When people think of innovation, their minds often go to Silicon Valley or flashy tech startups. But some of the most enduring breakthroughs don’t arrive as sudden disruptions — they take root in communities, shaped over time by collective effort. For centuries, the Netherlands has been such a place, where ingenuity has been woven into daily life as much as into grand design.
Dutch ingenuity is everywhere. They’ve engineered water management systems that have kept their country dry and set a global standard for climate resilience. They also built the first multinational corporations and the first stock exchange. More recently, the Dutch have led the way in sustainable agriculture, producing more food per square meter than almost any country on Earth while minimizing environmental harm.
Perhaps the most quietly radical strand of Dutch innovation has been in education, where purpose has always shaped structure.
Dating back to the early 20th century, the Dutch have approached schooling not as a fixed structure, but as something that can — and should — be shaped by purpose. Democratic schools like De Werkplaats challenged traditional hierarchies long before student-centered learning became a global trend. The Netherlands pioneered bilingual education models, vocational pathways and, more recently, schools without grade levels or fixed classrooms. They’ve designed for inclusion, for flexibility and for local autonomy. The Dutch have long treated schooling as a design challenge —something to be continually adjusted in response to purpose, community, and context.
That tradition is alive today at Saxion University of Applied Sciences, where the Academie Pedagogiek & Onderwijs (School of Education) and its partner schools are pioneering new approaches to team-based staffing. Building on decades of European collaborations, Saxion’s partnership with ASU and the Next Education Workforce™ marks a new chapter: one where Dutch and American educators learn from each other.
A two-way exchange
This past March, I visited Emmaschool in Apeldoorn, a Dutch school working with Saxion as it begins to implement team-based staffing. The school is rethinking how teachers collaborate, and what struck me most wasn’t only the open architecture or the multi-age classrooms — it was the mindset of the educators.
At Emmaschool, teachers were trying new ways of grouping students and structuring teams, especially to support children learning Dutch as an additional language. I watched students shift fluidly between instructional groups based on need rather than age or homeroom. Teachers shared responsibility for learners, leaning on each other’s strengths to provide tailored support.
This work at Emmaschool illustrates the heart of our blossoming partnership between Saxion and the Next Education Workforce. Saxion and its partner schools are eager to learn from U.S. approaches to strategic school staffing. Simultaneously, we are learning what it looks like when the elements of the Next Education Workforce are translated into a different system, cultural, and policy context.
Already, Saxion sends students to Arizona for semester-long placements in team-based schools. These pre-service educators live and learn alongside U.S. teacher teams, then return to the Netherlands with fresh insights and lived experience.
And now, we’re dreaming bigger. What would it look like for ASU students to do the same in Dutch schools? How might our faculty collaborate on shared research or co-designed coursework? Could this partnership become a hub for international learning about educator teams?
Why team-based staffing matters — everywhere
The conventional one-teacher, one-classroom model is under pressure around the globe. In the U.S., we feel it acutely: teacher shortages, burnout and ever-growing expectations make the current model unsustainable. But the Dutch feel it, too. As student needs grow more complex — especially in multilingual, multicultural settings — no single educator can do it all alone.
Team-based staffing offers an alternative. When implemented well, it allows educators to specialize, share responsibility and support one another in meeting learner needs. It allows students to be known by more than one adult. And it opens space for innovation — not just in what educators teach, but in how educators work.
What’s remarkable is that we’re seeing convergence: Dutch schools moving toward flexible grouping and multi-age learning, and U.S. schools rethinking roles and schedules to support educator collaboration. Through our partnership with Saxion, we’re weaving those threads together. We’re co-constructing models that might work in both contexts, and asking together: What does it really take to build a sustainable, effective teaching team?
Innovation, Dutch-style
One thing I’ve learned from working with Dutch educators and leaders is that innovation, in this context, doesn’t usually come in the form of flashy apps or overnight transformation. It’s deeply systems-oriented. It’s thoughtful, careful and grounded in evidence. It values relationships, feedback loops and long-term thinking. And perhaps most importantly, it’s collaborative.
We see our own commitments reflected in that ethos. At the Next Education Workforce, we’ve long believed that solving complex educational challenges requires more than pilot programs. It requires building ecosystems — across universities, school systems and policy environments — that support real, lasting change.
With Saxion, we are working together to create the conditions and infrastructure for sustained learning between people, institutions, and now, countries — well beyond the scope of a single site visit or exchange program.
What comes next
At its core, this is a partnership built on shared values: A belief that the status quo in education is not good enough. A commitment to designing something better. And a deep respect for what each side brings to the table.
The Dutch are innovators: turning the constraints of geography, language and size into opportunities for bold, creative thinking. We’re excited to learn from that history. But we’re equally excited that our partners in the Netherlands are learning from what’s possible when we staff schools with teams, not just individuals.
If we get this right — together — we can build something that transcends any one school or system. We can build the next education workforce, not just in Arizona or the Netherlands, but as part of a global effort to make schools more human, more collaborative and more effective for all learners.
