Transition-oriented education: Implementing the IDGs at an institutional level at Van Hall Larenstein

Van Hall Larenstein University of Applied Sciences (HVHL) has been active in the green sector for over a century. Through programmes such as Environmental Science, Forest and Nature Management, Animal and Livestock Farming, and Innovative Plant Cultivation, students learn how nature, people, and the living environment are intertwined. This requires professionals who not only bring knowledge to the table, but who can also adapt to the major changes facing the field. 

That is why HVHL embraced the Sustainable Development Goals in 2018 and transition-oriented learning became an increasingly explicit part of its education. In 2021, the university laid this down in its institutional plan Growing as Experts in Transition – a course that has since guided all its programmes.  

After setting up the new course, a broad-based design process began for a new educational concept that would enable the university to achieve its goals. Programme managers, lecturers, students and educationalists worked together on an educational concept that responds to the complex challenges facing the green professional field. The result, Transition-Oriented Education (TGO, Dutch: Transitie Gericht Onderwijs), was presented in 2023. The programmes used this concept to design their new curricula, followed by the development of new teaching methods. The first programmes in this new form started in September 2025, with the rest following in 2026.  

TGO is based on five educational elements that constantly interact with each other: meaningful content, personal attention, learning together, active learning and well-organised education. Within this structure, students not only learn what is changing in their field of work, but above all how they themselves can contribute to those changes. 

Transitions inevitably involve friction: conflicting interests, stubborn habits, entrenched structures. HVHL considers it essential that students learn to deal with this. 

In their education, they are therefore given the space to: 

• determine their position in a playing field full of conflicting values; 
• engage in constructive conversations within and outside their own field of expertise; 
• understand diversity of perspectives; 
• tolerate uncertainty and discomfort without losing the dialogue. 

These skills are considered indispensable for future-proof professionals.  

The Inner Development Goals (IDGs) play an important role within HVHL. They form a set of transition skills that help students to engage in valuable conversations, understand complex situations and work from a place of connection. 

The IDGs are reflected in: 

• the university’s Teacher Training programme; 
• training courses from the HVHL Academy; 
• the curricula of study programmes, which were given a great deal of freedom in how they integrate the IDGs. 

Some study programmes explicitly incorporate the IDGs into their learning outcomes or into the Attitude component of their BOKSA descriptions. Others link them to personal and professional development (PPO) or weave them throughout the curriculum.  

Practical example: Coastal and Maritime Management 

The Coastal and Maritime Management programme links selected IDGs in the first year to PPO workshops that are directly related to a practical assignment in the field. 

• Throughout every year, students work on their development in all IDGs.
• They collect evidence and reflections in their portfolios. 
• IDGs included in the programme profile are assessed normatively within regular teaching units. 
• The other IDGs are encouraged and the development and reflection is valued in portfolio assessments. 

In their lessons, lecturers explicitly make the connection between learning moments and the IDGs, enabling students to recognise which inner skills they use in practice.  

The programme currently uses at least two tools of the Transition Makers Toolbox:  

• A variant of Social Presencing Theatre: An improvisational theatre course in the first year, in which students practice, through various assignments, how body posture and voice use affect themselves and others. Students also find it a fun team-building experience that allows them to get to know each other better while having fun at the same time. 

• Inviting Non-Human Stakeholders: a stakeholder meeting where students participate, and some represent coastal or marine elements of the area they are designing improvements for.