We focus on instruction and learning processes in a number of domains that are at the core of the curriculum in primary and secondary education and on factors at the micro, meso and macro level that are essential for the quality of these processes. Factors at the micro level include student characteristics (sociocultural background, gender, aptitude, self-regulation, motivation), and the pupil-teacher relationship. At the meso level we study the effect of school leaderschip on educational innovation. Typical macro issues include equal opportunities in relation to segregation, selection procedures, and school drop-out. The combination of micro, meso, and macro levels of research is a distinctive characteristic of the Education programme as a whole. Research lines in the Education programme are:

• Cultural and individual differences, social outcomes
• Instruction, learning processes and learning disorders
• Domain-specific learning (e.g. literacy, history, arts, mathematics, science). 
• Innovation in education
• Motivation and learning
• Philosophy of education, school segregation
• Student-teacher relationship
• Vocational education, educational policy

The 4 research groups in this research programme are

• Educational Sciences
• Domain Specific Learning
• Developmental Disorders and Special Education
• Methods and Statistics

PhD Projects RPEDU

• Accessible pathways to higher education | PhD candidate: Benthe van Wanrooij, MSc 
• Development of creativity of children in Primary Education | PhD candidate: Olga Potters, MSc
• Educational governance for youth citizenship | PhD candidate: Hester Mennes, MSc
• How to make a success of a large scale implementation of an evidence-based program for the prevention of reading difficulties? | PhD candidate: Fae van der Weijden, MSc
• Learning to Write Synthesis Texts | PhD candidate: Liselore van Ockenburg
• Mathematical modelling and the role of language skills | PhD candidate: Sevinç Göksen-Zayim, MSc
• No Data Left Behind: New meta-analytic structural equation models for complex data structures | PhD candidate: Lennert Groot, MSc
• Results-oriented citizenship education | PhD candidate: Lianne Hoek, MSc
• Scaffolding small heterogeneous student-groups while discussing mathematics | PhD candidate: Sharon Calor, MSc
• Self–regulated learning in primary education | PhD candidate: Rutmer Ebbes, MSc 
• Stimulating historical reasoning in inquiry-based learning lessons in Primary Education | PhD candidate: Yolande Potjer, drs 
• Stimulating student teachers - critical consciousness of structural inequality in primary education | PhD candidate: Nina Hosseini, MSc
• Teaching critical thinking about controversial issues: the potential of an integrative approach | PhD candidate: Saskia Arbon
• The impact of scholarship of teaching and learning | PhD candidate: Svenne Groeneweg
• The role of resilience and future time perspective in teachers' and students' dealing with stress and self-regulated learning | PhD candidate: Thijmen van Alphen, MSc
• The role of tensions in novice university teachers’ professional learning | PhD candidate: Marije Eradus
• Understanding the effects of schools on students citizenship outcomes: characteristics of the school community | PhD candidate: Willemijn Rinnooy Kan, MSc

Other research projects RPEDU

1. Online and blended education during COVID-19
2. Accessible pathways to and through higher education – an integral perspective on the accessibility of higher education in the Netherlands
3. Diversity in the classroom: reinforcing teachers’ competences
4. The developmental roots of inequalities in education
5. Developing evidence-based interventions for students at-risk for developing deficits in reading, mathematics, on-task behaviour or emotional wellbeing