Focus on writing skills
Renske Bouwer is associate professor in Language & Education. As an interdisciplinary researcher, she combines theories from educational sciences, psychology and linguistics to improve the writing skills of students in primary, secondary and higher education. She uses various methods such as eye tracking, keystroke logging, comparative judgement and text analysis, to unravel the cognitive, affective and social processes of writing. She also investigates how to validly and reliably assess students’ writing skills and how to provide effective (peer)feedback.
Bridging the gap between research and practice
Together with teachers, Renske implements the scientific insights into evidence-informed teaching materials that can be used in educational practice. This combination of fundamental and practice-based research has already led to the successful spin-offs Tekster and Comproved, several scientific and professional awards, and a cum laude PhD at Utrecht Institute for Language Sciences.
Current research projects
Currently, she is a Comenius Teaching Fellow on academic writing (www.academischschrijven.nl), PI of an interfaculty USO educational innovation project on promoting the academic reading-writing nexus, and a NRO-funded project on dialogic writing (www.dialogischschrijven.nl). She is also co-promotor of two PhD researchers on comparative peer feedback and automatic text-analysis and feedback.