Leon van Gelder (1913-1981)

Professor of Educational Studies at the University of Groningen (1964-1981)

For almost twenty years, Leon van Gelder was professor of Educational Studies at the University of Groningen. The path he took to achieve this was that of a classic social riser. Growing up in a Jewish working-class Amsterdam family, the only way to get ahead in the 1920s and 1930s was to study for a teaching certificate. After Van Gelder obtained it in 1931, it was difficult to find a permanent job as a teacher during the crisis years due to budget cuts in education. During the Second World War, Van Gelder had to go into hiding. He used those years to study pedagogy. After the war, he became a lynchpin in the web of training work, renewal education and the teachers' union. He became director of the General Pedagogical Centre, which aimed to professionalise teachers and promote educational innovation. Besides pedagogy, Van Gelder also studied psychology, became a school psychologist and, in 1953, obtained his doctorate with an orthopaedic study on the diagnosis and treatment of children who got stuck in education. In 1964, he became the first professor of Educational Studies in the Netherlands.

The main pillars of Van Gelder's work were the professionalisation of teachers and educational policy for greater equity of opportunity. For the former, with the cooperation of many colleagues and students, he developed the Didactic Analysis model, which was elaborated in a book in 1974 and became an important guideline for generations of teachers. In addition, from the 1950s Van Gelder was already engaged in research into ways of promoting social ascendancy for children from lower social backgrounds and thus creating more equality of opportunity. He advocated the introduction of a middle school, a form of secondary education in which children in heterogeneous classes could postpone their choice of school for three or four years after primary school. Groningen decided to be one of the first to establish such a Middle School. The Leon van Gelder School, where children with different levels sit together in class and can develop at their own pace and in their own direction, still exists.

The Van Gelder building can be found at Grote Rozenstraat 3 and currently houses the Department of Educational Sciences and the GION.