Projects
Investigating the impact of conversational and cognitive strategic support for promoting secondary school students’ argumentative writing: Experimental studies in authentic classrooms Ghent University
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 ...
How do different schools deal with cultural diversity and (why) does it matter for achievement gaps? KU Leuven
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 ...
Interactive book reading in multilingual contexts: The functional use of L1 for L2 vocabulary development Ghent University
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 ...
Agency and structure in practices of educational innovation. A description and analysis of implementation practices in primary and secondary schools. KU Leuven
Firstly, the diversity in implementation practices ...
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. KU Leuven
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 ...
The impact of teachers’ mental representations of dyadic teacher-child relationships on social information processing: New insights from affective priming research KU Leuven
The extended attachment perspective on teacher-child relationships states that teachers internalize
experiences with specific children into a mental representation of the dyadic relationship. These
mental relationship representations are believed to shape cognitive-affective and behavioral
responses towards children. According to this perspective, understanding teachers’ mental
relationship presentations (MR) is of ...
Classics in the Classroom. Dutch canonical literature in upper-secondary education in Flanders and The Netherlands KU Leuven
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 ...