GENDER MAINSTREAMING COMPETENCIES AND TRIPLE LOOP-LEARNING: HIGHLIGHTS AND CHALLENGES

Gender mainstreaming is one of the specialisations of the Masters Management of Development course at Van Hall Larenstein University of Applied Sciences, the Netherlands. In this programme we teach rural development professionals from all over the world. The education is competence-based, therefore knowledge, in particular theories on gender but also skills training is part of the curriculum. To become competent in working on gender equality in particular a change in attitude is required. Gender is always a sensitive topic for discussion. In our education strategy we think that the triple-loop learning approach is useful to challenge students’ existing views and assumptions.

Like many others we experience that in competence-based education (CBE) assessing changes in attitude is not an easy task. In this paper a concrete approach that puts into practice the triple-loop learning strategy is presented.