"Any student answer can be used by teachers as feedback about the learning process....silence is also a student answer " (Smit, 2021)

Nienke Smit works as an assistant professor in the department of Education at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. Her research focuses on scaffolding processes, interaction and adaptive teaching. She specialises in classroom observational research from a complex dynamic systems research perspective. 

Nienke is currently wrapping up a replication study about contingent support in face-to-face interaction. She is supervising an interdisciplinary PhD project about responsiveness in multilingual classrooms together with colleagues from the department of Data Science. 

Nienke Smit is an experienced teacher educator and teaches various courses in the Graduate School of Teaching. She leads a project which aims to decrease the teacher shortage and improve teacher education programmes for second career teachers.