drs. Hans van Iersel

Bio

I am Hans van Iersel, a Dutch researcher and according to my friends and colleagues my main competence is my curiosity for knowledge and my tendency to relate concepts - which can be fruitful or a waste of time. Educated as an history teacher and an organizational psychologist,  I dedicated the main part of my career training and coaching social professionals, or managing that process, mainly in the Netherlands but also in the UK (London), Belgium (Antwerp and Ghent) and Germany (Dortmund and Saarbrücken), my special interest matures in the special relation between social professionals and their clients. In 2014 I returned to the domain of education, at the Capabel University of Applied Sciences, as teacher and coordinator of the department of Applied Psychology, with zero students at the start.  Since 2019 I am conducting research at Tranzo a PhD program concerning reciprocity in growth between social professionals and their clients. 

Expertise

My expertise is primarily practical, training and coaching social professionals, mainly in the welfare-to-work domain. I held several different positions in the welfare-to-work sector, as an editor, member of the quality committee of the sector, and member of a committee of the department of Social Affairs aiming to improve the quality of the profession.

As well in my professional education, in the welfare-to-work  section and in designing and implementing an educational program for future applied psychologists, the theoretical framework consisted mainly of the self-determination theory as initiated by Deci & Ryan. 

Teaching

As a teacher my aim is the growth of a student. As the attainability of knowledge has hugely increased over the last decades, the position of my teaching shifted from a source of expertise and knowledge to activating and motivating students. I was raised as a history teacher, knowing it all and spreading it over an audience of students, resembling nowadays teachers as talking powerpoints, I changed in forbidding beamers in lessons except for the use of photographs and video's. 

My professional experience is rooted in my personal practical experience on the one hand and solid knowledge of psychology on the other hand, concentrating in activating and motivating people.