I love how physics helps us to understand the world around us, and how we can use this knowledge both in our day-to-day life and in the development of new technologies. From 2004 until 2020 I have therefore enjoyed working as a physics teacher in order to make secondary school students enthusiastic about physics, and to encourage them to adopt an inquisitive attitude. It is a beautiful and important profession that gives a lot of satisfaction.

In my years as a physics teacher I considered it a challenge to make students really understand what they were doing. This inspired me to do a PhD research on the teaching of quantum mechanics (QM) at secondary schools. In this project I have researched experts' opinions on the QM curriculum, secondary school students' difficulties after learning QM, and the influence of students' understanding of potential energy on their understanding of QM.

Currently, I work as a physics teacher educator and researcher at the Freudenthal Institute. In my research I strive to gain more insight in students' learning of modern physics at the secondary school level in order to improve physics education. In my lectures I hope to inspire and motivate pre-service teachers to show the beauty and importance of physics.