Self-evaluation - Technische Universiteit Eindhoven

Self-evaluation research programme ESoE
8. Societal relevance: quality, impact and valorisation
Raising the number of teachers in the domain of STEM as well as raising the quality and
innovative capacity of teachers in response to current demands from policy, school
management and society are core priorities of the national and European policy agendas and
are of the utmost importance to the TU/e as well. As such, the focus of the research
programme ‘teacher professional learning’ connects well to these priorities, since professional
development and learning of teachers, especially in the STEM domain, form the central part
of the programme. The impact of the ESoE research program and its output contribute to the
above priorities in several ways.
(1) Outcomes of the research programme are part of the curriculum of the (3TU) Master
of Science Education and Communication and the minor Communication and
Education that ESoE coordinates and are used to improve both the content of the
curriculum as well as the manner in which it is set up. Examples of such researchbased
topics are: teacher-student interpersonal relationships (den Brok), diversity in
science education (van Eijck, Griethuijsen), teaching multicultural groups (den Brok),
concept-context education (Vos, de Putter-Smits, Taconis), educational design
(Gravemeijer, Vos, de Putter-Smits), professional identity (Beijaard, Pillen, van der
Want), teacher research (Vrijsen-de Corte, Cornelissen, van der Linden), selfassessment
by teachers (van Diggelen), supervision and coaching (Koopman,
Mittendorff, Ketelaar), student learning (Koopman), ICT in education (Marée,
Taconis), pedagogical content knowledge in informatics (Saeli). ESoE staff and PhD
students also collaborate with student teachers in research during the (end) thesis that
student teachers write as part of their teacher education program 34 . As a consequence,
research staff and internal PhD students act as teachers in several courses, such as the
courses in educational science (‘onderwijskunde’, professor dr. P. den Brok, dr. M.
Koopman and drs. M. van Diggelen), STEM education (‘bètadidactiek’, dr. M. van
Eijck, drs. R. Griethuijsen and ir. H. de Beer), and the final research project
(‘onderzoek van onderwijs’, all ESoE staff).
(2) ESoE research staff is – based on their expertise – asked to participate in several
policy advisory boards, educational task-forces, evaluation or accreditation
committees or research evaluation panels. Examples of participation in task forces and
policy advisory boards are the TU/e (e.g., the ‘task force implementation bachelor
college’; ‘task force improvement education of the department built environment’;
‘task force advanced academic teaching TU/e’), OMO (advisory council of OMO
schools Eindhoven), IVA (scientific advisory council), ROC Eindhoven (scientific
advisory council), the research centre of de Kempel, the expertise centre ‘personal
professionality in teaching’ of de Kempel with other universities of applied science
(advisory council; expert panel). Examples of memberships of evaluation committees
or evaluation panels are also located within the TU/e (e.g. departments of Industrial
Engineering and Innovation Sciences, Built Environment, Electrical Engineering) as
well as on national level, both for education (accreditation committees of Flemish
teacher education institutes; accreditation of Master Learning and Innovation of
Interactum) as well as for research (evaluation panel of review studies and
34 For an overview of theses (note that most are in Dutch), see:
http://library.tue.nl/catalog/FullBB.csp?Profile=Default&OpacLanguage=dut&SearchMethod=Find_1&PageType=Start&Pre
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