Title Promoter Affiliations Abstract "Understanding teacher educators' scholarship. Biography, workplace and pedagogy." "Geert Kelchtermans" "Centre for Innovation and the Development of Teacher and School, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Kulak Kortrijk Campus" "The concern with high quality teacher education as a warrant for good schooling remains very prominent in the media, the educational policy, and research. Yet, in these debates on teachers and their teaching quality, little attention is paid to the ones who actually educate these teachers. Empirical research that explicitly focuses on the professional livesand expertise of teacher educators remains scarce. This puzzling paradox is partly explained by the widespread assumption that a teacher educator is someone who teaches (his/her subject) to students in higher education rather than to students in elementary or secondary education. The question that remains largely unaddressed is that of the nature of teachereducators' professionalism: how do they define their professional tasks?; what is the basis for that definition and its enactment in their pedagogical practice? This dissertation addressed this knowledge gap by putting the following research question at its center: how can we understandand conceptualize the content of teacher educators' professionalism andhow does this professionalism develop throughout their careers. In chapter 1, we situate this research interest in the international literatureand present an overview of the four studies that constitute this dissertation.Chapter 2 reports the results of a systematic literature review of the Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices or S-STEP research. The two central questions in the study were: (1) what research questionsare being addressed in self-study research?; and (2) what characterizesself-study as a methodological process? Based on our analysis we described research from the S-STEP-approach as research by teacher educators on their own practice; for this reason it privileges the use of qualitative research methods as well as a collaborative and interactive research process; and trustworthiness is used as the key criterion for its validity. In line with these characteristics, we also identified two essentialtensions that constitute challenges and possible pitfalls for the achievement of the self-study research agenda and which need to be (more) explicitly addressed by self-study researchers: the tension between relevance on the one hand and rigor the tension between effectiveness and understanding on the other hand.Based on the results of this literature review we designed a project with a self-study research group, which is described in chapter 3. For this project, we collaborated with and supported six teacher educators enacting a self-study of their own practice. Using an ethnographic case-study approach, we simultaneously figured as the subject and the object of this study and analyzed how teacher educators' professional development through self-study can be meaningfully supported by external facilitation. We started by articulating the pedagogical rationale of the facilitation practices in terms of four general principles, grounded in theoretical understandings of professional development. Each principle was formulated as a working hypothesis that explicitly included its pedagogical consequences. The empirical data for this study include the facilitators' and teacher educators' logs, the audiotapesof the research group meetings, and all the written materials produced during the project. Systematic qualitative content analysis resulted in an empirical validation and refinement of the rationale and, as such, contributed to a pedagogy of supporting professional development with, by,and for teacher educators.The background of chapter 4 was again provided by the self-study research group, but in this study we specifically zoomed in on the professional development of one teacher educator in the collaborative project. Drawing on an analysis of the recordings of the research group meetings, e-mail conversations, and an in-depth interview, we framed this teacher educators' development using the image of theprofessional learning journey. Our analysis indicated that the most meaningful interactions in the project concerned those moments when this teacher educators' sense of self as a teacher educator was at stake. We analyzed how these interactions induced feelings of vulnerability which acted as a trigger to either enable or constrain this teacher educators ability to confront personal assumptions and biases. Therefore, we put forward the argument that vulnerability is an inevitable, and therefore structural, condition of teacher educators' work.Chapter 5 delved deeper into the question of how we can understand and conceptualize the content of teacher educator professionalism. Drawing on a combined theoretical framework of the personal interpretative framework (Kelchtermans, 1994a, 2009) and positioning theory (van Langenhove & Harré, 1999), this study examined the relationship between teacher educators' positioning of themselves as teacher educators and their teacher education practices. We drew on a cycle of in-depth interviews with twelve experienced teacher educators in two teacher education programs. Our analysis revealedthree forms of positioning as a teacher educator: a teacher educator of 'pedagogues', a teacher educator of reflective teachers, and a teacher educator of subject teachers. Each positioning constitutes a coherent pattern of normative beliefs about good teaching and teacher education, the preferred relationships with student teachers, and valuable teacher education approaches and strategies. We empirically illustrated each positioning and highlighted how teacher educators' positioning of themselves is also consequential for how they define the action agenda in terms of which learning processes the teacher educator accepts as his/her responsibility (or not) and how he/she wants to support these.We conclude this dissertation with a discussion in chapter 6. We summarize the main results of the four empirical studies and critically look back on the theoretical assumptions we started from, as well as the methodologicalchoices we made and its consequences in terms of the research relationship. We then move on to look what this dissertation adds to our existingunderstanding of teacher educator professionalism and offer implications for future research." "Investigating the impact of conversational and cognitive strategic support for promoting secondary school students’ argumentative writing: Experimental studies in authentic classrooms" "Hilde Van Keer" "Department of Educational Studies" "More than ever, effective writing and proficient argumentation are imperative for full participation in our 21st century society. This proposal combines both, as prior (inter)national findings call attention to the fact that secondary school students’ writing, and argumentative writing in particular, is inadequately developed. Therefore, the main aim is to gain insight in how to support all secondary students adequately in acquiring argumentative writing. Considering prior research on the value of conversational and cognitive strategic support, the proposal builds on and combines both theoretical strands. 2 experiments will be set up. Experiment 1 with a 2x2 design studies students’ argumentative writing via an intervention in 16 authentic 9th-grade secondary school classes and will evaluate and compare the impact of class-wide teacher-led educational interventions aiming at cognitive strategic support (i.e. explicit writing strategy instruction) and/or conversational support (i.e. collaborative writing) on students’ writing motivation, self-efficacy, strategy use, and argumentative writing performance. We further study whether the potential impact of collaborative writing can be attributed to quality differences in the collaborative interaction. Experiment 2 studies the impact of a class-wide teacher-led intervention aiming at eliciting transactive talk during collaborative writing on the group’s argumentative writing performance and individual student outcomes (cf. exp 1)." "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)." "Interactive book reading in multilingual contexts: The functional use of L1 for L2 vocabulary development" "Hilde Van Keer" "Department of Educational Studies, Department of Linguistics" "In order to become proficient in language, obtaining sufficient vocabulary is crucial. L2 learners with a home language (L1) different from the language of instruction (L2) often experience difficulties acquiring L2 vocabulary. In this regard, research points to the potential of using L1 during interactive book reading (IBR) in L2. To gain more insight into the effectiveness, comparing different approaches for using L1 in IBR thereby considering that teachers often do not master L2 learners’ L1 is necessary. This is especially relevant in primary education in view of continuous literacy promotion after preschool. Therefore, research goal 1 aims to evaluate the effectiveness of different approaches to exploit L1 during IBR in L2 to increase L2 vocabulary knowledge in 7-8-year olds. So as to transfer results to teachers, research goal 2 focuses on the first phase in teachers' continuous professional development, i.e. teacher education. To gain better theoretical understanding of pre-service teachers’ competence to apply functional multilingual practices during IBR, the relationship between their knowledge, beliefs, and teacher behavior will be examined. Additionally, the effectiveness of a pre-service teacher professionalization on these teacher competence components and on L2 learners’ vocabulary development will be investigated. In this respect, this project is treading underexplored paths by focusing on functional multilingual learning during IBR in primary education." "Agency and structure in practices of educational innovation. A description and analysis of implementation practices in primary and secondary schools." "Geert Kelchtermans" "Centre for Innovation and the Development of Teacher and School" "Research has amply documented that the implementation of educational innovations takes very diverse and often not sustainable forms in practice. In order to understand the diversity in implementation practices, thisdissertation starts from two dualities that have figured vividly in theinnovation literature: change versus stability and agency versus structure.Firstly, the diversity in implementation practices reflects an inherent tension between change and stability in school organizations. Despite the fact that constant change is the norm today, schools are at the same time required to perform as relative stable and reliable entities. We therefore conceptualize the relationship between change and stability as interdependent and complementary. Secondly, we focus on the duality in research approaches emphasizing the ability of individual actors to make a difference in the flow of events (agency) versus those approaches highlighting structural and cultural constraints on action in understanding (the variation in) implementation practices (structure). Rather than treating these as opposing ideas - requiring us to privilege one over the other - this dissertation explicitly aimsat developing and empirically grounding a theoretical approach that acknowledges and integrates the interplay of social actors and the structural reality in which they operate. We therefore draw on concepts from twocomplementary theoretical traditions: neo-institutional theory and sense-making theory. Whereas sense-making theory privileges the role of social actors and their individual and collective sense-making, neo-institutional theory emphasizes the role of more formal structural aspects and institutional rules in understanding organizational behavior. The main research interest in this dissertation can be formulated as follows: How can we understand implementation practices from the interplay between meaning-making actors (making sense of structure) and structural factors (structuring the sense-making)?In response to this research interest, we designed and conducted three qualitative-interpretative studies, each starting from a particular implementation practice.In the first study, we applied a sense-making approach to studythe implementation of a new mathematics curriculum in secondary schools. More particularly, we analyzed how teachers sense-making of the new curriculum was mediated by their personal beliefs about the content, their normative ideas about good teaching, and the structural reality in which they were working. As such, the analysis highlighted how teachers interpretation and implementation of the reform strongly depended on the congruence between the normative ideas in their personal interpretative framework and in the rationale underpinning the reform. Based on the first study it also became clear that it is not enough to take into account only the role of human actors and their sense-making in understanding implementation processes.In a second study, we therefore addressedand unravelled the important role ofmore structural factors in implementation processes by focusing on the role of an artifact as an (institutional) actor in school organizations: the Educational Care and Support-file (ECS-file). The data analysis revealed how the artifact (and its materiality) had a constitutive role in the actual implementation process. The ECS-file not only transferred care-related data, but also changed the discursive interactions in the school team around pupil/student care. Moreover, we determined how the ECS-file acquired its authority from the institutional pressure mechanisms in the schools organizational field.In the third study, we re-introduced the actor in our analysis. Wefocused on the impact of the introduction and subsequent withdrawal of mentoring-hours on the actual mentoring practices in one school. This case study identified how the mentoring-hours not only introduced additional resources for mentoring, but also installed a new institutional logicwith regard to mentoring in the school. Moreover, it demonstrated how organizations are not only the instantiation of institutional logics, butare also places where people and groups make sense of and creatively use logics. The fact that the mentors internalized the new logic because it lent legitimacy to their position as a mentor illustrated how the institutionalization of mentoring operated in part through the actions of local actors in the organization. This micro-organizational analysis provided insight into the nuances of how messages from the environment entered into schools and how such messages were (re)interpreted, filtered, andstrengthened through local actors social interactions.The reports of the three studies are preceded by an introductory chapter, and followed by a final chapter in which we provide a conclusive overview of the results of these studies, together with a general discussion, directions for future research, and implications for the educational practice." "Resolving ambiguity in everyday life: A multi-method longitudinal investigation of the nature and socio-affective consequences of inflexible negative interpretations linked to depressive symptoms." "Peter Kuppens" "Quantitative Psychology and Individual Differences" "Increased efforts to identify mechanisms underlying depression are crucial to develop more effective approaches to its treatment. Theories propose that a bias toward inferring negative interpretations of ambiguity plays a crucial role in depression, but little is known about how this bias exerts its toxic effects. This project expands on the novel hypothesis that inflexibility in how people revise negative interpretations of social situations engenders depressive symptoms by undermining their ability to successfully navigate the social world. This project takes a pioneering step in capturing and modeling (a) how people with depressive symptoms revise negative interpretations based on social interactions in daily life, (b) how inflexible interpretations dysregulate social emotions and behavior to generate social stress (and vice versa), and (c) how inflexible interpretations shape a person’s position in social networks and fuels depressive symptoms. Methodologically, this project involves three studies using innovative data collection procedures combining ecological momentary assessment, mobile sensing, and longitudinal follow-up in community adult samples. The newfound knowledge will (a) further the understanding of the fundamental role of cognition in socio-affective difficulties in depression, (b) provide empirical grounds to extend dominant theories beyond their current boundaries, and (c) guide novel advances in treatment to alleviate the burden imposed by depression." "The impact of teachers’ mental representations of dyadic teacher-child relationships on social information processing: New insights from affective priming research" "Jantine Spilt" "School Psychology and Development in Context, Parenting and Special Education, Clinical Psychology" "The extended attachment perspective on teacher-child relationships states that teachers internalizeexperiences with specific children into a mental representation of the dyadic relationship. Thesemental relationship representations are believed to shape cognitive-affective and behavioralresponses towards children. According to this perspective, understanding teachers’ mentalrelationship presentations (MR) is of critical importance for the understanding of teacher sensitivityin interactions with children. However, the idea that teachers internalize experiences with specificchildren into MR is largely speculative. Indirect evidence comes from two studies using in-depthinterviews to tap into MR of teachers. To our knowledge, there is no evidence from experimentalresearch. We propose two affective priming experiments to address this issue. Teachers will beprimed with photographs of faces of different children to automatically activate MR and to examinedifferences in priming effects on teachers’ affect (experiment 1) and on teachers’ cognitiveresponses to ambiguous child behavior (experiment 2). Overall, the research is expected to improveand refine contemporary understanding of the nature of dyadic teacher-child relationships as anantecedent of teacher sensitivity. Moreover, it will offer an innovative research method to promotenew exciting research on this topic." "Classics in the Classroom. Dutch canonical literature in upper-secondary education in Flanders and The Netherlands" "Lieke van Deinsen" "Dutch Literature, Leuven, Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen" "From ‘Know your classics!’ to ‘Fuck the canon!’: the literary canon has long been fiercely debated in Flanders and the Netherlands, both in the public press and in academia. Spurred by upcoming curricular reforms, the discussion has recently come to focus on the place of Dutch-language classics in secondary education. Although there seems to be a strong believe in the necessity of teaching the classics, there is little agreement on the most suitable didactics, nor on the amount of time teachers should allocate to them. Such discussions quickly degenerate into a polemic of personal opinions due to the lack of systematic large-scale insights into educational practices, especially with regard to Flanders. This project fills this urgent lacuna by obtaining a comprehensive understanding of the ways in which literary-historical texts from the Dutch language area are used, interpreted, and evaluated in contemporary secondary education, innovatively including (a) concrete pedagogies and text selections in the (culturally diverse) literature classroom, (b) values and aims of teachers, and (c) perceptions of students. By studying both Flanders and the Netherlands, this project aims to shed light on the hitherto understudied geographical differences. By closely collaborating with key educational organizations, actively sparking a dialogue between academia and schools, this project will provide an important contribution to the current canon debates and educational policies." "The effects of written corrective feedback on L2 case acquisition in the German prepositional phrase mediated by working memory capacity and procedural memory." "Katja Lochtman" "Linguistics and Literary Studies" "Error correction, or corrective feedback (CF), is an important component of the second/foreign language (L2) learning experience of most people but its role and effectiveness for L2 learning have been controversial ever since antiquity. Even today the question remains whether CF really enables or facilitates SLA. Many language teachers and learners assume that CF facilitates L2 learning or is even necessary for attaining high levels of L2 proficiency. Researchers, however, are more divided, and the efficacy of CF has been questioned both on theoretical and empirical grounds. In contrast to most previous studies, the present study will investigate the effects and effectiveness of CF on both (a) the outcomes of the L2 learning process (by measuring not only the explicit but also the implicit knowledge that learners acquire) as well as on (b) the cognitive mechanisms believed to operate during the learning itself (attention allocation, awareness). Further adding to the innovativeness of this study is the combined use of both online (eye-tracking technology) and offline procedures (stimulated retrospective recall protocols) to measure the effectiveness of CF. In addition, we investigate how the effectiveness of CF is mediated by (i) the relative complexity of the linguistic structures targeted by the CF (case in the prepositional phrase in German) and (ii) cognitive abilities that differ from learner to learner (working memory and procedural memory)."