Securing the accessibility of higher education is high on the agenda in Dutch higher education. Yet, persisting differences can be found between students from varying backgrounds in their likelihood to successfully enrol and study in higher education. In this research programme, we examine why students who formally have equal access to higher education, differ in practice in their chances of successful enrolment and graduation. We will map explicit and implicit obstacles that varying student groups may encounter on their path to and through higher education, and examine the choices and strategies that they make or use in response to these obstacles.

The program is set up along three research lines. The first line is focused on generating a more integral picture of the opportunity structure of higher education from the perspective of (prospective) students in primary, secondary and higher education. In the second line, we zoom in on the chances and constraints relating to particular key moments and particular students groups.

In the third line, we will study educational practices that aim to improve the accessibility of higher education. Next to the output that each individual project will deliver, the program will result in an interactive (online) road map to and through higher education. This road map will present our findings about key moments and facilitating and impeding factors, as well as the promising avenues that we identify to improve the accessibility of higher education in practice.
 

• Period: 2021 -2025
• Funding: NRO
• Researcher/contact Dr. Louise Elffers

Aim/objective:

In this project teachers and research-coordinators/teacher-educators from five primary school boards and researchers from three research institutes collaboratively investigate how teachers can (learn to) use diversity in the classroom for creating an inclusive learning environment. They develop a practical overview of ways in which teachers can take diversity into account, and test aspects of it fitting the teachers’ own context. The consortium also develops and evaluates a professional development approach aimed at improving teachers’ competences in this area.

Relevance/impact:

Teachers are faced with an increasingly diverse student population. Their students not only differ in terms of ability, interest and learning preferences, but also in ethnic background, SES, religion, home language, migration history, etcetera. In metropolitan areas in particular, this ‘superdiversity’ puts great demands on teachers’ competences. Diversity in the classroom creates new possibilities for learning and can be a source of inspiration, but many teachers experience it as a complex challenge. The aim of this project is to investigate how teachers can use diversity in the classroom for creating an inclusive learning environment and how a professional development approach could contribute to reinforce these competences.

The first phase of the research focuses on theoretical elaboration and inventory of good practices of using diversity in the classroom. In the second phase a professional development approach is developed and applied that aims to increase teachers’ competences in taking superdiversity in the classroom into account. The EST principle (integrating experiential, social and theoretical learning) is guiding for the professional development. In the third phase this approach is evaluated in terms of its contribution to teachers’ competences and to the inclusiveness of the learning environment in their classrooms. The project results in scientific publications and in products for primary school practice.

Method:

Ten primary schools and three research institutes in Amsterdam (the Netherlands) participate in a change laboratory. Ten teacher communities of practice (one per school) experiment with, and reflect upon, examples of good practice. Each community of practice is supported by a researcher. All teachers and researchers meet several times during the project to discuss and reflect upon their acquired knowledge so far.

The overall study has a mixed method design. Quantitative data will be gathered at both student level (N = 800), and teacher level (N = 40) level on the student’s wellbeing and teacher’s competences in the multicultural classroom. Qualitative data will be gathered at teacher and school level (N = 10) by means of learning diaries, school specific plans, interviews and focus groups.     

• Period: December 2018 – September 2022
• Funding: NRO Programme Council for Applied Education Research – longterm practice-oriented education research (NRO/PPO)
• Researcher Prof.dr. Monique Volman

At the beginning of 2020, higher education institutions in The Netherlands were forced to suddenly transition into online education. From an educational sciences perspective, this natural experiment offers an excellent opportunity to investigate online teaching and learning. The primary goal of our project is to gain insight into the online pedagogical strategies teachers use, and examine for which (learning) goal and for which target audience these appear to be more effective.

Relevance

Currently little is known about online pedagogies to meet the high expectations champions attribute to online education, such as high performance, motivated students, and a lot of flexibility for both teachers and students. To learn from the numerous initiatives that arose in the last period within and outside of the UvA, the Executive Board asked our project team to study the experiences of teachers and students with online education. Which pedagogical approach did they choose? What was their experience with it?  What worked and what could have been improved? What would they like to keep in future online education? These are the types of questions our research team investigates, and which will contribute insight into how to effectively design and deliver online education programs. These insights will contribute further development and improvement of the UvA vision concerning digitalization and online education.

Methods

During this one-year project four studies will be conducted:

1. A systematic literature review on factors that contribute to effective online and blended education. Read the results here.
2. A survey on UvA teachers’ online education practices and experiences, with a specific focus on the pedagogical strategies they used for the attainment of different types of learning goals.
3. Online focus groups on the experiences of teachers and students with online education. The goal of the focus groups is to deepen the results from the survey by gaining qualitative insights into the design of online courses, the facilitation of social interaction, and online learning. Focus groups will be held with teachers and students from all UvA faculties.
4. Case studies where we aim to gather ‘best practices’ by interviewing important stakeholders (e.g., educational directors, members of the examination committee, members of the (faculty) TLC’s, and teachers. In these case studies we will investigate which pedagogical approach did they choose, for what particular goal, what worked and why, and for whom did it work and with which goal in mind?

Period

This research started in August 2020 and is expected to finish in August 2021.

Researchers

• Natalie Pareja Roblin
• Chevy van Dorresteijn
• Monique Meij

Project leaders 

• Monique Volman
• Frank Cornelissen
• Joke Voogt
• Mariska Min-Leliveld

• Promovendus: Benthe van Wanrooij
• Promotors: Monique Volman en Louise Elffers

The goal of this PhD project is to further disentangle mechanisms underlying unequal access to higher education in the Netherlands. The research focused on generating a more integral picture of the opportunity structure of higher education from the perspective of (prospective) students in primary, secondary and higher education. It aims to map explicit and implicit obstacles that varying student groups may encounter on their path to higher education, and examine the choices and strategies that they make or use in response to these obstacles.
This project is part of the research program Toegankelijkheid hoger onderwijs voor, door en na de poort. It received funding from NRO Praktijkgericht onderwijsonderzoek - langlopend.

• Promovendus: Michelle Rosmalen
• Promotors: Geert ten Dam, Tom van der Meer en Remmert Daas

This project studies the differences in political ambition and voting intention between adolescent boys and girls. It studies to what extent gender roles and norms play a role in the political socialization between these groups and how we might improve a more equal socialization process and thereby improve equal political participation. The first part of the study uses panel-data to establish to what extent there are different levels of political ambition and voting intention between boys and girls and how much of that variance can be explained by the role of gender norms. The second part of the study wants to explain the influence of gender roles and norms on political ambition by conducting in-depth interviews with the target groups. Lastly, the third part of the project tries to test the role of external variation in political gender norms and available role models using a vignette experiment.

The PhD project is This study is part of the ADKS-project and is funded by an NWO SGW Open Competition M scholarship.

• Promovendus: Olga Potters
• Promotors: Joke Voogt en Tessa van Schijndel

Within education, creativity is recognized as an important 21st-century skill, but there is a lack of knowledge about the development of creativity of the primary school child. This doctoral research deepens the available knowledge about creativity and enriches this knowledge with empirical research about the development of creativity of children from 4 to 12 years old. In this research a longitudinal mixed-method research is carried out, in which quantitative and qualitative measurements are combined in order to get information about how the creative ability develops within children.

This research is part of an NWO PhD scholarship for teachers.

• Promovendus: Esther Karkdijk
• Promotors: Anne Bert Dijkstra, Geert ten Dam en Remmert Daas

In this project, I examine citizenship education and adolescents’ citizenship competences. I am part of the research team that conducts the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) 2022 in the Netherlands. The aim of this large-scale, quantitative study is to gain insight in adolescents’ citizenship knowledge, civic attitudes and skills, and citizenship education in the Netherlands. I am especially interested in the role of the different contexts in which adolescents grow up, in relation to their citizenship attitudes. Besides the school context, I focus on the home environment (parents) and the peer group. Since ICCS was also conducted in 2009 and 2016, I will also investigate changes over time in citizenship education and citizenship competences in the Netherlands.

This research is funded by NRO.

• Promovendus: Nikki Dekker
• Promotors: Han van der Maas, Bert Bakker, Remmert Daas en Anke Munniksma

The last decades have been marked by increasingly sharp contrasts between social groups. Polarisation – the development or existence of a persisting, extreme, multi-modal divide in attitudes, identities, and behaviors – can be a significant impediment to harmonious and productive societies. Newly emergent patterns of polarisation with respect to topics like COVID-19 policies and climate change interlock with existing cultural and political divides and identities, undermining society’s capacity for taking concerted collective action. Polarisation is a complex phenomenon which is linked to processes at all levels of societal life. These processes collectively impact the well-being of democratic societies.

The goal of this interdisciplinary PhD project is to further disentangle how attitudes and polarisation develop and unfold among youth in Amsterdam. Using longitudinal data from surveys and interviews in schools, this project tests new and existing (citizenship education) interventions and studies opinion development and polarization in general.

This research is funded by research priority area Polarisation.

• Promovendus: Hester Mennes
• Promotors: Anne Bert Dijkstra, Herman van de Werfhorst, Anke Munniksma

In this project, I examine governance aspects of schools’ provision of civic education in the Netherlands. Increasingly, research insights are available on how schools can contribute to young citizens’ equipment to navigate through democracy. However, less is known about what supports schools in realizing such a contribution, and I therefore build on these previous insights and focus on governance factors that shape schools’ provision of civic educational practices. Given concerns about rising inequalities in educational opportunities, I pay particular attention to social inequalities in students’ access to and gains from schools’ provision of civic education. This project relies on large scale data from the Dutch as well as European context and I use quantitative research methods.

This project is funded by the Dutch Inspectorate of Education. A part of the project was funded by ODISSEI (Open Data Infrastructure for Social Science and Economic Innovations) and runs from September 2018 – August 2022.

• Promovendus: Femke Koekkoek
• Promotors: Monique Volman, Eddie Denessen, Louise Elffers

Inequality of opportunity in education is a ‘wicked problem’: despite the investment of a great deal of money and effort in recent years, it has proven difficult to reduce educational inequalities. Individual stakeholders do not always feel the responsibility, ownership and/or agency to deal with the issue. Tackling it requires collective effort that, occasionally, might conflict with individual interests. As such, educational inequality of opportunity can be viewed as a collective action problem.

The objective of this project is to map out the possibilities that different stakeholder groups (such as teachers, parents and local administrators) see for themselves in realizing equality of opportunity, as well as the obstacles they face, that are limiting their individual and collective efforts. Moreover, we will test whether participation in a collective action network, using a policy game, contributes to the individual and collective agency of different actors.

This project received funding from NRO (Netherlands Initiative for Education Research).

• Promovendus: Lianne Hoek
• Promotor: Anne Bert Dijkstra

For some time, it has been observed that citizenship education in the Netherlands is not always arranged in a structured way, that schools do not formulate learning objectives for citizenship education and have no insight into the results, and that generally tools to map students’ citizenship competences are lacking.

A results-oriented approach in citizenship education, consisting of a systematic evaluation of the citizenship competences of students in the upper grades of primary school and the instruments needed for this, as well as the establishment of a feedback system based on these results, enables schools to map citizenship competences of students. Moreover, it helps schools to determine educational goals, to align the curriculum to students’ needs, and to develop citizenship education within the school.

This project is carried out in collaboration with the Academische Werkplaats Onderwijs. It received funding from NRO langlopend praktijkgericht onderwijsonderzoek.

• Promovendus: Sharon Calor
• Promotors: Monique Volman, Jannet van Drie

In a quasi-experimental study the effect of teacher support (scaffolding) adapted to the level of small heterogeneous student-groups on the quality of mathematical discussions and mathematical level raising of the students is investigated. Fourteen heterogeneous 7th grades classes of a large secondary school participate in this study.

This project is part of an NWO PHD scholarship for teachers.

• Promovendus: Rutmer Ebbes
• Promotors: Helma Koomen, Brenda Jansen, Jaap Schuitema

Self-regulated learning (SRL) is considered a key competence, influencing both students’ motivation and achievement in elementary school. SRL depends on student skills and characteristics but also on characteristics of the learning environment. Our project examines (a) reliable and valid measurement of SRL, from the student and the teacher perspective, (b) the influence of teachers’ perceptions of a students’ SRL ability on their instruction and support during a math task, against the background of peer influences, and (c) student characteristics explaining differences in SRL-intervention effectivity.

• Promovendus: Nina Hosseini
• Promotors: Monique Volman, Lisa Gaikhorst, Monique Leijgraaf

Over the past decades, educational inequality in the Netherlands has increased. To challenge the reproduction or reinforcement of mechanisms that create inequality and oppression, teachers must first become aware of the existence of these inequalities, unequal power structures and the political character of teaching. In the Netherlands, issues such as inequality in education are currently not addressed extensively in urban teacher education. This research project aims at providing insight into the process of raising teacher candidates’ awareness of structural inequality in education and society. The research question of this project is: How can social justice-oriented teacher education contribute to raising awareness of structural inequality among student teachers in the Netherlands? To answer this question, a mixed-methods empirical study will be done to map the views and beliefs about structural inequality that student teachers currently have. Subsequently, an educational programme or course will be designed and implemented to challenge these views and beliefs. This course will be evaluated in order to answer the main research question. The results of this study will be used to identify principles to support teacher educators to develop patterns of practice for equity in their specific education contexts.

• Promovendus: Eva Kelder
• Promotoren: Monique Volman, S.F. Akkerman, M. Verhoeven

While school engagement is a recurrent problem, adolescents are known to have many interests, including subject-related ones. Interests are evidenced sources for learning, development and engagement, yet not always carefully complemented or developed further in school. We see upcoming and promising educational arrangements for interest development, yet their workings and impact are underresearched.

This research project is designed to study and conceptualize how schools and teachers support interest development, taking existing arrangements as an authentic variation of contexts for empirical study. The research project will identify and theorize various curricular and pedagogical strategies for interest development and their effects on interest development, school engagement and curricular choices over time.

This project is part of the interlinked research project ‘IDEA: Interest and Diversity in and beyond Educational Arrangements’ in collaboration with Utrecht University. It received funding from NRO.

• Promovendus: Lotte Schreuders
• Promoters: Frank Cornelissen, Bieke Schreurs, Natalie Pareja Roblin

Digital technologies are rapidly evolving, causing teachers to face the endless possibilities and challenges of the integration of technology in their teaching practice. Therefore, research into teachers’ technology integration has been extensive across various contexts, providing insight into the personal (e.g., knowledge and beliefs), technological (e.g., ease of use), and contextual (e.g., infrastructure) factors influencing technology integration. However, relatively little is known about why teachers integrate technology the way they do. One way to get deeper insight into teachers’ technology integration practices is to study teachers’ pedagogical reasoning – or the thinking underlying teachers’ decision-making.
In this research project, we will investigate how university teachers reason about technology integration and the factors that stimulate developments in their pedagogical reasoning. Due to the complexity and importance of the concept, the first study aims at providing an overview of pedagogical reasoning in literature. Building on this foundation, three successive empirical studies will delve into university teachers’ pedagogical reasoning and its role in technology integration practices. Here, the development of pedagogical reasoning and the factors influencing it will be examined. The results will contribute insight into how pedagogical reasoning can be supported and stimulated in the context of higher education, thereby providing concrete guidelines for the design of professional development initiatives.

The PhD project is funded by the Teaching and Learning Centre (TLC Central) of the University of Amsterdam.

• Promovendus: Thijmen van Alphen
• Promotors: Joost Jansen in de Wal, Jaap Schuitema

To successfully deal with the fast-paced changes in 21^st century work and society, both students and teachers need to be able to self-regulate their learning (SRL). The regulation of emotions is an important process that precedes SRL-behaviours like planning, investing effort, and monitoring progress. This is because many learning situations are potentially stressful for students and teachers.

This PhD project, seeks to develop, test, and apply a model that explains how teachers deal with day-to- day experienced stress. It does so, based on two factors that, to date, have been insufficiently studied: future time perspective (FTP) and resilience. The resulting model is tested through experimental interventions that target teachers’ resilience and FTP to decrease their experienced stress and promote SRL-behaviours.

The research also aims to make a methodological contribution by employing ecological momentary assessments (EMA) of stress and emotional experiences, FTP, resilience and SRL-behaviours.

This project is funded by NRO Samenhangende onderzoeksprojecten [in Dutch]. For more information see also the projectdescription [in Dutch].

• Promotor: Svenne Groeneweg
• Promotors: Monique Volman, Natalie Pareja Roblin, Daphne van Weijen

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) represents an area of scholarship in which teachers aim to improve teaching and learning through systematic inquiry into their own educational practices. SoTL is seen as a powerful professional development strategy and a promising avenue to raise the status of teaching in higher education. Yet, empirical knowledge of the actual impact of SoTL remains rather limited. This PhD project therefore aims to synthesize and expand the empirical knowledge on the impact of SoTL.

We will synthesize the current body of SoTL knowledge by conducting a systematic literature review and we will expand on that knowledge by using different theoretical lenses (value creation, social network theory, and sensemaking/sensegiving theory) to better understand the impact of SoTL.

By examining the impact of SoTL and unravelling the mechanisms behind it, the current research project will contribute insights that inform future decision-making about how to stimulate and sustain engagement in SoTL.

The PhD project is funded by the Teaching and Learning Centre (TLC Central) of the University of Amsterdam.

• Promovendus: Nynke van Ketel-de Wit
• Promotors: Frank Cornelissen, Bieke Schreurs, Natalie Pareja Roblin

Universities need innovations to secure and strengthen the quality of their education and keep up with societal, educational, and technological changes. One approach to achieve this is by promoting bottom-up innovations which are associated with many advantages. To enhance the bottom-up innovations’ reach and impact, it is important that they achieve scale. However, there is little empirical research on how and why bottom-up innovations can achieve scale, particularly in the context of higher education. This research project aims to contribute empirical insights into the factors and processes that foster the successful scale of bottom-up innovations in higher education. It does so by incorporating insights from multiple stakeholders (innovators, alters, and policymakers), from the start of the scale of bottom-up innovations to the scale on an institutional level. The methods include a comparative case study, longitudinal social network analyses, and a Delphi method. The findings may serve to guide policymakers and innovators in higher education in their efforts to scale bottom-up innovations.

This project received funding by Teaching and Learning Centre UvA.

• Promovendus: Wilemijn Rinnooy Kan
• Promotors: Anne Bert Dijkstra, V.S.C. März

This project consists of two parts. Firstly, I will conduct case studies (N=8) aimed at identifying school factors relevant for citizenship learning. My focus in this research is on the characteristics of the school community, and specifically on if , and how, the schools’ vision on citizenship of students is internalized and ‘lived’ within the school community by school leaders and teachers.

Secondly, this project contributes to a large-scale quantitative data-collection (80 schools, 5200 students, age 14-15) and analyses the data with regard to the effects of the characteristics of the school community on students´ citizenship outcomes.

• Promovendus: Edda Veerman
• Promotors: Monique Volman, Joana Duarte, Lisa Gaikhorst

In the increasingly diverse educational context in contemporary societies, many teachers are teaching students with a different social and cultural background than their own. For those teachers it’s a challenge to tailor their lessons on the out of school knowledge and skills, including the home languages, of all students. For students, this can lead to a sense of discontinuity between school and the out of school environment in which they grow up, and thus a reduced involvement in school. A response to a deficit approach is an teacher attitude that assumes that all children are competent and have gained valuable knowledge and skills through life experience outside of school that can be used in school. From this attitude, in and out of school learning experiences can be linked, thus reducing the sense of discontinuity. Ways for teachers to do this is making use of funds of knowledge approaches and multilingual pedagogies.

This dissertation investigates how the use of meaningful learning experiences including students’ home languages can be put into practice in primary education and what the cognitive and socio-affective benefits are. The research consist of three research projects in which researchers collaborate closely with school boards and teachers from primary education from the Educational Research Lab Amsterdam.

The research projects are funded by NRO, Porticus and Amsterdams Universiteitsfonds.