Title Promoter Affiliations Abstract "The crucial role of lecturers in dealing with diversity in higher education. A study on lecturers’ diversity ideologies and practices, their impact on students and the development of an intervention trajectory." "Jozefien De Leersnyder" "Social and Cultural Psychology" "Compared to other regions, the Flemish educational system scores highly on quality, yet poorly on equality: significant achievement gaps between youth with and without a migration background and those with low versus high socio-economic status (SES) persist in secondary and tertiary education (European Center for Statistics, 2014; PISA, 2015; 2018). These inequalities in turn reduce the future career opportunities and living standards of already vulnerable youth with a migration and/or low socio-economic background. Previous research has shown that these achievement gaps cannot be explained away by individual or family factors (such as IQ, parental education or home language) (Agirdag & Korkmazer, 2015), and that the approach to diversity at school is a crucial but underexposed factor. Specifically, it has been shown that an intercultural/pluralistic approach that recognizes and values socio-cultural differences reduces achievement, while the reverse is true for color-blind approaches that ignore socio-cultural differences and emphasize individuality (Celeste et al., 2019; De Leersnyder et al., 2020). In many European higher education institutions meritocracy, equal treatment and uniqueness are core values. A color-blind approach is most tempting and, therefore, often dominant. Students with a migration background and/or low socio-economic status are still confronted with misunderstanding or unconscious behavior (micro-aggressions, white middle-class blindness, language prejudice etc.) (De Vroey et al., 2016; Jansen et al., 2017).Concretely, minority students in higher education experience up to 4 times as much discrimination as their peers in the majority group, feel less at home at the college or university and suffer from higher drop out rates and slower study progress (e.g. Diversity Monitor UvA, 2016; O’Keeffe, 2013). A student’s ability to develop a sense of belonging within the higher education institution requires a caring, supportive and welcoming and a safe environment. This can be achieved not only through the development of positive student/faculty relationships and the presence of a well-equipped counseling center, but also by a pluralistic study environment that embraces diversity and difference and does not see diversity as a deficit, but as an actual resource and asset to thrive in higher education. Part of the pathway towards more inclusive higher education institutions is the employment of staff with a diverse background, because they can act as role-models for the students and that having a lecturer with the same migration and/orsocio-cultural background is linked to better study results (Llamas, Nguyen & Tran, 2019). However, creating an inclusive diversity climate is not solely the task of staff with a migration an/or lower socio-economic background. An equitable and inclusive learning environment in which diversity can be activated as capital and an environment that embraces cultural differences related to ethnicity and/or social class also relies on the diversity qualities and skills of staff belonging to the majority group. This PhD thesis focuses on the socio-cultural sensitivity of higher education staff and their awareness of implicit assumptions and/or Western frameworks translated into their curriculum and didactics. It also examines the impact of lecturers' diversity ideologies and practices on their students' sense of belonging and study results, and sets out first steps towards interventions that can promote a pluralistic climate in higher education." "How do different schools deal with cultural diversity and (why) does it matter for achievement gaps?" "Orhan Agirdag" "Education and Society, Social and Cultural Psychology" "Many countries face severe ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in education. Combining recent insights from educational sciences and social-cultural psychology, this project formulates a novel route to understand and tackle these disparities - a route that studies how a school’s diversity model (SDM; i.e., approach to diversity) impacts achievement via psychosocial mechanisms at the teacher and pupil levels. Specifically, we aim to identify which school characteristics (school composition and SDM) relate to minority and low SES pupils’ academic achievement (objective 1), and which psychosocial mechanisms account for this link (objective 2). Concretely, we propose to study these questions with both quantitative and qualitative techniques in 10-12 year olds since this is the age when children start to form academic as well as socio-cultural identities. Firstly, we will examine to what extent the three SDMs that dominate the literature – i.e.,  assimilation, colorblindness, multiculturalism – are present at Flemish primary schools across different domains (such as linguistic and religious diversity) and how they interplay with school composition variables (WP1). Subsequently, we will study how SDMs relate to pupils’ academic self-concept (WP2) and teacher beliefs (WP3). Finally, we will test our full theoretical model on how school characteristics relate to academic achievement via the mediating role of pupils’ academic self-concept and teacher beliefs (WP4)." "PhD: How do schools deal with ethnic diversity and what are the consequences?" "Jozefien De Leersnyder, Orhan Agirdag" "Social and Cultural Psychology, Education and Society" "Many countries deal with ethnic and scoio-economic inequalities in education: pupils from poor families and/or with pupils from migration backgrounds perform less well at school compared to pupils from white families, even after controlling for individual capacities. Building on previous research from various disciplines, the ECDIS project takes a new approach to understand these inequalities (and, by doing this, formulating advises to decrease these inequalities). The ECDIS-project focuses on how elementary schools deal with ethnic-cultural diversity. It studies which visions they have on diversity and which practices they apply in various domains (like language policies, curriculum, activities etc.). It aims to understand whether the ways schools deal with cultural diversity is related to academic achievements of pupils with a migration background and/or from lowe social classes (aim 1) and how this process works (aim 2). More concretely, we will first study to which extent the three School Diversity Models dominating the literature - mostly assimilation, colour-blindness and pluralism - are present in Flemish elementary schools. We will identify these in various domains (like linguistic and religious diversity) and we will study how they are related to school composition in terms of pupils' socio-economic statuses and ethnicities. Next, we will measure the impact of the School Diversity Models on pupils' identities and on teachers' beliefs. To conclude, we will test whether the link between school-characteristics and School Diversity Models on the one hand, and school achievements on the other, can (partially) be explained by the impact they have on pupils' identities and beliefs." "Concept features and lexical diversity. A dialectological case study on the relationship between meaning and variation" "Dirk Geeraerts" "Quantitative Lexicology and Variational Linguistics (QLVL), Leuven" "This dissertation focuses on lexical diversity, the amount of lexical variation that a concept shows, in the dialects of Dutch. Lexical diversity can differ between concepts. For the concept 'drunk', for instance, nearly 3000 English expressions exist, including blitzed, intoxicated, hammered and I’m not as think as you drunk I am (Dickson 2009, cited in Lillo 2009). For the concept 'sober', however, a significantly smaller number of lexical items are available, like sober or abstinent. As is apparent from this example, variation in lexical diversity is influenced by the meaning of the concepts to be expressed: concepts that are prone to taboo show more variation. The finding that meaning influences lexical diversity was first confirmed on a large scale in three pilot studies (Geeraerts & Speelman 2010, Speelman & Geeraerts 2007, 2008). Importantly, however, these pilot studies not only inquired into the proneness to taboo of a particular concept, but showed that other types of meaning-related concept features (viz. features that concern the prototypical organization of the lexicon) significantly affect lexical diversity as well. Nonetheless, as these pilot studies only focused on one dialect area, viz. the Limburgish dialect area, and only took into account one universal semantic field, viz. the field of concepts relating to the human body, the extent to which these features are also relevant in other datasets has not yet been examined.In this dissertation, four case studies are presented that examine the relationship between lexical diversity and meaning in different ways. In part 1, we show that cognitive concept features, related to the maximalist view on meaning of the Cognitive Linguistics paradigm, affect the amount of variation a concept shows. The main aim of the first case study, outlined in chapter 3, is to confirm that concept features related to the prototype-theoretical organization of the lexicon influence the amount of variation a concept shows in other datasets than were used in the pilot studies. More specifically, we examine the influence of these features on six semantic fields (the human body, the house, celebration & entertainment, personality & feelings, family & sexuality and society, school & education) of the digitized databases of the Dictionaries of the Brabantic and Limburgish Dialects. The analysis shows that the results of the pilot studies are the same in other dialectal data and in other semantic fields: less salient, more vague and affect-sensitive concepts are characterized by significantly more lexical diversity. Additionally, we elaborate on the results of the pilot studies by selecting semantic fields organized along two dimensions (viz. concreteness and universal versus society-related versus locally bound concepts). This indicates that these dimensions affect the relative impact of the concept features between semantic fields.In the second case study, presented in chapter 4, we inquire into the effect of these concept features on the different aspects of lexical diversity in dialect data, viz. the number of unique types that are available per concept, on the one hand, and the extent to which these types are heterogeneously scattered across geographical space, on the other. The results of the regression models indicate that the effect of the concept features is relevant for every aspect of lexical diversity. However, some predictors play a larger role for the number of unique types (viz. affect and, to a lesser extent, onomasiological vagueness), while onomasiological salience seems to influence the geographical spread of the lexical variants more. Furthermore, the analysis indicates that the fact that the data are geographically stratified is not the only reason why the concept features reached significance in the first case study (chapter 3).In part 2, we take into account the fact that concept-related features can differ between language users. More specifically, we examine the extent to which the experiential and usage-based nature of meaning is reflected in lexical diversity between dialect speakers from different locations. Chapter 5 investigates how the interaction between semantic features and lectal differences is reflected in the types of lexical variants that are used in different locations. In practice, we inquire into the usage of non-native variants from three source languages (viz. French, Latin and German) in four semantic fields (society, school & education, personality & feelings, church & religion and clothing & personal hygiene) in the Brabantic and Limburgish dialect area. The results indicate that we find geographical and semantic structure in the lexical variants that are used: loanwords are not used at random. The data show clear differences between the source languages and between the semantic fields. Although these results corroborate previous findings, this case study contributes to contact linguistic research in Cognitive Sociolinguistics as it is one of the first to simultaneously investigate differences between source languages and in different semantic fields on a large scale using quantitative inferential techniques (viz. Generalized Additive Modelling).In chapter 6, finally, we examine to what extent an experience-based characteristic of a concept, viz. experiential salience, correlates with lexical diversity. We rely on extra-linguistic, objective frequency counts of plants that occur naturally in the northern part of Belgium to gauge the experiential salience of a plant. The analysis shows that experiential salience correlates with lexical diversity: the more frequently a plant occurs in the everyday environment of a language user, the smaller the amount of unique types that are available, given the amount of tokens. However, as indicated in the discussion, experiential frequency alone does not cause complete lexical homogeneity in the speech community: dialect speakers not only need to encounter a plant frequently in their everyday environment, but they need to talk about it as well.Overall, then, this dissertation contributes to the field of lexical semantics from a Cognitive Sociolinguistics perspective. It shows how, through the use of quantitative techniques on a semantically diverse dataset, aspects of the structure of lexical diversity are revealed and how an examination of dialectological data can contribute to theoretical linguistics. " "Teaching for divercity. A steppingstone to team-oriented perspectives on educating teachers and catering for student diversity." "Tom Smits" Didactica "The project aims at modelling the transition to a renewed teacher education by means of intercollege teams fostering cooperation, expertise sharing and collaborative learning. The project takes its departure from a shared focus on preparing novice teachers for urban education and wants to impact upon class practice in schools and in teacher education itself. The project comprises three subsections ('communities of practice') that concern the central tenet of 'teaching for divercity': (1) Linguistic diversity (co-supervisors: Jordi Casteleyn, Mathea Simons & Rianne Pinxten) (2) Urban education (co-supervisors: Paul Janssenswillen & Wouter Schelfhout) (3) Inclusive education (co-supervisors: Elke Struyf & Ellen Vandervieren). Partner institutions are: CVO Crescendo, CVO Horito, CVO Provincie Antwerpen, CVO HBO 5 Antwerpen, Artesis Plantijn Hogeschool, Karel de Grote Hogeschool and Universiteit Antwerpen. The communities of practice are composed of staff from these partner institutions, constituting genuine learning communities managed by a process coach (Carlijne Ceulemans until 30.09.2017). This approach allows for design-based research into the functioning and effectivity of learning teams." "Inclusive practices and co-support in Flemish secondary schools. A qualitative study on inclusive school development." "Katja Petry" "Parenting and Special Education" "Inclusive practices and co-support in Flemish secondary schools. Qualitative study on inclusive school development. Annet De Vroey; Supervisors: Prof. dr. Katja Petry & Prof. dr. Elke Struyf (UA)In spite of international statements and legislation, becoming an inclusive school is a complex process of educational change, challenged by many constraints. Qualitative research on inclusive practices, processes and interventions may add to the understanding of key factors and the implementation of inclusive education. Using a multiple case study design, the objective of this study is to assess inclusive school development and classroom practice in Flemish secondary schools, characterized by achievement-based secondary streams, and a dual system of mainstream and special education and support delivery.   Based on organizational, educational and sociological perspectives of inclusion, four studies are performed: (1) a literature review in search for key factors that contribute to the development of inclusion in secondary education, and (2) a meta-synthesis evaluating implementation strategies of inclusion in secondary schools, followed by a multiple case study on inclusion across 12 secondary schools in Flanders, evaluating (3) inclusive classroom practice across secondary streams and grades, and (4) inclusive school development processes within and across the case-study schools.   While implementation models vary, knowledge of key factors for successful inclusion in secondary schools is crucial, such as teachers’ and peers’ attitudes, access to the general curriculum, shared decision-making and collaborative practice. In Flemish illustrative case studies, observations of inclusive classroom practice - across grade levels, streams and with regard to diverse support needs -, show the capacity of teachers to access the curriculum in a balanced way, performing emotionally supportive skills and high quality instruction towards the whole group as well as individual student needs.  However, few adaptations are used. A framework of inclusive classroom practice is developed accordingly, which is introduced and evaluated in teacher education.  Analysis of interviews with principals, teachers, students, peers, parents and visiting support teachers show a variety of implementation processes, all based on supportive relationships, shared leadership and know how, strategies of integrated support and collaborative practice.  Schools find ways of adopting inclusive practice, in line with former diversity practice and the school’s values.  Reaching a higher self-efficacy through effective classroom practice and embedded support, school teams discuss further needs and challenges of inclusion with regard to full academic participation, and sustainable collaborative support.  " "Determining sample requirements for modeling and reporting (stability of) school value-added estimates: sample size, inter-school student mobility and sample heterogeneity" "Koen Aesaert" "Educational Effectiveness and Evaluation" "Within the context of school accountability systems, many countries use value added (VA)-estimates as indicators of the educational quality or effectiveness of their schools. A fundamental issue in this field is the (in)stability of VA estimates across time, i.e., the extent to which school effects persist over successive cohorts of students. VA-estimates are less stable, i.e., less reliable, especially for primary schools and for schools that are located at the low end of the performance distribution. As such, for schools that are already at risk the stakes become very high, because they might be unfairly targeted for negative sanctions. Although research results start to indicate that the sample is related to the stability of VA-estimates, specific guidelines on which sample characteristics to account for when modeling and reporting (the stability of) VA-estimates are missing. Therefore, the aim of this project is to investigate the effect of school sample size, student inter-school mobility and school sample heterogeneity on the stability of VA-estimates." "Learning scenarios to support inclusive language and culture education for heterogeneous school classes (E-Learnscene)." "Tom Smits" "Adam Mickiewicz University, Catholic University of Louvain, University of Gothenburg, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Didactica" "Through numerous language policy initiatives on the one hand and new findings from language teaching research on the other, existing input-oriented language acquisition and learning models have been replaced by an output- and competence-oriented language acquisition and learning perspective, at the same time demonstrating the complexity and dynamics of language acquisition by multilingual individuals. Above all, however, the introduction of the Common European Framework of Reference (CFR) (Council of Europe, 2001) has led to national curricula changing the progression of learning towards a process-based perspective on language learning, and to the addition of pedagogical aspects such as intercultural learning, media competence and other personality-related competences (ability to work in a team, critical competence). In spite of all these substantial changes, most textbooks and teaching materials for German are still backward-looking, which proves to be most explicit in countries with German as an official language (or minority language) coexisting with other speech communities (Italy, Belgium, Poland, etc.) and those with an increased demand for German as a foreign language in many fields (Sweden). In these countries, the promotion of German is generally falling short, which most prominently emerges in teaching wanting in innovation and pedagogical measures that are modestly successful. Against this background, the project aims to use the expertise of an international consortium in the field of German as a foreign and official language to develop, implement and evaluate learning scenarios that provide in-service and pre-service teachers with pedagogical support for collaborative and learner-centered teaching in present-day heterogeneous classes. Joining expertise in a transnational consortium of this kind will make an essential contribution to the national curricula involved (in particular to the systematic improvement of their teaching quality) and will thus meet the special needs of German in the different countries. The project sets for itself the following objectives: • Promoting and supporting a comprehensive approach to language teaching and learning, capitalizing on the diversity of today's increasingly multilingual classrooms. • Supporting synergies with research and innovation activities and promoting new technologies as incubators and drivers of improvements in language and culture pedagogy. The project combines both the expertise of academic partners with proven experience in language teaching research, teaching materials design and development, and in- and pre-service teacher training (Universities of Bozen, Antwerp, Louvain, Poznan and Gothenburg), as well as the practice-oriented profile of the Belgian German Teachers' Association and school partners representing the different teaching contexts targeted in the project, that will contribute to support the development, evaluation and dissemination of the learning scenarios through integration into the relevant professional networks and the numerous associated schools and institutions, safeguarding the transfer between theory/research and practice. The project will impact on the level of the students, the (trainee) teachers, and the subject-specific school teams and learning communities for German." "Nurturing safe, nutritious and sustainable food consumption behaviour: a multi-stakeholders intervention at primary school level in Indonesia" "Liesbeth Jacxsens" "Department of Food Technology, Safety and Health" "The project, hosted by 5 institutions (UGent, UGM, UNS, UNDIP, Rikolto), aims to identify gaps in current status of food safety, nutrition, and food behaviour so to establish an ideal food meal system model (safe, nutritious, healthy and sustainable) at primary schools in Indonesia. Eight work packages will be implemented covered by 2 Ph.D students (topic 1. nutritional and behaviour; 2. food safety and risk assessment).  A coordination among promoters and local stakeholders is implemented for a co-creation approach to ensure the success and sustainability of the project" "Culturally Inclusive Schools: Celebrating diversity, teaching common values and fostering intercultural competence among youth" "Ellen Claes" "Faculty of Social Sciences, Centre for Political Research" "Our culture can shape identity and communication. Effective intercultural communication has become more important for schools in Europe facing increasing student diversity. Building more efficient intercultural competencies in the classrooms requires measurable, conceptualised models based on empirical studies, and targeted educational approaches. To fill this gap, the EU-funded INCLUDed project will study a heuristic framework based on an ecological systems theory. This will be applied to a nationally representative sample of 14-year-olds in Italy. The aim will be to analyse, develop, adjust, and validate multifaceted measurement instruments of intercultural competence and cultural diversity. It will allow for the examination of effectiveness of approaches in different cultural school settings to improve educational policies."