When developments in technology move very fast, but in education it takes a long time before new ways of learning can be embraced, what do you do as an educational publisher?
Eric Razenberg, CEO of ThiemeMeulenhoff, tells the story.
“It starts with the curriculum. SLO, the central-government organisation that deals with curriculum development, draws this up. They are in charge of the what: what do children need to learn to be prepared for further education or for society? Once that is clear, we set to work on the ‘how’ question. How are we going to teach it to those children? We then create an outline of the method. We put that to teachers and authors and then we get to work making it. For each method this process takes roughly two years.”
Developments in education
The question is always whether educational publishers are the driving force behind developments or whether they merely follow them. “We are not in charge of what is taught in schools – the government decides that. So we are certainly not the driving force there. At the moment, for instance, there is a lot of attention for language, arithmetic and reading: for many children these basic skills are not good enough. Those subjects are therefore emphasised in the curriculum, together with digital literacy and citizenship. We then make sure that the methods we develop align with the curriculum.
So we are not leading in what is taught, but we do have a vision on HOW children and young people learn. Our knowledge of educational processes and of what works in learning and teaching plays a big role there. We pay a great deal of attention to learning design: what scientific insights are there about effective learning, how do we apply those principles, into what mould do we pour the material, which structure works best, what are inspiring forms of teaching? That is how we try to challenge pupils and make the best method in terms of quality.”
“We keep challenging schools with innovative teaching methods, in the interest of education.”
Unfortunately education responds only slowly, Eric states. “With ThiemeMeulenhoff we always try to stay at most one small step ahead. Do you ‘walk’ any faster? Then schools ignore your method. We once put millions into a platform for personalised learning, but nobody was waiting for it at the time. Teachers thought it was cool and promising, but did not dare to start using it because they could not see through exactly what the computer was doing. They felt – rightly, of course – responsible for children’s learning process, and the computer was a ‘black box’ to them. We think teachers would have dealt with it differently these days. We keep challenging schools with innovative teaching methods, in the interest of education, but we now tune it better to the pace of the education field.”
So what about the Netherlands’ position relative to the rest of the world? Are we ahead in the field of educational innovation, or actually behind?
“Ahead, absolutely. Innovations for education mostly come from Silicon Valley or the UK and are often first tried out internationally in countries such as Denmark, Israel and the Netherlands. For companies in the US and the UK, those are the three springboards to the rest of the world. We have an innovation-focused economy: the Netherlands is known as a country that easily adopts new things and can then market them to other countries. We are, for example, a good ten years ahead of Germany, certainly when it comes to adopting technology in education. That said, it is still disappointing in the Netherlands too, especially when you consider that internet penetration in our country is 99%. It is then strange that only half of primary-school pupils in the Netherlands have a laptop or tablet available at school. Nevertheless, we in the Netherlands are much further along than the rest of the world.”
In his career at ThiemeMeulenhoff, Eric has been able to set many changes in motion. ThiemeMeulenhoff is a strong brand, but Eric also had to shift down a gear a few times. “I have had to take off a few coats when it comes to my ambitions and enthusiasm. Innovation in education simply takes time, as it turns out. Honestly, I have yet to see whether I will live to witness every school making optimal use of the technological possibilities.”
“It is often said that teachers do not want to innovate. That is nonsense. It is certainly not unwillingness. I think that in the current education system they are ‘surviving’.”
There is a big shortage of teachers, and so they sometimes have to keep an eye on several classes. Is a full classroom a safe learning environment for teachers to try something new? No. If you make a small mistake, you spend a quarter of an hour getting the class back on task. You lose your credibility. Teachers absolutely have the ambition to learn things and to improve, but they are not given the opportunity. School leaders must ensure there is room for this and that teachers can implement it slowly but surely. In my view, directors and school boards often lack the leadership qualities that the 21st century demands to achieve this.”
A lawyer for publishers
Educational publishers run into various legal questions. “To get straight to the point: copyright is our lifeblood. Some time ago there was a case against a platform that had come up with a clever online solution to make arithmetic more fun for primary-school pupils. They had done a round of the various publishers to ask whether they could use the content of their methods, but had been told ‘no’ everywhere. So they simply copied it, from several publishers … Well, that is one way to do it. Naturally we took collective action against this. We joined forces with other publishers and started a case. But the other party got wind of it, reacted at lightning speed and replaced all the copied content. These are the matters that lawyers like Jetse help us with.”
AI also brings major challenges when it comes to copyright. “If you have a text written by ChatGPT, there is no copyright on it. But how will we still be able to prove, in future, that our texts were written by our authors and not by AI?”
Another hot topic is privacy, Eric explains. “In 2015 there was a provocative item on RTL Nieuws. The headline was: ‘The data of two million pupils could easily end up on the street’. This was of course greatly exaggerated, but suddenly there was a lot of attention for the fact that data of children and young people is in the hands of educational publishers. The government urgently wanted to talk to us about how we safeguard the privacy of these pupils and students. That eventually gave rise to the Education Privacy Covenant, which sets out all the agreements we have made about this. This covenant is regularly revised and adapted to new developments and circumstances.”
As a publisher, you want to use the data you have to improve your products (methods) and optimise learning processes, tailored to the needs of pupils and students. “It is interesting, especially in digital learning environments, to analyse the data and present the pupil with more challenging or, conversely, simpler problems when they need that. The scope to use the data in that way is unfortunately still limited at the moment.”
AI in education
If we zoom in on AI (which also uses a lot of data): what is the influence of these smart tools on education? That it is a major challenge for schools is already clear. “Higher education, for example, uses software for plagiarism checks. If you take chunks of text from the internet, the software recognises it. Texts from ChatGPT (or other tools) cannot be traced. Writing a paper is thus suddenly no longer a good way to assess.”
Still, we must embrace AI and give it a place in education, Eric believes. “It offers an enormous number of opportunities. And yes, we as a publisher also face challenges created by AI, but I know it is not going away. I am currently doing a course at MIT in America on the impact and possibilities of AI for our business strategy, so that I can make good choices for the future with more knowledge in hand. One of our designers recently had a table of contents for a new title made by AI, without mentioning that it had been put together by AI. The authors were impressed and could not fault it. Speeding up such processes with the help of AI saves an enormous amount of time, of course, which allows us to bring methods to market faster and at lower cost. AI can also be deployed as a virtual teacher within methods. If a child gets stuck on a mathematical problem, they can consult the AI tool, which briefly explains again how it works, so that the child can move on. In short: we try to surf along on the wave of AI rather than let ourselves be swamped by it, because the impact is and remains enormous and there are many interesting opportunities. For education and therefore for us too.”
Lawyers involved
Jaap Versteeg
LawyerJaap acts extensively for clients in the creative industries, including music, television/streaming/film, events, theatre, art and culture. He advises and litigates in the fields of intellectual property law, music law, unlawful publications, contract law and employment law.
