Research projects
Here you can find an overview of all the research projects that our Institute is involved in.
These are all the research projects that the Digital Technology and Education research group is currently involved in.
The innovative learning platform for Co-Teach Informatica is part of the REACT-EU project. This EU-funded project aims to reduce the mismatch between the supply and demand of ICT skills and knowledge in Utrecht. The innovative learning platform is one of the project components of REACT-EU.
There is a shortage of high schools that offer computer science education, partly thanks to a shortage of qualified computer science teachers. To support high schools to be able to offer computer science education, Co-Teach Informatica created a course that can be offered without a qualified teacher. An element of this is an online method. The REACT-EU project develops a new online learning platform for this online method. The basic features of the platform are to present the learning material, facilitate grading by teaching assistants and allow students to communicate with teaching assistants.
The research in this project focuses on the use of learning goals within the platform and the learning material. The structure of (prior) knowledge per module is represented in a graph. It is possible to track the degree to which a student controls a learning goal, based on a structure of (prior) knowledge. We study what the role of these learning goals can be within the learning platform.
A first user study will take place starting in February 2023, using a prototype of the platform. Over 100 students from 3 different schools in the region of Utrecht will use the platform for several weeks. The results of this study will be used to improve the platform.
In this project, Utrecht University collaborates with Co-Teach Informatica.
Project duration: April 15, 2021 - December 2023
Project leader: Sylvia van Borkulo
These are all the research projects that the History & Philosophy of Science research group is currently involved in.
The Agent Dependent View (ADV) is a metaphysical position that emphasizes the inherently perspectival nature of scientific knowledge. The ADV embraces the contingent nature of our world and our experience of the world, providing a naturalized role for the personal elements of our knowledge. Inspired by investigations into the differing explanatory paradigms of the natural and life sciences, work on the ADV seeks to bridge the conceptual underpinnings of the philosophy of physics and the philosophy of biology. This project is primarily focused on the further explication and extension of the ADV to classic problems in the philosophy of science, such as explanation, modeling, causation, realism and construction. The scope of the project also includes work on developing a naturalized, philosophical explication of Open Science, its tenets, methods and evolution.
PhD candidate: Maura Burke, m.c.burke@uu.nl
Supervisor: Guido Bacciagaluppi, g.bacciagaluppi@uu.nl
Project duration: May 1, 2021 – May 1, 2026
After World War II, the rebuilding of European scientific infrastructure was seen as a crucial step in the reconstruction of war-torn Western Europe. As part of this reconstruction effort, European countries decided to collaborate on some of the first large-scale international scientific research projects, such as the Centre Européen de Recherche Nucléaire (CERN) and the European Space Agency (ESA). Not only was this a way to stimulate scientific recovery on a national level through regional cooperation, it was also a show of political unity that starkly contrasted the spectre of authoritarianism that had precipitated the war. Thus, in parallel to the emergence of post-war economic and political alliances, European integration also proceeded through scientific cooperation. This project will investigate the history of this cooperation through the lens of the expectations, and ideals, of the scientists and science administrators instrumental in shaping it. The project posits that post-WWII international scientific cooperation in Europe was driven by expectations of the role of science in modern society that tapped into larger cultural narratives of the utopian character of science, so-called ‘scientific utopian narratives’. These narratives painted a picture of science as the main driver of progress – materially, politically, and morally.
Drawing on scholarship from Science and Technology Studies, the project uses the notion of ‘sociotechnical imaginary’ to conceptualise European scientific cooperation as the institutionalised embodiment of specific ideals of science. Focusing on a core group of six actors instrumental in building European Science – Edoardo Amaldi, Pierre Auger, Henk Bannier, François de Rose, Gösta Funke and Jean Willems – this research aims to show how utopian scientific narratives have become enshrined in European scientific cooperation, and how science, in the process, became a symbol of European integration.
PhD candidate: Luca Forgiarini, l.t.forgiarini@uu.nl
Supervisor: Guido Bacciagaluppi, g.bacciagaluppi@uu.nl; David Baneke, d.m.baneke@uu.nl
Project duration: October 1, 2021 – October 1, 2026
Our most basic, fundamental assumptions are often the ones that get scrutinised the least. This very much holds true for the primary ontological and conceptual distinction that underlies much of physics, philosophy of physics and metaphysics: the idea that all entities and structures in our universe are to be categorised and conceptualized as either space (or, in modern physics, spacetime) or matter, never both, never neither. Everything must be either the “container” or the “contained”. Although this strict conceptual dichotomy did make a lot of sense in the context of our pre-20th century worldview, the COSMO-MASTER project contends that it is no longer tenable, and even a hindrance to further progress. More precisely, each of the main ingredients—dark matter, inflation, dark energy, black holes and general relativity—of our highly-successful and well-established standard model of cosmology that was developed over the course of the 20th century puts pressure on the outdated Newtonian idea that the space(time) and matter concepts can and should be strictly distinguished. A systematic interdisciplinary analysis of the extent to which this dichotomy breaks down will have profound consequences for various debates in the philosophy of physics and metaphysics (e.g., undermining the substantivalism-relationalism debate about the metaphysics of spacetime, and providing novel opportunities to reassess and advance debates regarding conventionalism, scientific realism and scientific guiding principles) as well as for theory development and community interaction in cosmology, and physics more broadly. Far from being an unwelcome babel, a conceptual undoing, giving up the spacetime matter distinction will provide guidance as to which traditional debates become moot and which novel avenues open up.
Project leader: Niels Martens
The project aims to reconstruct the developments of science and mathematics education (SME) as (scientific) discipline(s) through the lens of the history of the Freudenthal Institute (FI) since 1970. Freudenthal et al. developed both a theoretical framework and a research method, which have been, to different degrees, influential in educational research and practice. Researching the history of a new discipline and scientific institute raises questions such as ‘whether and why there was a need for such a discipline’, and ‘how did researchers in this new discipline define their field?’
Several different ‘roots’ have been brought together in the FI in its current form. Before the turn of the century, science education and mathematics education were housed in separate institutions. The differences and similarities between the development of these two areas of study will on the one hand provide insight into the evolving ideas about what the nature of science and mathematics education was. On the other, it will also illustrate how specific political and social influences, within and outside of the university, played a role in the shaping of the academic fields.
An important aspect of the history of SME research and development is the transdisciplinary nature of the work. The FI and its predecessors employed varying levels of inclusion of stakeholders, such as teachers and students. At the same time, developments at university level meant that the institute’s predecessors had to conform to a stricter focus on research, which tended to exclude non-academic actors and their experiential knowledge. This project seeks to understand who was thought to have relevant expertise, and why. Moreover, it will shed light on how these different forms of knowledge have contributed to the development of education in the past.
PhD candidate: Elske de Waal, e.dewaal@uu.nl
Supervisors: Arthur Bakker, Bert Theunissen, Christine Knippels
Project duration: November 1, 2020 – April 1, 2025
The SATFUTURE project aims to understand the history, and future, of satellite infrastructures, focusing on satellite futures, or visions of desirable satellite infrastructures that set expectations for the future and shape the direction of technological, societal, and political development. Focused at the intersection of history of science, technology, and science & technology studies, the project employs concepts of sociotechnical imaginaries and visioneering to showcase how the communication of the future shapes the way technologies are developed and utilized.
SATFUTURE will contribute to understanding Europe’s history in space by looking back to two of the European Space Agency’s first satellite infrastructures: Meteosat, for meteorology, and the European Remote Sensing Satellite (ERS), for Earth observation. These two case studies offer a unique opportunity to reflect on where Europe’s expectations of space infrastructures once were, and where they stand today.
Any examination of Europe’s early space projects will necessarily look at American influences. Both Meteosat and ERS were explicitly modelled after NASA satellites: SMS (Synchronous Meteorological Satellite), GOES (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite), Landsat, and Seasat. It is understood that the US embedded itself in European scientific communities during post-war reconstruction and shaped its research agenda in many ways. This project will seek to understand the extent of American influence while maintaining a focus on the European context, such as the 1975 formation of ESA as a mechanism for uniting Europe. As ESA’s first foray into both meteorological and remote sensing infrastructures, expectations for the future wrought by Meteosat and ERS were sure to include European integration. Examining these satellite futures provides a powerful means of understanding the forces that shaped our satellite infrastructures to this point, and how we are transcribing our expectations of the future onto the technologies of today.
PhD candidate: David Skogerboe, d.s.skogerboe@uu.nl
Supervisors: Toine Pieters, t.pieters@uu.nl; David Baneke, d.m.baneke@uu.nl
Project duration: December 1, 2022 – December 1, 2027
Museum Vrolik consists of a biomedical and cultural-historical collection of human and animal material. It contains dried skeletons, bones, and skulls, wax models and plaster casts and wet preparations such as organs, body parts and of course, fetuses. The collection, consisting roughly of about 10 000 items, had been collected over the period of 1750 to 1950 and was built in two phases, of which I primarily focus on the second phase, from 1880 to 1930. One of the main issues with this collection is that we know very little of the provenance of its preparations: the origin of eighty percent is unknown. The collection of fetuses and neonates consists of roughly 840 specimens, mostly with congenital malformations. How did the fetuses end up in the collection?
This project will investigate the collecting of fetuses between 1880 and 1930 in the Netherlands. The first aim of this research is to investigate, by means of provenance research, via which channels and networks they entered the collection of Museum Vrolik. However the second aim is more general in scope: to write a cultural history of the position of the fetus in Dutch society between 1880 and 1930. For what reasons were they kept? What cultural practices and meanings attributed to the preservation of fetuses?
PhD candidate: Lisa Vanderheyden, l.vanderheyden@uu.nl
Supervisors: H.M.Huistra@uu.nl; L.derooy@amsterdamumc.nl; L.T.G.Theunissen@uu.nl
Project duration: October 15, 2021 – October 15, 2025
The PhilDarkEnergy project proposes that the most dominant ingredient of our universe, dark energy, undermines the widely held assumption of a strict ontological trichotomy between spacetime, matter and constants of nature. Dark energy exhibits aspects of all three categories, rather than falling neatly into exactly one category. The project will study the wide-ranging and far-reaching consequences of this blurred categorisation of dark energy for major debates in philosophy---in particular: the substantivalism-relationalism debate about the metaphysics of spacetime and matter, scientific realism vs. scientific anti-realism, and conventionalism---as well as for theory development in cosmology. This project will take place at the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands, and provide the fellow Dr. Niels Martens with additional training, skills and knowledge in the fields of philosophy of dark energy and philosophy of cosmology more broadly. This will consolidate his academic expertise, independence and networks, with the goals of providing him the skills and expertise needed for a permanent academic position in the EU and playing a leading role in developing and promoting the new field of philosophy of cosmology in the EU.
Contact: Niels Martens
HoMed (Homo Medicinalis) will implement a SSH research infrastructure with an enormous potential for automatic transcription of sensitive audio-visual (AV) recordings. Its use case will focus on AV-recordings of medical consultations on the use of pharmaceuticals (henceforth ‘MedPharm’). MedPharm in practice shows situations where patients often appear not to be able to understand proper medicine use. To overcome unintentional medicine use we need to better understand the attribution of meaning to medicines. Therefore, recordings and transcriptions of patient consultations are needed.
In HoMed a standard automatic speech recogniser (ASR) for Dutch will be adapted to MedPharm discourses, since essential jargon is not part of the vocabulary of the current generic ASR. The ASR will be retrained on existing radio and tv data and on highly sensitive AV-recordings of patient consultations at Nivel. The resulting infrastructure will be made available.
Project duration: December 1, 2021 - December 1, 2023
Contact: Toine Pieters, Berrie van der Molen
Website: http://homed.ruhosting.nl/
If someone donates their body to science, does that mean the army or car manufacturers can experiment on it too? Dutch academic hospitals receive around 650 body donations each year. Yet, although the donation process itself is clearly regulated, guidelines for how these bodies can and cannot be used after donation are absent. To develop these much-needed guidelines, we require insight into the moral dilemmas that emerge in the handling of donated bodies. This project provides this insight by studying the recent history of handling donated bodies in Dutch academic hospitals with the methodology of witness seminars.
Project duration: November 1, 2023 - October 31, 2024
Contact: Hieke Huistra
Rotterdam mainport offers employment to numerous people, like crane operators, boatmen and dockers. Yet, it also offers work to the drug trade and people smugglers who are connected to internationally operating criminal networks. In FORT-PORT, businesses, government organisations, and leading academics collaborate to stop cocaine trafficking, human smuggling and corruption in and around Rotterdam mainport in an intelligent and predictive way, now and for the future. FORT-PORT connects with the mainport, the city, and the international port network and thus contributes to the development of an economically prosperous, safe, resilient, and therefore future-proof mainport and increases societal resilience against subversive crime.
More information: FORT-PORT
Project duration: September 2023-March 2028
Contact: Stephen Snelders
In today's biosciences the use of racial classifications is still contested. While ‘race’ is usually denied a biological reality, it still figures in human diversity and health research. Recently, the concept of race has become central in the rapidly growing field of human microbiome research, where it is widely used to highlight health problems (e.g., obesity, type-2 diabetes) suffered by socio-economically disadvantaged groups. Here, ‘race’ is not primarily genetic but refers to different microbial compositions (e.g., in the gut) of human groups in certain environments. This shift from genes to microbes proceeds from ‘global to local’. Rather than globally distributed genetic ancestry, local factors like diet and lifestyles now serve as a basis for racial classification and to explain different disease susceptibility between groups. Despite its health-related promises, microbiome research faces two crucial problems: it might again lead to discrimination against research populations (e.g., non-white groups from the Global South). In addition, while microbiome research endorses populations’ local specificity, it still applies allegedly globally applicable, US-centric racial classifications. Thus, it lacks a conceptual framework to study human diversity in local contexts. This project solves these conceptual problems through an integrated (i) historical, (ii) philosophical, and (iii) participatory approach. By building on multisite collaboration with Latin American and South African human microbiome ecologists, it (i) reconstructs recent shifts in human diversity classification practices, and (ii) demonstrates when and why global and local racial categories are used, and what their epistemic virtues and limitations are. This allows creating a conceptual framework that integrates local into predominant global views of human diversity, without distorting the former or entailing discrimination. Finally, this project (iii) generates guidelines for scientists’ decision-making concerning usage or replacement of racial categories. This new classification tool will contribute to better identifying groups in the ‘Local South’ for microbial health interventions.
Funding: NWO VIDI
Project duration: 14 January 2024 – 13 January 2029
Project leader: Abigail Nieves Delgado
Niels Bohr has been hugely influential both in physics and outside physics, but he is also hugely misunderstood, partly because a few of his writings have been overstudied at the expense of many others. This ERC project is devoted to his philosophical legacy, and will establish an unprejudiced understanding of Bohr, building on a current revival of interest in Bohr’s ideas in the philosophy of physics, and extending it among other things to his wider influence in other scientific disciplines, specifically in biology, and on general debates such as on science and objectivity. The project will systematically exploit the resources of the Niels Bohr Archive in Copenhagen, which has only recently started digitising its collections.
This ERC project has the ambition to rectify historical misjudgements and to build bridges between physics and philosophy, between different schools in philosophy of physics, between philosophy of physics and philosophy of biology, and even between analytic philosophy and continental philosophy. The relevant resources are only now becoming more widely available. It is a large and methodologically novel project, combining philosophy and history, involving the systematic study of extensive sources, and including applications to philosophy of physics, philosophy of biology and general philosophy of science. Historically informed analysis has long proved to be an important tool in the philosophy of science, and the project will lead the way in applying a historically accurate understanding of Bohr’s thought to 21st-century debates.
Funding: HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
Project duration: September 1, 2023 - August 31, 2028
Project leader: Guido Bacciagaluppi
These are all the research projects that the Mathematics Education research group is currently involved in.
Our general objective is to transform future teachers’ grasp of teaching standard STEM topics. To achieve that we will rethink and reshape the delivery of fundamental STEM subject knowledge in the context of key competence development. Future teachers need to be encouraged to refrain from teaching with the sole purpose to transfer knowledge about a single STEM subject, isolated from other STEM subjects. This simply does not live up to todays and tomorrows challenges anymore. They need to understand the relation between knowledge, skills and attitudes, how they affect each other and how they have an effect on their students’ learning experience and personal life. They also need to understand that the STEM subjects are linked to each other and that a forward-looking approach to STEM teaching needs to connect STEM subjects interdisciplinary.
More information here
(Dutch/English).
TARGET GROUPS
The proposal addresses the following main target groups:
1.Future STEM teachers (students in ITE programmes)
2.Higher education teaching staff involved in STEM ITE
3.Higher education staff responsible for STEM curricula and course progammes
Project duration: September 2020 - September 2023
Designing and organising (free) one- and two week summer camps for girls aged 13-18, in the summers of 2021 and 2022, to provide a lively experience of 'science contexts' like software engineering, programming languages etc.
The experiences in the different partner countries in the EU will be used to strengthen the various partners in making localised choices and elaborations for camps and other activities (and related research).
More information here (E/N)
Project duration: 2020-2022
ENSITE develops training materials for teacher education in Science and Mathematics in the area of Socio-Scientific Issues. This material targets the development of teacher competences for:
- teaching effective lessions
- supporting students within the framework of 'critical citizenship'.
Ensite builds on previous European projects (such as Inclusme and Parrise).
More information here.
Secondary school students have difficulty in drawing meaningful conclusions from statistical data. This problem even arises with seemingly simple graphical representations of data such as the histogram. The research question is how students can learn to draw correct conclusions from histograms. Eye-tracking is used to identify what causes students' misinterpretations. Based on these results, an intervention will be designed and tested that will support students in drawing correct conclusions. This research contributes to a theory on graphical representations and to the improvement of statistics education for HAVO and VWO. A presentation on the first two studies as well the ideas for the third study (video, 45 minutes) as well as other materials and a pdf of the presentation can be found here.
PhD student: Lonneke Boels, (l.b.m.m.boels@uu.nl)
Supervisors: Paul Drijvers en Arthur Bakker
Timeline project: 2016 – 2021
In our knowledge-oriented society, academic thinking skills are of growing importance. Pupils in the upper years of pre-university education, in particular, have the cognitive abilities to develop these. However, stimulating these cross-curricular thinking skills is complex, and understanding of how these can be developed by pupils is still limited.
This research focuses on acquiring knowledge about how academic thinking skills can be stimulated within science education in the upper years of pre-university education. This research will first be carried out within the upper years of pre-university education at the CSG Prins Maurits in Middelharnis. Here, existing teaching modules for philosophy of science and research will be supplemented with newly developed teaching modules. Although the academic set-up is used throughout pre-university education, the research proposed here focuses mainly on science profiles. We zoom in on specific problems within these profiles, such as experimenting and working with complicated formulas. In this study, a design is aimed at that is also relevant for other secondary schools that want to stimulate the academic thinking skills of their pupils.
PostDoc VO: Marianne van Dijke-Droogers
UU-supervisor: Paul Drijvers
Project duration: 1 september 2021 - 31 augustus 2024
Funding: NRO
The main goal of the project FunThink is to support teachers and students with regard to functional thinking. Altogether, 6 core partner institutions and further associated partners from 5 European countries collaborate to achieve this goal. Ludwigsburg University of Education coordinates this project.
Functional thinking as thinking in relationships, dependencies and changes is highly relevant in many contexts within and beyond mathematics. The team members share the common vision that (mathematics) education can be significantly improved by enhancing functional thinking. For this purpose, effective teaching-learning-settings as well as adequate pre- and in-service teacher education are crucial.
To achieve this common goal the project objectives are:
- Learning environments for school
The development of digital-embodied and situated learning environments for inquiry that can be implemented in mathematics classrooms from primary to upper secondary school in order to support students’ functional thinking.
- (Pre-service) teacher course
The implementation of a corresponding pre-service teacher course to enable pre-service teachers to effectively enhance their future students’ functional thinking through these learning environments.
- Digital platform
Enhancing the reflection, transnational interaction and professional exchange by launching an open educational, interactive and multilingual digital platform equipped with the project outcomes.
Project duration: September 2020 to August 2024.
Daily practice in a mathematics class is dominated by students reproducing solution procedures with paper-and-pencil tasks from a textbook. An adaptation of mathematics lessons should be considered so that students experience the most important feature of mathematics: mathematical thinking. The art of origami is a promising approach for a creative and realistic form of mathematics education. Firstly, the focus is on the haptic process of (un)folding. Secondly, students will analyze crease lines and folded shapes in relation to the mathematical problem. We conjecture that via mathematical origami, students will come up with their own solutions to mathematical problems and thereby build their knowledge in an embodied way. We want to investigate the design characteristics informed by embodied approach for effective mathematics teaching and learning with mathematical origami. More information: www.wiskundigvouwen.nl (in Dutch).
PhD-candidate: Jacoliene van Wijk, j.vanwijk@uu.nl
Supervisors: Michiel Doorman, Rogier Bos, Anna Shvarts
Project duration: September 1, 2022 – September 1, 2026
These are all the research projects that the Science Education research group is currently involved in.
NRO Long-term Practical Research
Developments in science and technology can have both a positive and negative impact on our society. To make responsible decisions in so-called socio-scientific issues (SSIs), both scientific knowledge and personal and social norms and values are important. An important goal of science education, and therefore a challenging responsibility for science teachers, is to educate secondary school students so that they are able to make informed decisions about SSIs that they may come across in their daily lives.
In this project, biology and chemistry teachers work together with FI researchers to strengthen citizenship education on sustainability issues. Through the SSIBL (Socio-Scientific Inquiry-Based Learning) approach, which has been developed in the European PARRISE project (www.parrise.eu), education is being developed and tested in various Lesson Study cycles, with the aim of integration the forming of opinions on social issues related to sustainability more effectively in the lower years of secondary school. Both teacher competence and student learning take centre stage. Ultimately, this project will lead to a collection of practices, teaching materials, lesson examples, measuring instruments and knowledge that stimulate citizenship education in science.
Project leader: Marie-Christine Knippels
Project duration: January 2019 to June 2023
3C4Life will develop an online platform for future STEM student teachers, young teaching professionals as well as experienced in-service STEM teachers
to increase the attractiveness of the STEM teaching profession in the partner countries (and abroad)
The three perspectives are:
- career guidance, in vertical and horizontal directions
- collaborative practice among relevant educational actors on national level (mainly pre- and in-service STEM teachers, higher education training and research, PD providers, education policy and school practice) and
- development of up-to-date teaching and leadership competences.
Within the project, Utrecht University cooperates with partners in Germany, Lithuania, Portugal, Turkey and Spain. More information here (scroll down for English).
Project duration: 2021 – 2024
Our general objective is to transform future teachers’ grasp of teaching standard STEM topics. To achieve that we will rethink and reshape the delivery of fundamental STEM subject knowledge in the context of key competence development. Future teachers need to be encouraged to refrain from teaching with the sole purpose to transfer knowledge about a single STEM subject, isolated from other STEM subjects. This simply does not live up to todays and tomorrows challenges anymore. They need to understand the relation between knowledge, skills and attitudes, how they affect each other and how they have an effect on their students’ learning experience and personal life. They also need to understand that the STEM subjects are linked to each other and that a forward-looking approach to STEM teaching needs to connect STEM subjects interdisciplinary.
More information here (Dutch/English).
TARGET GROUPS
The proposal addresses the following main target groups:
1.Future STEM teachers (students in ITE programmes)
2.Higher education teaching staff involved in STEM ITE
3.Higher education staff responsible for STEM curricula and course progammes
Project duration: September 2020 - September 2023
Most targets the societal issues of waste and energy. Within these two themes, questions or problems that are relevant for the 'community' are formulated, and subsequently worked on in so-called SCP’s (School Community Projects).
The didactical approach of MOST is didactische insteek van MOST is inquiry- and design-based learning, as has also been developed within predecessors of MOST (the European projects Mascil, MaSDiV, Primas, etc.).
More information here.
Project duration: 2020-2022
ENSITE develops training materials for teacher education in Science and Mathematics in the area of Socio-Scientific Issues. This material targets the development of teacher competences for:
- teaching effective lessions
- supporting students within the framework of 'critical citizenship'.
Ensite builds on previous European projects (such as Inclusme and Parrise).
More information here.
Recently, Einstein’s special relativity theory (SRT) was added to the physics curriculum for Dutch pre-university education. As the features of SRT are highly abstract and very remote from every day experience, learning difficulties have been widely reported. It is hypothesised that visualization, or mental imagery, of exemplifying thought experiments may offer a potential solution to this problem. The aim of this project is to investigate students’ interaction with a visual computational modeling tool and its effects on students’ reasoning about SRT. Finally, the results of this study will be implemented into a whole-class lesson series.
PhD-student: Paul Alstein
Supervisor: Wouter van Joolingen
Project duration: September 2019 - September 2024
Funding: NWO
Pre-university science students reputedly vary in the extent to which they can apply digital research skills. However, the perceived gap between the actual skill level in this field and the demands of first-year university has never been thoroughly investigated. The proposed research project comprises an assessment of the actual gap by studying the level of digital research skills demonstrated in the mandatory research project (profielwerkstuk) and the demands posed by undergraduate education. Furthermore, it aims to assist in bridging this gap, by developing and implementing a formative assessment tool for digital research skills in secondary science education.
PhD-student: Kim Blankendaal
Supervisor: Wouter van Joolingen and Ralph Meulenbroeks
Project duration: September 2020 - September 2025
Funding: NWO
Students in higher education are regularly asked to self-assess their work. Even though there seems to be a general agreement that self-assessment is a valuable practice, reports on concrete applications continue to show mixed results. It seems that there is still a gap in understanding how, why, and when self-assessment works well and when it does not. The main focus of this research is on filling this gap.
Project duration: until 1 October, 2023
PhD-student: Christian Köppe
Supervisor: Wouter van Joolingen
These are all the research projects that the Public Engagement and Science research group is currently involved in.
Climate change is one of today’s most-pressing societal challenges, yet it is still highly contested, also in the Netherlands. While efforts are underway to place climate change science into Dutch and international formal education such as secondary school curricula, informal education on climate change science is far less structured. Many different projects aim to support Public Engagement and other forms of informal education with climate change science to a broad audience from school pupils to concerned citizens.
Attempts to measure the effectiveness of such projects in terms of changing knowledge, attitudes, and behaviour of citizens, are sparse. Therefore, we remain uncertain whether resources allocated to public engagement are well spent. For a proper and systematic evaluation there is a need for an established general framework for assessing public engagement activities. Such a framework will allow comparing the efficacy of different projects, and devising and evaluating strategies for improving particular projects.
In this postdoc project, we will develop such a framework and accompanying measuring instruments for the effectivity of Public Engagement and other forms of informal education projects that focus on climate change science.
Supervisors: Erik van Sebille, Wouter van Joolingen en Madelijn Strick
Project duration: February 2022 – June 2024
The ocean plays a pivotal role in the climate system of the Earth. Approximately 25% of all carbon dioxide emitted through anthropogenic activities ends up in the ocean, and more than 90% of the heat due to climate change has gone into warming ocean water. This excess heat and carbon puts severe stress on marine ecosystems, from rising temperatures to ocean acidification. Add to that the pressures from other anthropogenic activities such as overfishing and noise pollution from shipping, and the picture emerges that even the most far-flung marine ecosystems are impacted by our human actions.
Most of these impacts on the ocean are receiving considerable attention in public and social media, and one type of oceanic pollution in particular seems to be hitting the headlines a lot: microplastics. But while plastic obviously does not belong in the ocean, there is no scientific evidence that the amount of microplastic pollution currently in the ocean is high enough to be harmful to marine ecosystems. Meanwhile, the scientific evidence that climate change harms ecosystems is unrefuted.
Ao here is a dichotomy: while the scientific evidence for the impact of climate change on marine ecosystems is clear, the public’s concern for ocean warming and acidification has been relatively limited. The situation is reverse for marine plastic pollution, where the public concern is much larger than the scientific evidence for its harm seems to warrant.
In this PhD project, we will be teasing out the mechanisms behind this dichotomy, and then particularly with a focus on the role and messages of scientists and other important stakeholders such as journalists, activists and policy makers. How have these different groups engaged with the general public and each other about marine plastic pollution and oceanic climate change, and what impact did that have?
PhD candidate: Aike Vonk
Supervisors: Erik van Sebille en Mark Bos
Project duration: November 2021 – October 2025
These are all the research projects in which multiple of our research groups play a role.
These are all the Institute's Multidisciplinary projects
The central aim of this PhD research is to develop a relevant, appealing and feasible learning trajectory for learning to explain and design the technically programmed world for the upper grades of primary education. The research provides insight into the level of development of pupils and how this influences the ability to explain and design, which contexts are exemplary and appealing to pupils, how a balance can be found between different instructional approaches, how progress can be made visible and which TPACK is the minimum required to teach pupilshow to explain and design the technically programmed world.
It is governmental policy in the Netherlands to integrate programming and computational thinking in the primary curriculum. A number of countries are working on the introduction of programming and computational thinking in primary education (the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Estonia, USA). However, the proposed interpretations and the expected learning outcomes vary widely and it is by no means clear what a desired mastery would entail at primary school level, what would be a good, constructive learning trajectory, and what knowledge and skills teachers would need to teach and direct this. This research aims to offer both theoretical and practical tools for this.
PhD student: Gerard Dümmer, e.g.dummer@uu.nl
Supervisors: Paul Drijvers and Elwin Savelsbergh
Project duration: 1-12-2017 to 1-12-2021
ICSE Academy is a collaboration of 13 Higher Education Institutions, 13 policy-making organisations and 65 schools in 13 European countries to provide innovations for professional learning of pre- and in-service STEM teachers. This means that, altogether 100 higher education researchers, STEM initial teacher education (ITE) staff and continuous professional development (CPD) providers, educational policy makers, pre- and in-service teachers joined forces to improve STEM teacher education and training towards sustainable development goals (SDGs). Within the Academy we explore opportunities for a wide range of activity formats, e.g. reflective job-shadowing for teacher educators and teachers, clustered workshop series, and summer schools which bring together STEM teacher students, teacher educators and teachers. Jointly organized by all project countries and taking place across Europe, each format is expected to enrich European perspectives on STEM education, supported by a distinct spotlight on learning about, from and for each other. The basis of all this is a strong needs and feasibility alignment, which is studied through partner schools and their connected networks.
This teacher academy is co-funded by the European Union under acronym proSTEM and grant no. 101052670.
Information: Michiel Doorman
Project duration: summer 2022 - summer 2025
These are all the completed research projects by the Freudenthal Institute's different research groups.
The main goal of MERIA is to promote a positive attitude towards mathematics in upper secondary education and to show that mathematics is engaging, important and useful. In the project we try to achieve this goal by implementing an inquiry-based approach to mathematics education by using theories of Realistic Mathematics Education and the Theory of Didactic Situations. We develop scenarios for various mathematical topics in close cooperation with teachers from Croatia, Slovenia, Denmark and the Netherlands. The MERIA project activities address low and high achievers in mathematics with the ultimate aim of improving students' knowledge and attitudes towards mathematics. All resources are available through the MERIA website and disseminated by the MERIA newsletter.
Project leader: Matija Basic (Croatia)
Contact NL: Rogier Bos and Michiel Doorman
Website: https://time-project.math.hr/
Project duration: 2016-2019
Erasmus+
Cases of research misconduct are frequently discussed in leading scientific journals and have gained substantial public interest. The use of codes of conduct can help as guidelines to inform students and researchers about appropriate research practices, but a code of conduct without a clear implementation will not change the behaviour of scientists. Moreover, implementing rules and regulations is not always the best way to stimulate responsible behaviour. The development and implementation of an educational pathway for students on all levels of studies (Ba, Ma, PhD) is necessary to teach students how to recognize problematic situations, how to discuss them with their colleagues, and how to devise strategies for dealing with them. The first objective of the project is to encourage students to act with integrity during their education and conduct research in an integer way upon completion of their education. The second objective is to increase the level of digital teaching skills of staff and use of digital tools for integrity teaching. The third objective is to facilitate the translation of the existing codes of conduct into the curriculum and policy of Higher Education Institutions
Project leader: Bert Theunissen
Project duration: October 2018 - August 2021
NWO Veni project
Quantum mechanics is one of the most prominent theories of physics to date. However, since its conception, there have been disputes about the interpretation of its main object: the quantum state of a system. Are quantum states aspects of the world (ontic interpretation), or do they represent our knowledge about a system (epistemic interpretation)?
For some eighty years, this has been mainly a philosophical question. However, in 2012, Pusey, Barrett and Rudolph (PBR) showed that, given some intuitive assumptions, an epistemic interpretation is in conflict with quantum mechanical predictions. Specifically, their theorem demonstrates that, in any model that is able to reproduce the predictions of quantum mechanics, and in which states give a direct description of reality, the quantum state must be part of this description of reality. Obviously, such a result requires that the notion of an ontic interpretation of quantum states is formalized within the language of mathematics. In this project this step will be severely scrutinized to assess the precise philosophical import of the PBR theorem and other so-called ψ-ontology theorems. In addition, there are two sub-projects on the implications of ψ-ontology theorems.
The first concerns the implications for the quantum mechanical description of macroscopic systems. Quantum mechanics allows for the possibility of superposition states which, on an ontic interpretation, leads to the famous paradox of Schrödinger's cat. This sub-project explicates the possibilities for reconciling the quantum description of macroscopic systems with our every day experience.
The second focuses on the role of quantum states as generators for probability functions. Does an ontic interpretation of quantum states directly imply that these probabilities are also intrinsic properties of the world? And if not, what do ψ-ontology theorems tell us about the nature of quantum probabilities? These questions will be answered in the second sub-project.
Project number NWO: 275-20-070
Project leader: Dr. R. Hermens
Project duration: 16/01/2018 to 31/08/2020
Affiliated with: Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
FQXi Mini-Grant
Spontaneous collapse theories are modifications of quantum mechanics that introduce a fundamental (as opposed to ‘measurement-induced’) mechanism of collapse of the quantum mechanical wave function. The first arguably successful proposal was by Ghirardi, Rimini and Weber (GRW) in the mid-1980s for standard non-relativistic quantum mechanics. In the non- relativistic case, however, the collapse happens instantaneously everywhere, so that there is no straightforward relativistic generalisation. Various proposals have been put forward, but they are all problematic in some ways, and there is currently no consensus on the way forward.
This project is a collaboration between Guido Bacciagaluppi (UU), Wayne Myrvold (Western Ontario) and Owen Maroney (Oxford) investigating the current options for relativistic collapse theories, especially in the light of recent results by ourselves and others.
Project leader: Dr. G. Bacciagaluppi
Project duration: 30/05/2019 to 31/07/2021
In technology-rich mathematics education, we wonder how mathematical thinking, central in the new Dutch mathematics curricula, can be integrated with computational thinking, stressed in the Dutch informatics curriculum and the curriculum.nu reform. The main research question of this practice-oriented study is: How can a teaching-learning strategy, focusing on digital tool use, support 16-17 years old pre-university students in developing computational thinking skills related to mathematical thinking?
The consortium, consisting of six schools, two universities and a curriculum development institute, will perform a theory-informed design study. This study includes four phases: an inventory phase, consisting of a literature study and an expert interview study, a first design cycle in which two 5-lesson interventions are designed and piloted, a second design cycle phase, in which the revised intervention is field-tested and learning outcomes are assessed, and a concluding phase on disseminating results.
The study’s results include a theory-informed, practice-oriented list of key elements of computational thinking related to mathematical thinking; empirically validated learning activities for upper secondary pre-university education students in pure and applied mathematics courses; instruments to assess the related learning outcomes; a teacher guide on learning activities targeting computational thinking and mathematical thinking using digital tools; a policy document to inform upcoming curriculum reform.
Consortium members:
Erik Barendsen, researcher, Radboud University
Sylvia van Borkulo, researcher, Utrecht University
Christ van den Brand, teacher OBC Bemmel
Wim Caspers, teacher Lyceum Ypenburg, The Hague
Juan Dominguez, teacher Willem de Zwijger College, Bussum
Paul Drijvers, project leader, Universiteit Utrecht
Marjolein de Goede, teacher CSG Liudger, Drachten
Maria Kallia, researcher, Radboud Universiteit
Tim Leenders, teacher OBC Bemmel
Caroline Mattijssen, teacher OBC Bemmel
Jos Tolboom, curriculum developer, SLO
Peter Vaandrager, teacher CSG Liudger, Drachten
John Val, teacher Rijnlands Lyceum, Oegstgeest
Fetske Zwaga, teacher Harens Lyceum, Haren
Publications:
van Borkulo, S. P., Kallia, M., Drijvers, P., Barendsen, E., & Tolboom, J. (2019). Computational thinking and mathematical thinking: Digital literacy in mathematics curricula. Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Technology in Mathematics Teaching – ICTMT 14, 384–386. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.17185/duepublico/70781
Van Borkulo, S. P., Kallia, M., Drijvers, P., Barendsen, E., & Tolboom, J. (2020, July). Computational practices in mathematics education: Experts’ opinions. Paper to be presented at ICME14 July 2021, Shanghai, China.
Project leader: Paul Drijvers, p.drijvers@uu.nl
Contact: Sylvia van Borkulo, s.vanborkulo@uu.nl
Project duration: February 1, 2019 until February 1, 2022
Students learn mathematics in a more meaningful way by involving them in the process of reinventing concepts, processes and results. How is this principle successfully implemented? Reinvention is form of learning by inquiry.
In TIME, we collaborate with Croatia, Slovenia and Denmark to find ways to support teachers in implementing inquiry in their schools. The work in this project builds on two traditions in mathematics education: Realistic Mathematics Education and the Theory of Didactical Situations. We will use the method of Lesson Study with teams in schools to organize implementation on a structural level. TIME (https://time-project.math.hr/) is a follow-up of the Meria project.
Project duration: 2019 – 2022
Embodied, Embedded and Extended Cognition (E3C) marks the recent turn in Epistemology, the philosophy of knowledge. The three adjectives indicate that our knowledge and capacities are not located in our skulls, but extend to, and are distributed over: (i) our bodies, which are always embedded in their environment they interact with; and (ii) the artefacts we use, varying from paper notebooks to computers. E3C holds that practical knowledge is primary: subject S knows how to perform an action, and that the other kind of knowledge, propositional knowledge, derives from it phylogenetically and ontogenetically — subject S knows that p. The mediation of knowledge acquisition by ICT is becoming so dominant and ubiquitous (smartphone, tablet, laptop, computer, world-wide-web) that Epistemology must take, after the E3C turn, a further, digital turn.
We concentrate on the following epistemological questions that obtrude: How to make sense of mathematical knowledge after the turn in epistemology to E3C, given its abstract character? Does the digital turn affect the genesis and essence of mathematical knowledge? When practical knowledge is primary and propositional knowledge is derivative (E3C), how does this ‘derivation’ work in a digital environment?
To answer these pressing philosophical questions, an empirical case study in epistemology will be performed of the acquisition of mathematical knowledge and capacities in a controlled ICT-embedded environment — also because the acquisition of these sorts of knowledge and capacities are exact and testable. Moreover, the flexible ICT–tool that this Project develops will also be of great service in mathematics education at secondary schools.
Consortium members:
Main applicant:
- Prof.dr. F.A. Muller, Faculty of Philosophy, Erasmus University Rotterdam
Co-applicants:
- Prof. dr. ir. J.M. Broersen, Faculty of Humanities, Utrecht University
- dr. A. Bakker, Faculty of Science, Utrecht University,
- Daan Dronkers MA, PhD student, Faculty of Philosophy, Erasmus University Rotterdam, supervised by prof. dr. F.A. Muller,
- Alexandra Kuncová MA, PhD student, Faculty of Humanities, Utrecht University, supervised by dr. J.M. Broersen
- Rosa Alberto MSc, PhD student, Faculty of Science, Utrecht University, supervised by prof. dr. P. Drijvers and dr. A. Bakker
- Prof. dr. P. Drijvers, Faculty of Science, Utrecht University
- P. Boon, project leader of the Numworx Digital Mathematics Environment
Partner from industry:
- Noordhoff Uitgevers
Project leader: dr. Arthur Bakker
Project duration: February 1, 2017 until March 1, 2021
See also: https://www.nwo.nl/en/research-and-results/research-projects/i/30/26830.html and project website https://digtep.sites.uu.nl/
In various professions, such as in the construction sector, but also in daily life, it is important to have spatial insight. You can learn spatial insight by doing while moving in the three-dimensional world, but also with the help of apps for computers or tablets, which take place on a two-dimensional screen. The question now is to what extent virtual reality (VR) applications can form a bridge between both types of experiences and how you can combine these learning experiences into a fruitful learning arrangement.
To investigate this question, an existing successful computer application, Building blocks using different views from the Digital Mathematics Environment, is combined with a VR application. This combination is tested in a small-scale situation with students from the construction sector ('MBO BBL' Carpenter level 2/3) who are recruited by Bouwmensen Twente. Analysis of video data will lead to insights into the extent to which the different learning experiences contribute to the intended insight. The project will thus provide scientific knowledge with regard to the effective arrangement of computer and virtual learning activities in the context of vocational education.
Although the use of VR in education is not a new phenomenon, this proposal has the following innovative aspects: (1) the focus on vocational education, (2) the combination of different media, and (3) the focus on 3D geometry. The consortium consists of experienced researchers from Utrecht University, educational experts in vocational education from Bouwmensen Twente, and experts in the field of VR from The Virtual Dutch Men.
Project leader: Paul Drijvers, p.drijvers@uu.nl
Contact person: Sylvia van Borkulo, s.vanborkulo@uu.nl
Project duration: October 1, 2019 until October 1, 2020
Introductory statistics courses are both essential and challenging for university students. Reasons for this challenging character include the abstract character of the statistical concepts at stake, and the large number of students enrolled in the courses, making it difficult for teachers to provide individual support. Therefore, this study addresses the question how automated feedback in an online learning environment can support students in higher education in gaining understanding of statistics. Two feedback types form the starting points: student models for providing global feedback on series of tasks, and domain reasoners for providing local feedback on single tasks. Statistics-specific versions of both feedback types have been designed and implemented in introductory statistics courses in three bachelor programs at Utrecht University. The design of the feedback is evaluated through qualitative analysis of student work in the online learning environment, questionnaires and interviews. Feedback effects on student understanding of statistics are evaluated in a study in which students are randomly assigned to different feedback conditions and in which student work and exam results are analyzed quantitatively. As a result, effective feedback mechanisms for statistics education and other domains will be identified.
PhD candidate: Sietske Tacoma (s.g.tacoma@uu.nl)
Supervisors: Paul Drijvers (p.drijvers@uu.nl) and Johan Jeuring (j.t.jeuring@uu.nl)
Project duration: April 1, 2015 – July 1, 2020
Teachers are increasingly using video in their lessons, with various aims, such as raising students’ levels of conceptual knowledge or interest. Videos that can be used for educational purposes are numerous, ranging from instruction videos to fiction films. These videos all have different characteristics, for example regarding the amount and structure of information, and the audio-visual presentation. However, guidelines on which video characteristics can help to achieve specific teacher aims are lacking. In our research, we make a first step towards composing such guidelines by adding a film theory perspective to educational research on videos.
In both film theory and educational psychology we have found leads to believe that film and video might be useful for raising students’ interest. In a literature review we bring together the theories from both fields into a convergent framework. We then empirically test this framework to judge its workability and ecological validity. Finally we translate the framework into guidelines that should enable teachers and filmmakers to make or select interest raising videos that kickstart science and mathematics classes.
PhD candidate: Winnifred Wijnker (w.wijnker@uu.nl)
Supervisors: Paul Drijvers (p.drijvers@uu.nl) and Arthur Bakker (a.bakker4@uu.nl)
Publications:
- Wijnker, W., & Bos, R. D. (2018). Een goede onderwijsvideo dient een helder doel. NVOX, 43(4), 212–213.
- Wijnker, W., Bakker, A., Van Gog, T. A. J. M., & Drijvers, P. H. M. (2018). Educational videos from a film theory perspective: Relating teacher aims to video characteristics. British Journal of Educational Technology. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1111/bjet.12725
Project duration: September 1, 2016 – November 1, 2020
Due to increased use of technology, the workplace practices of engineers have changed. So-called Techno-mathematical Literacies (TmL) are necessary skills for current and future engineers. In this study, the specific TmL used by engineers are identified. With these TmL as central learning goals, an innovative course of applied mathematics for higher technical professional education (HBO) will be developed and evaluated by the research approach of design-based implementation research. This study will yield theoretical knowledge about the nature of TmL and the implementation of TmL in education, next to a course of applied mathematics that is adjustable for all technical domains.
PhD student: Nathalie van der Wal, n.j.vanderwal@uu.nl.
Supervisors: Paul Drijvers, promotor, and Arthur Bakker, copromotor.
Project duration: 2014-2020
Current statistics education for 15-year-olds focuses on the formal procedures of descriptive statistics. As a result, students have difficulties to apply these procedures in practice. Moreover, students are not aware that statistics is essentially about how we can extrapolate data obtained from a sample to the underlying population in a reliable way. Informal statistical inference focuses on this extrapolation with corresponding reasoning on the likelihood. Therefore, the aim of this study is to gain knowledge of a learning trajectory to enhance informal statistical inference.
PhD student: Marianne van Dijke-Droogers, https://www.uu.nl/staff/MJSvanDijkeDroogers
Supervisors: Paul Drijvers en Arthur Bakker
This research received funding from the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science under the Dudoc program. https://www.ru.nl/dudoc/docent-onderzoekers/
Project duration: September 2016 – February 2021
Inquiry-based learning (IBL) is advocated in policy documents but does not yet seem to be a routine in daily teaching. The project investigates IBL in mathematics in China and the Netherlands to better understand the current situation in different cultural contexts. We first explored through a teachers’ perspective and a students’ perspective, and found many shared IBL beliefs and practices in Chinese and Dutch samples. We will further investigate opportunities for IBL provided by textbook tasks and the actual practices of IBL in mathematics lessons.
PhD candidate: Luhuan Huang (L.huang@uu.nl)
Supervisors: Wouter van Joolingen (W.R.vanJoolingen@uu.nl) and Michiel Doorman (m.doorman@uu.nl)
Funding source: China Scholarship Council (CSC)
Project duration: October 2016 – September 2020
The concepts of Special Relativity Theory can be quite counter intuitive for novice learners. Our aim therefore is to develop an effective teaching approach for secondary education. We first investigated students’ pre-instructional reasoning with light propagation and found that students reason consistently with one of two alternative models. Based on these results we designed tasks to introduce the light postulate to secondary students. Finally, we collaborated with teachers to develop and field-test a teaching approach.
PhD-student: Floor Kamphorst
Supervisors: Wouter van Joolingen, Elwin Savelsbergh, Marjolein Vollebregt
Project duration: August 2015 - July 2020
Funding: NWO (Grant No. OCW/PromoDoc/1065001)
The <colette/> project provides educators with a low-threshold approach using the Bring-Your-Own-Device approach to embed the teaching of Computational Thinking in their classes. Thus, more students can engage in and learn about Computational Thinking all over Europe.
One of the outputs of the project is an interactive web portal which provides authoring tools to easily modify exemplary tasks. The tasks can be adapted by the teachers and put together in task sequences catering to the learners' individual abilities.
Another output is an app ('colette-project') for mobile devices in which the students can work on tasks assigned to them by their teacher and in which they can submit their solutions. It will be possible to create and run algorithms as well as to use Augmented Reality.
There will be a catalogue of generic tasks, i.e., a collection of best-practice and sample tasks that can be used to foster Computational Thinking. These tasks will target different ages and ability levels and there will be content to use in both lower and upper secondary school.
There is a manual introducing the concept of Computational Thinking and explaining educators how to use and embed <colette/> in their classrooms which helps teachers to learn about the basic functionalities on their own.
Finally, a modularized short-term curriculum for teacher trainings will help educators to get familiar with the concept of Computational Thinking and <colette/>.
The consortium consists of six partners from five European countries: Goethe University Frankfurt am Main (project coordinator, Germany), Autentek GmbH (Germany), Johannes Kepler University Linz (Austria), Univerzita Konstantina Filozofa Nitre (Slovakia), Utrecht University (the Netherlands), Université Claude Bernard Lyon (France).
Project duration: September 2020 to August 2023.