Samenvatting

Workload in primary education of novice and experienced teachers is a known phenomenon in the Netherlands. While 63 percent of the novice teachers consider leaving the profession, experienced teachers don‟t leave the primary education. Following recent literature, this small scale qualitative research studied experience of workload by novice and experienced teachers in het primary education.
In his intensification thesis Apple (1986, in Ballet & Kelchtermans, 2009) made an attempt to conceptualize and explain the changes in the education: the growing economic oriented perspective on education leads to an intensification of teachers‟ work. Ballet & Kelchtermans (Ballet & Kelchtermans, 2004; Ballet, Kelchtermans & Loughran, 2006) added the „experience of intensification‟. They emphasize the intensification that teachers experience. By interviewing the teachers and keeping a diary, this research tried to examine if the activities that the teachers experience as intensive match the actual activities of the teachers. Three out of the five teachers experienced the administration in education as intense. They would rather spend their time in giving good lessons and helping the children. This is not reflected in the diaries, because the teachers spend most of their time doing different tasks at the same time. Likewise there was no proof that there is a difference in this aspect between novice and experienced teachers. A difference is found between novice and experienced teachers in the way they experience daily practice. Experienced teachers seem to be more positive than novice teachers.
It is hard to identify aspects that describe how novice and experienced teachers experience the workload. Many factors appear to affect the workload teachers experience. A clear distinction between novice and experienced teachers cannot be made. Aspects like the character of the teacher, the class and the principal of the school also affect the workload as experienced.