In my research, I focus on a range of topics such as teacher-student communication processes in the classroom (in particular in multicultural classrooms), learning and assessment at the workplace, assessment and motivation, assessment and creativity, and the development of teacher expertise and the contribution teacher education can make to the development of teacher expertise. Recently, I started research into differences between children's social and cultural environment within and outside the school and the effects of these differences on educational equity.
My research is part of the programme Education and Learning. I also am one of the members of the core team of the research focus area "Professional Performance" and I am involved in het programma "Change your perspective! Youth's media use and the role of teaching and education." (part of Dynamics of Youth: one of the four startegic research themes of Utrecht University).
Projects
Project
Better Together: investigating multilingual classroom interaction through social network analysis
01.09.2022
General project description
Verbal interaction in the language classroom is both a means and a goal in the language learning process. There are a lot of factors that influence students’ decision to interact with their teacher and fellow students in the classroom. For example, their background knowledge, their motivation level, their mood, and their relationship with the teacher could all play a role. Translanguaging, the planned use of more than one language for teaching and learning, is a promising pedagogical approach that stimulates learners to use their full linguistic repertoire for learning. In a more and more (linguistically) diverse society, this mixed language use could make a large impact on student behavior.
This project aims to investigate moment-to-moment classroom interaction patterns, through social network analyses. These analyses will allow us to quantify how students and teachers interact, and estimate how this interaction might be improved. The goal of this project is to gain more insight into how using diverse languages can add to the language learning process that occurs in secondary schools.
This project is a collaboration between the departments of Education and Methodology & Statistics. The interdisciplinary "Better Together" team brings together insights from educational psychology, applied linguistics and data science in order to improve our understanding of how teenagers in a multilingual society like the Netherlands may develop their interactional competence during foreign language lessons. Results of this project may inform teacher education and educational policy.
Role
Researcher
Funding
Utrecht University Faculty Social and Behavioural Sciences