and learning style are generally considered important success factors and career determinants in hospitality management. This study assesses the influence of these antecedents on the development of expertise in hospitality management. Correlational, ANOVA and hierarchical regression analyses demonstrated that (a...

Purpose – The demographic shift and the rapid rate of innovations put age and employability high on policy makers’ and human resource managers’ agenda. However, the authors do not sufficiently understand the link between these concepts. The authors set out to investigate the relationship between age and employability and aim to identify motivationa...

Purpose – The topic of informal learning at work has received increasing attention in the past years. The purpose of this study is to explore in which informal learning activities employees engage and what are the drivers for informal learning. Design/methodology/approach – Semi-structured interviews were taken from ten human resources (HR) and te...

Development of professional expertise is the process of continually transforming the repertoire of knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary to solve domain-specific problems which begins in late secondary education and continues during higher education and throughout professional life. One educational goal is to train students to think more like e...

Leren en werken goed laten aansluiten? Een complex vraagstuk! Studenten en startende werknemers zijn vaak niet optimaal voorbereid, opleiders weten niet goed wat er op de werkvloer speelt en praktijkbegeleiders hebben weinig zicht op wat stagiairs al op de opleiding hebben geleerd. Daarnaast zijn er vanuit Human Resources Development vragen over he...

In this study, we examined how social informal learning and formal learning of faculty staff in higher education relate to their employability. Data were collected from 209 faculty staff members working at a Dutch university. Results showed that social informal learning was related to the employability of faculty staff. Further analysis revealed th...

In today’s time of demographic change and rapid innovation, age and employability as well as the role of learning and development are high on the agenda of policy makers and human resource managers. Empirical studies, however, do not provide consistent evidence for the relation between age and employability and between age and work-related formal a...

Employees in countries with advanced industrial economies need to continuously develop their competences to sustain their employability - that is, to have a set of competences that enables them to maintain or find an adequate job. But how should efforts to enhance employability progress in the context of the demographic shift? Previous research sug...

This study was conducted to investigate which pitfalls users of personal development plans (PDPs) perceive in business and governmental organisations with mandatory PDP use. Hundred and thirty-one written statements of PDP users across three Dutch organisations were analysed and categorised into nine pitfalls. Next to an overall lack of use and inc...

Communities of Learning (CoL) kunnen het leerproces van deelnemers binnen online leer modules bevorderen. Eerder onderzoek heeft echter hiërarchische posities als een drempel voor collaboratieve leerprocessen vaak geneeerd. Dit artikel gaat in op deze tekortkomingen door het uitvoeren van empirische studies over 25 CoL ingericht als onderdeel van p...

This chapter addresses the use of personal development plan (PDP) as learning and development tools. It discusses five main themes. First, the chapter defines a PDP and its characteristics, referring to the learning and motivation theories on which the use of the tool is grounded. Second, it outlines the different purposes of the use of PDPs. Third...

In today's time of demographic change and rapid innovation, age and employability as well as the role of learning and development are high on the agenda of human resource managers and chief learning officers. However, existing research has failed to integrate these concepts in a clear model and offers little explanation of how the concepts may be l...

This study examines the nature of hospitality managers’ knowledge when solving typical hotel management problems. In a cross-sectional study, data were collected from first-, fourth-, and eighth-semester students and compared with experts who had seven to ten years of experience working as hospitality managers. Three typical hospitality management...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of chronological age and formal and informal learning activities on employability. Furthermore, indirect effects of age on employability via learning activities were tested. Design/methodology/approach – The authors conducted quantitative, cross-sectional survey research ( n =780) in th...

The present article analyzes social engagement as an outcome of higher education. It can be conceived as an attitude that by definition only manifests itself over time, and should therefore not be assessed or measured during the years of study or at graduation. The argument is being made that social engagement should be understood in terms of condi...

Purpose – This article aims to understand conditions under which personal development plans (PDPs) can effectively be implemented for professional learning. Both the organization's manner of supporting the PDP practice as well as the individual employee's motivation is taken into account. Design/methodology/approach – A questionnaire was distribut...

Purpose This study aims to examine the effects of using a personal development plan (PDP) on the undertaking of learning activities and the employee's job competencies. Design/methodology/approach Data from Dutch pharmacy assistants was collected ( n =2,271). Analyses of variance (ANOVAs) as well as regression analyses were conducted on this datas...

Background: Research on the relation between teaching and learning approaches has been mainly conducted in higher education and it is not yet clear to what extent the results can be generalised when it comes to secondary education.Purpose: The purpose of this study was to research how students in secondary education perceive their teachers’ approac...

When confronted with an aging population, fast-developing organizations come to realize that the employee’s continuing professional development drives business success. In order to gain competitive advantage, attracting and integrating new highly skilled workers and developing, motivating, and retaining the current workers have become crucial (Noe...

Purpose – This study aims to examine the effects of using a personal development plan (PDP) on the undertaking of learning activities and the employee's job competencies. Design/methodology/approach – Data from Dutch pharmacy assistants was collected (n ¼ 2,271). Analyses of variance (ANOVAs) as well as regression analyses were conducted on this da...

More than 3 million students study outside their home country, primarily at a Western university. A common belief among educators is that international students are insufficiently adjusted to higher education in their host country, both academically and socially. Furthermore, several groups of international students experience considerable amounts...

In today’s fast changing knowledge economy, organizations are forced to give priority to strategic human resource development to gain and maintain a competitive advantage (Guthridge et al., The McKinsey Quarterly 1:49–59, 2008). Therefore, tools such as Personal Development Plans (PDPs) are increasingly implemented. This assessment tool is used for...

To cite this article: Simon Beausaert, Mien Segers & Wim Gijselaers (2011): The use of a personal development plan and the undertaking of learning activities, expertise-growth, flexibility and performance: the role of supporting assessment conditions, Human Resource Development International, 14:5, 527-543 This article may be used for research, tea...

Today, organizations are increasingly implementing assessment tools such as Personal Development Plans. Although the true power of the tool lies in supporting the employee’s continuing professional development, organizations implement the tool for various different purposes, professional development purposes on the one hand and promotion/salary rai...

Despite the popularity of Personal Development Plans (PDPs) in the workplace, relatively little is known about the actual use of the tool and its impact on the employee’s learning and development. Empirical evidence of the impact or effectiveness of PDPs is limited. As a consequence, the implementation of the tool by Human Resource Development is o...

Confronted with the speed of technological advancements and increasing global competition, organizations have come to realize that their employees' continuous learning drives busi-ness success. A popular tool to support and enhance continuous learning is the personal development plan (PDP). Despite its popularity, empirical evidence of the effectiv...

It is evident that in the current knowledge economy learning does not stop after graduation. Learning for a profession is only a starting point for learning in the profession. One tool to enhance learning in the profession is a personal development plan (PDP). Although this tool is very popular to date, there is no review study available to inform...