Available Research projects

Contact: Liesbeth de Bakker (e.p.h.m.debakker@uu.nl) / Frans van Dam (f.w.vandam@uu.nl) 

If you are interested in science communication education, want to support and study innovative education methods, and are into personal development and reflection, here’s a project to join and do your MSEC master thesis (R30) on!

In summary, we offer two positions for a R30-project. A research-informed evaluation of a new MSEC reflection course (timeline Sep 2026 - June 2027), and a curriculum study, an inventory of current reflection practices and approaches in the master SEC-programme.

As of September 2026, a new mandatory master SEC-course will be developed and taught throughout the academic year, aimed at professional development of master SEC students. This course empowers students to self-design their study programme, and prepare for a future career. By reflecting on their learning experiences through transformative learning, students will become competent regarding the UU Education Model’s graduate attributes: reflection, collaboration, personal leadership and respect, and thus more balanced and broadly-formed future science communicators. 

Rationale for a programme-wide learning trajectory

Reflection is a core component of both professional and personal development, as emphasized in the 2024 UU Educational Model. Within the two-year Master Science Education and Communication programme (R&D track), programme evaluations have indicated a strong need for more systematic guidance of students’ development into capable, independent, reflective, and growth-oriented early-career professionals in science communication.

Course purpose

To address this need, a new course will be developed and taught, providing structured and continuous guidance in students’ personal and professional development throughout the two-year Master SEC programme. Central to this course is the development of students’ confidence and growth mindset. Fostering such confidence requires an openness and curiosity, which the course actively cultivates. Students are invited to critically reflect on their own perspectives, values, ambitions, and learning needs, creating space for shifts in mindset and perspective. 

Possible research projects (R30)

Within this project two R30 thesis topics are proposed: (1) The evaluation of the first iteration (condensed format) of the new mandatory professional development course, and (2) a study of current reflection practices and approaches in the MSEC programme. Possible frameworks to use are reflection-oriented: reflection on science communication skills, or learning skills, or personal development. Also the level of reflection: content / process / premise (head and heart) aspect, can make a suitable framework. Same counts for the Graduate Attributes and the pedagogical approach used in this course, transformative learning. For the curriculum study the curricular levels of Van den Akker offer a good starting point. 

Needless to say, there may be plenty more aspects to focus on within this innovative education project. If you are interested, reach out to Liesbeth or Frans (e.p.h.m.debakker@uu.nl; f.w.vandam@uu.nl ).

Contact: Liesbeth de Bakker (e.p.h.m.debakker@uu.nl)

A research project focusing on inclusion, in science communication itself as well as in science communication teaching, aiming to help develop ideas and strategies for overcoming barriers to participation in science communication. The findings will help inform future teaching activities and research, as well as identify areas in science communication practice where diversity and inclusion initiatives are needed, may require additional support, and how to practice what you preach.

In recent years ‘Equity’, which is closely related to social inclusion and an openness towards true engagement with diverse and new publics, has become a very important issue in society. Inclusion and diversity have become words of importance, not only at Utrecht University, but also in science centres / museums and other informal science education settings worldwide, and on the work floor. One of the relatively new and very active working groups in the field of informal science education is Equity@Ecsite (Ecsite being the network of European Science Centres and Science Museums). 

The problem of exclusion / social inequality has been around for a long time. It has always been part and parcel of our current day society. Over the past decade more and more people came to realise that it is mainly the ‘haves’ that participate and make use of the facilities offered, rather than the ‘have-nots’ who would arguably be those who stand most to benefit from such experiences, in the field of science communication for instance from a museum visit. 

Inequity is present in society in many different forms and ways. For instance, it’s attached to gender, socio-economic status, ethnicity, physical ability, religion, and there are more aspects to name. Science and science communication are certainly also affected by it. In recent years equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) have received increasing attention in both science communication practice and research (Judd & McKinnon). 

In a similar vein EDI has become the focus of an elective course of the UU MSEC programme: Inclusive science communication (5 ECTS). The overall goals of the course are to make students more aware of the issue of EDI in science (communication), to motivate them to do something about it and to provide them with tools and skills to become (more) inclusive science communication practitioners (in the future). 

Of course, as a lecturer I am interested in how best and most effectively to reach those learning aims with the students that participate in the course. So that’s why I decided to make this course the focus of my research project. And over the past five years as a lecturer I have come to realise that I cannot teach about equity, diversity and inclusion in science communication unless my pedagogical approach is inclusive in and of itself as well. I decided the pedagogical approach of Jack Mezirow’s transformative learning is suitable for the course. 

So here’s a call to all those students interested in inclusive science communication OR inclusive science communication teaching: join my project if inclusion in science education and communication makes your heart beat faster. 

Last year three EDI-related studies were carried out under my supervision: One student investigated what sensitive issues (often related to our colonial past) exist in Dutch science museums and what can be done to improve the museum’s communication on such sensitive topics. The second student redesigned with the pedagogical approach of transformative learning in mind, one of the assignments of the Inclusive Science Communication course focused on inclusive science writing and tested it out in a workshop format. The third student’s  research project focuses on the development of a critical conversation exercise about inclusion based on transformative learning for the ISC course and testing out its effectiveness as well.  

Ideally new studies will build on previous studies or other elements out of the Inclusive Science Communication course. Some suggestions: 1. Using the results of the previous sensitive issues in museums study as a framework to study the ‘story’ in astronomy museums (Sonnenborgh as a context for instance); 2. Studying what factors keep students / practitioners from engaging in uncomfortable conversations. Of course other options are possible.

Interested? Let’s talk about your plans. Please contact me, Liesbeth de Bakker (e.p.h.m.debakker@uu.nl), for more information.

Core literature

Cairo, A. (2023). Holding space – A story telling approach to trampling diversity and inclusion. Amsterdam: Aminata Cairo Consultancy.

Cheryan, S., Master, A., & Meltzoff, A. N. (2015). Cultural stereotypes as gatekeepers: Increasing girls’ interest in computer science and engineering by diversifying stereotypes. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 49. https://doi.org/10.3389/FPSYG.2015.00049/BIBTEX

Dawson, E. (2019). Equity, exclusion and everyday science learning. The experiences of minoritized groups. Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY – Routledge.

Ikkatai et al. (2020). Masculine public image of six scientific fields in Japan: physics, chemistry, mechanical engineering, information science, mathematics and biology. Journal of Science Communication,  https://doi.org/10.22323/2.19060202

Judd K and McKinnon M (2021) A Systematic Map of Inclusion, Equity and Diversity in Science Communication Research: Do We Practice what We Preach? Front. Commun. 6:744365 doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2021.744365

Kalender, Z. Y., Marshman, E., Schunn, C. D., Nokes-Malach, T. J., & Singh, C. (2019). Why female science, technology, engineering, and mathematics majors do not identify with physics: They do not think others see them that way. Physical Review Physics Education Research, 15(2), 020148. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.15.020148

Staal, M. (2019) Reducing Gender Bias in Popular Science Writing, master thesis UU.

The HARP project is a EU funded collaboration between Utrecht University (the Netherlands), Masaryk University (Czech Republic) and the University of Vienna (Austria), that focusses on climate change education. Its focus is to study how education can bring more hopeful and resilience perspective when addressing the climate issue. More and more, European education systems are bringing climate change into curricula. Often this is done through a very rationalistic perspective, focusing on facts and neglecting the emotional aspects these bring to learners. The HARP project studies how action-oriented education can foster hope, resilience and action competence in young people, and how such approaches can be brought into schools and universities. This includes mapping the systemic and personal barriers that teachers may experience in doing so.

The project runs between 2024 and 2027. Currently, there is room for several SEC students to join the research team. Depending on interests and availability of students, international mobility to one of the partner universities can be explored.

Research Project 1: Success stories of Hope and Resilience in climate change education at schools

HARP collaborates with educational actors to identify secondary schools that present success stories of climate change education. In this research project, you will support the HARP team by collecting data from students in these schools (focus on higher secondary) through surveys and focus group discussions. Both focus on the action competence, climate emotions and emotional coping strategies of students, as well as students’ perception of the educational approaches to climate change education at their school. This project will result in descriptions of these student characteristics and experiences for success schools, and produce inspiration and recommendations for (other) schools on how to offer hopeful and resilience perspectives in climate change education. Data collection for this project needs to happen before the summer of 2026.

Research project 2: How can teachers bring hope and resilience into climate change education?

The HARP project aims to explore how teachers can be supported to bring hope and resilience into climate change education. To this end, this research project will deploy a survey, focus groups, and interviews among teachers from primary and secondary schools in the Netherlands, Austria and the Czech Republic. Focus will go to teachers' current educational practices in climate change education, self-efficacy for and barriers to action-oriented climate change education and addressing climate emotions. This project will identify teachers’ needs for support and professional development and can propose recommendations to address these. Data collection for this project needs to happen before the summer of 2026.

Nature connectedness is described in educational and psychological literature as a factor of great importance for young people. This connectedness can be expressed in two ways. There is the affective involvement of young people with nature, also referred to as the degree to which individuals experience themselves as part of (or just separated from) the natural environment. On the other hand, there is the more behavioural involvement: the extent to which young people come into contact with nature in their personal and school context. These two components have been shown to be crucial in developing environmental behavior, willingness to contribute to nature conservation, young people's health and learning, and even their citizenship competences.

In this light, the botanical gardens of Utrecht University hold great educational and societal potential. Class groups can come there to learn about the plant kingdom, ecology, biodiversity, evolution and conservation in an informal context. Currently, Utrecht University Botanic Gardens (hereafter referred to as BoTu) are renewing their educational activities. This creates the possibility for meaningful educational research.

Questions that can be put in focus in master studies are, among others:

• How can the educational activities of the BoTu tap into the interests of various groups of young people? We know from literature that young people go through a dip in their (personal and situational) interest in and connection with nature during adolescence. The informal learning context of the BoTu offers room to work complementary to the school curriculum and to focus on specific interests (and interest development) of pupils. The question then is, what are those interests and how can they be integrated in the educational activities?
• Which elements of self-determination (Autonomy, Relatedness, Competence) can be identified in the current educational activities of the botanical gardens? Research from psychology shows that basic needs satisfaction contributes to the well-being and learning of pupils. Research into the (potential) presence of these basic needs in the educational activities of the botanical gardens can contribute to strengthening the educational impact.
• What is the educational impact of the educational offering of the botanical gardens? Research on the learning outcomes (knowledge, attitudes, skills) of pupils participating in the educational activities of the gardens may reveal the impact and whether this impact is the same for different participants (age, origin, language, place of residence...).
• And finally, how can the three previous questions and their answers be linked to optimize the educational offer of the gardens and develop effective educational interventions.

Research that provides answers to these questions can take the form of (longitudinal) survey research, in-depth interviews and focus groups, case studies, design research, or a targeted combination of these.

The insights gained are relevant beyond the specific context of Utrecht University's Botanic Gardens. They teach us more generally about how informal education can connect to interests and basic needs and how this can enhance the effectiveness of an educational activities in term of pupils’ knowledge, attitudes, and actions concerning the natural environment. As such, Utrecht University Botanic Gardens is a fruitful context to serve as a test case.

Students interested in this research can negotiate with Jelle Boeve-de Pauw (assistant professor biology didactics at the Freudenthal Institute) and Edwin Pos (scientific director of Utrecht University Botanic Gardens), which questions they would like to focus on in their research project.

Relevant literature

Aladağ, E., Arıkan, A., & Özenoğlu, H. (2021). Nature education: Outdoor learning of map literacy skills and reflective thinking skill towards problem-solving. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 40, 100815.

Barrable, A., & Booth, D. (2020). Increasing nature connection in children: A mini review of interventions. Frontiers in psychology, 11, 492

Cincera, J., Johnson, B., & Kovacikova, S. (2015). Evaluation of a place-based environmental education program: From there to here. Applied Environmental Education & Communication, 14(3), 178-186

Martin, L., White, M.P., Hunt, A., Richardson, M., Pahl, S., & Burt, J. (2020). Nature contact, nature connectedness and associations with health, wellbeing and pro-environmental behaviors. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 68, 101389.

Paraskeva-Hadjichami, D., Goldman, D., Hadjichambis, A., Parra, G., Lapin, K., Knippels, M.C., Van Dam, F. (2020). Educating for environmental citizenship in non-formal framework secondary level youth. In: Hadjicjambis, A., Reis, P., Paraskeva-Hadjichami, D., Cincera, J., Boeve-de Pauw, J., Gericke, N., & Knippels, M.C. (Eds.) Conceptualizing Environmental Citizenship for 21st century education. Springer Open: Cham

Sellmann, D., & Bogner, F. X. (2013). Effects of a 1-day environmental education intervention on environmental attitudes and connectedness with nature. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 28(3), 1077-1086.

In upper secondary mathematics education, there is a growing demand for more flexibility in arranging and using learning materials. Teachers increasingly want to combine their own or alternative resources with standard textbooks, but they face questions such as: Are all learning goals still being met? and How does this fit into the existing learning trajectory?

To address these challenges, Numworx, the Freudenthal Institute, and Coornhert Gymnasium are developing an AI-based digital environment. This environment visualizes interconnected landscapes of learning goals, including their dependencies, and makes it possible to link existing or newly developed learning materials to these goals. This way, it becomes clear which learning goals are covered and how the material fits into a coherent learning arrangement.

Using so-called student models, the environment also enables monitoring of student performance at the level of individual learning goals, giving both teachers and students insight into progress and mastery. In addition, it allows for data-driven evaluation and visualization of the effectiveness of learning materials in relation to the learning goals.

The project initially focuses on Mathematics B in the upper grades of Dutch havo and vwo, but the approach is cross-disciplinary and holds great promise for other subject areas. This innovative design offers more autonomy for both teachers and students, supported by powerful data-driven insights.

Possible research questions include:

• How can learning goal landscapes be designed and visualized to maximize usability and interpretability for teachers and students?
• How do visualizations of interconnected learning goals support teachers in arranging and adapting mathematics learning trajectories?
• How does working with visualizations of learning goals influence students’ understanding of their own progress and mastery in mathematics?
• How do teachers use learning goal landscapes when arranging and adapting their teaching materials?
• In what ways does the environment support teachers in diagnosing student learning difficulties and planning next steps?

Because of a severe shortage of computer science teachers, many Dutch secondary schools cannot offer computer science as a subject. The program Co-Teach Informatica provides a temporary solution: students work independently with online learning materials, supported locally by non-specialist teachers and remotely by university-based subject experts.

To facilitate this model, a digital learning platform has been developed by Numworx. At its core is a learning goal graph that represents the structure and dependencies of key concepts, making it possible to track student progress and provide a foundation for personalized guidance.

Recently, a recommendation component has been added to the platform. This feature advises students on where additional practice is needed before progressing to the next assignment, aiming to create adaptive learning paths even in the absence of a subject-specialist teacher.

As a master’s student, you can investigate how such adaptive guidance affects teaching and learning. Possible research questions are: 

• How can students be supported in making meaningful choices about what to work on next? 
• How can recommendations assist both students and non-specialist teachers?
• How do visualizations of learning goals influence students’ learning strategies and teachers’ instructional practices?
   

Watchdog journalism is one of the many forms of journalism where journalists perform thorough research to investigate news events, for example through fact checking and interviewing. In science journalism this role of watchdog is less prominent than in political and economic news, but still very necessary. Watchdog science journalism is at the opposite side of cheerleader science journalism or propagandist science journalism. Recent research by Aike Vonk and myself showed that in science news the press release, which might be expected to be more propagandist than critical, is a dominant source of information for many science journalists. In fact, this research showed that quite often a “copy-paste” approach is practices in science news outlets. This seems to indicate that the watchdog role of journalists may not be in its prime. That said, there have been examples where journalists were about to uncover issues, topics and scandals in science that made it into the public arena. In recent years, there has been talk of a crisis in watchdog journalism (e.g., due to cuts) – but, to be honest, I am also curious to learn if there are examples of overzealous watchdogs (e.g., journalists who specialize in the watchdog role may become too skeptical or paranoid; watchdog journalism may harm public trust in science).

In this research we want you to gain more insight into the roles of scientists and journalists, focusing specifically on the (absence of) watchdog role. Depending on the research question we will formulate, you will do either content analyses and/or interviews with the stakeholders involved to uncover how often mishaps (in journalism) happen (e.g., what happens when retracted academic papers led to news paper articles?) and what heuristics are at play (e.g., what rules of the thumb do scientists (as reviewers) and journalists (when covering science) use to determine the quality of the research?).

If you like science news, journalism, and a bit of drama, than this is the research project for you!

For our project Hersenschimmen: Praten over Prikkels, we have multiple research projects running. However, in that project we also do public engagement events that are understudied. For example, we did a public engagement activity in University Museum Utrecht where participants were asked to look at various visuals in combination with prompts formulated by others to see if people would be able to 1) understand what the visual represented and 2) match visuals with their original prompts. All visuals were created using Aim, so prompts and visuals are readily available. In ongoing research projects, students are investigating the content of the text (prompts) and visuals (AI generated images) and how these may contribute (or hinder) communication (e.g., through interviews with experiential experts, content experts, friends and family of experiential experts, but also science communication professionals) (sidenote: although the project runs until summer 2026, it may still be possible to do a research project on that data as well). In the public engagement events we do museum activities and family lectures that can be studied. 

Should you pursue this project, it is important to know that one engagement activity was performed early 2025 and another end 2025, for these there already is data (that you will be expected to enter and process for analyses). Should you want to, there may be an option to organize another public engagement activity early 2026 for which you will then design the measurement instruments and collect the data yourself. Should you not want to do that, there is also an option to supplement the existing data from 2025 with qualitative data (interviews). In this research we want you to gain more insight into if, and if so, how, visuals can play a role in science communication, focusing specifically on AI generated images, and on expert-public interaction. 

There are a lot of participants in the project who have indicated to want to contribute, so if interviewing or focus groups are something you want to pursue, be sure to get into contact!

The weather report is so much part of our daily lives, that we almost forget that it is also a highly sophisticated piece of science communication. Whether it is the printed weather forecast in newspapers or the dynamic depictions online or on TV, weather reports communicate complex scientific scenarios with carefully assessed levels of uncertainty. The format of weather reports have changed over time and differ across various media platforms. We challenge you to investigate these changes by looking at the people involved, the content, and/or the effects. The format of weather reports in newspapers, radio, television, online and in apps has been constantly adapted to changing audiences.

We propose to analyze the communication aspects of weather reports. Research topics could include, for example:
 

• Differences in visualization strategies in weather reports in different media
• How weather reports have changed over time
• changing references to climate and climate change in weather reports in recent decades
• how levels of (un)certainty in weather forecasts are communicated, both visually and textually
• public understanding/interpretations of  / trust in weather reports and forecasts

But other approaches are also possible. Your suggestions are welcome!

Supervisors: Mark Bos and David Baneke

Literature

Compton, J. (2018). When weather forecasters are wrong: Image repair and public rhetoric after severe weather. Science Communication, 40(6), 778-788.

Daipha, Phaedra. Masters of Uncertainty: Weather Forecasters and the Quest for Ground Truth. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015.

Fine, Gary Alan. Authors of the Storm: Meteorologists and the Culture of Prediction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.

Gerst, M. D., Kenney, M. A., Baer, A. E., Speciale, A., Wolfinger, J. F., Gottschalck, J., ... & Dewitt, D. (2020). Using visualization science to improve expert and public understanding of probabilistic temperature and precipitation outlooks. Weather, Climate, and Society, 12(1), 117-133.

Gigerenzer, Gerd, Ralph Hertwig, Eva van den Broek, Barbara Fasolo, and Konstantinos V. Katsikopoulos. “‘A 30% Chance of Rain Tomorrow’: How Does the Public Understand Probabilistic Weather Forecasts?” Risk Analysis 25, no. 3 (2005): 623–29.

Project supervisors: Erik van Sebille (e.vansebille@uu.nl) and Mark Bos (m.j.w.bos@uu.nl)

The KlimaatHelpdesk is a unique and accessible communications platform that connects the general public with scientists and experts, run by a volunteer group and meant to become the go-to place for people with climate-related questions. These may cover the whole range of academic disciplines and range from physics, economy, geography, psychology, history, biology, etc. As such, it highlights the need for a multi- and interdisciplinary approach to address climate change. The questions are answered by a network of active experts who write evidence-based responses in an accessible language and each answer will be reviewed by at least one other expert.

The aim of the KlimaatHelpdesk is to provide an easily accessible source of reliable and evidence-based information, as well as insight into how science works. This is of crucial importance in a time in which the validity of available information is difficult to check for non-specialists and sometimes deliberately undermined  [Howe et al 2019, Petersen et al 2019].

The general public submits the questions, drawn to the KlimaatHelpdesk via social media (twitter, Instagram), national media (e.g. NOS.nl) and partnerships with klimaatakkoord.nl and Teachers4Climate. The platform stores the exchange of questions and answers, thereby becoming a source of easily accessible and reliable information. This procedure improves the quality of information and demonstrates to a broad audience how research works.

Since the official launch of the KlimaatHelpdesk in November 2020, it has assembled a database of 200 enthusiastic experts ready to answer questions, published more than 100 questions and answers on the website and attracted more than 10,000 visitors.

By lowering the threshold of engagement for a variety of leading experts, through providing access to a well-developed platform and broad audience, the platform motivates high level public scientific communication. The KlimaatHelpdesk is run by approximately 40 (UU) volunteers, with two part-time student-assistants to coordinate them. While all tiers in academia are represented in the team, most are (MSc) students or PhD candidates.

However, it is unclear how effective the method and vision of the KlimaatHelpdesk is [Corbett 2021]. Which target groups are reached with the KH (are people that ask the questions the same as those that are using the website as a source for reliable information) and what are they using the information for? What are key factors that can be used to predict whether a question (as well as an answer) is effective?

In this project, you will work together with the KlimaatHelpdesk team to measure and assess the effectiveness of the platform. 

Interested? Just get in touch with Erik (e.vansebille@uu.nl) and/or Mark (m.j.w.bos@uu.nl).

References

Corbett JB (2021) Communicating the Climate Crisis: New Directions for Facing What Lies Ahead (Lexington Books)

Howe LC, B MacInnis, JA Krosnick, EM Markowitz and R Socolow (2019) Acknowledging uncertainty impacts public acceptance of climate scientists’ predictions. Nature Climate Change, 9, 863–7

Petersen AM, EM Vincent and AL Westerling (2019) Discrepancy in scientific authority and media visibility of climate change scientists and contrarians. Nature Communications, 10, 3502

In this research strand dr. Alice Veldkamp and dr. Mark Bos work together

Currently, we live in a visual world; messages are communicated through visual communication (Rodríguez Estrada & Davis, 2015).

We want to investigation the design, use and effect of visuals in science communication and education. The expertise of Mark is science communication, Alice is expert on biology education. Based on work of people like Alberto Cairo and Jos van den Broek, and with your help, we plan to contribute to both theoretical and practical insights and practices in visuals.

We are interested in all aspects of visuals and their use, so in

1. the creation by artist(s) and/or knowledge expert(s),
2. the content that is supposed to be communicated, and
3. the effect on the reader,
4. the (development of) visual literacy needed to interpret these visuals

Your master research can be directed on one of these aspects or a combination (in either science education or communication).

Examples of previous and current research

Together with two students, we have researched how professional artists design visuals for complex biological process; resulting in insights into experiential knowledge and potential guidelines for future designs (and testing of these guidelines).

One student developed a data base with 3000 visuals from two leading methods for upper secondary schools.  What types of visuals are used in the methods, what is the relation with text, and how do they differ from the type of visuals used in national exams?

Another student looked at how scientists (visiting COP27) communicate about their visit on social media, investigating if, and if so, how, they communicate values in their posts and if this leads to higher levels of engagement among their followers.

Finally, together with the Dutch National Health Institute (RIVM), a student investigated the effects of adding visuals (infographics) to information leaflets about vaccination aimed at pregnant women on appreciation of the leaflet, understanding of its contents, their related health beliefs, and intent to get vaccinated.

Mark and  Aike Vonk are interested in the visuals used by scientists (in press releases for example) vs journalists (in news articles for example) to communicate about climate change and ocean plastics (e.g., how do visual frames compare to textual frames) and the effects thereof (e.g., how do people interpret what they see and what are the effects of potential incongruence between text and visual).

Other projects are possible (e.g., the use of pictograms to enhance treatment adherence), or the use of visuals in musea or the botanical garden (Science Park).

Interested? Please contact me, Alice Veldkamp (a.veldkamp@uu.nl) or Mark Bos (m.j.w.bos@uu.nl)

Sources

Visual Language – Jos van den Broek, Willem Koetsenruijter, Jaap de Jong, Laetitia Smit

Praktijkgids infographics ontwerpen – Jos van den Broek

Cairo, A. (2019). How charts lie: Getting smarter about visual information. WW Norton & Company.

Cairo, A. (2012). The Functional Art: An introduction to information graphics and visualization. New Riders.

van Beusekom, M. M., Kerkhoven, A. H., Bos, M. J., Guchelaar, H. J., & van den Broek, J. M. (2018). The extent and effects of patient involvement in pictogram design for written drug information: a short systematic review. Drug Discovery Today, 23(6), 1312-1318.

van Beusekom, M. M., Grootens-Wiegers, P., Bos, M. J., Guchelaar, H. J., & van den Broek, J. M. (2016). Low literacy and written drug information: information-seeking, leaflet evaluation and preferences, and roles for images. International journal of clinical pharmacy, 38(6), 1372-1379.

Van Beusekom, M., Bos, M., Wolterbeek, R., Guchelaar, H. J., & van den Broek, J. (2015). Patients’ preferences for visuals: Differences in the preferred level of detail, type of background and type of frame of icons depicting organs between literate and low-literate people. Patient education and counseling, 98(2), 226-233.

Background

The climate crisis is a pressing public emergency that demands urgent attention to mitigate its escalating effects on both the environment and human health (Campbell et al., 2023; Ripple et al., 2023). In the face of this emergency, we all have a role to fulfil. To enhance our support for addressing the climate crisis, it is essential to begin by collecting insights from Utrecht University (UU) students and understanding their information needs concerning climate change. This understanding can then be used to shape communication strategies and policies within the university (Fernandez et al., 2019). Therefore, in this project, our objective is to gather information on the perspectives of Utrecht University students regarding climate change, and the role of universities and scientists in climate change discourse. The possible implications of this project are as follows:

1. A better understanding of how climate change is perceived by university students and how their information needs can inform curriculum development and educational strategies.
2. The insights into preferred communication channels and trusted sources of information, which can enhance climate change policies and communications within universities.
3. The exploration of university students' views on scientists' and universities’ role in the climate change debate, which can shape research priorities and engagement.
4. The understanding of university students’ perception and engagement with climate crisis, which can inform climate action initiatives.
    

These outcomes closely align with the initiatives undertaken by the "Sustainability Education and Engagement" community. We encourage you to contact them in order to identify any areas of convergence between the goals of your project and their activities.

Research Questions

Here is a list of potential research areas and questions that you can choose as the central focus of your thesis. You have the flexibility to select one or more of these topics based on your personal interests.

A. Climate change

1. How do university students perceive the concept of climate change?

2. Is climate change relevant to university students, and why or why not?

3. What are the perceived impacts of climate change on the lives of university students?

B. Climate change communication

4. What are the information needs of university students regarding climate change?

5. What communication channels do/did university students prefer for receiving information about climate change?

6. Which sources of information do university students consider most trustworthy in the context of climate change?

C. Role of scientists and universities

7. What are the opinions of university students regarding the role of scientists in the climate change debate and their involvement?

8. How do university students perceive the role of universities in the climate change debate?

Study design

In this study, you will collect data from Utrecht University students using a survey that includes both closed and open-ended questions. The selection of the specific target group will be determined in agreement with the student. You have the option to either include all Utrecht University students or narrow your focus to particular faculties of interest (e.g., Faculty of Science) or, for instance, exclusively Master's or Bachelor's students. The analysis of data will require both quantitative and qualitative methods.

Supervision

In this project, you will be supervised by Tugce Varol, Nieske Vergunst and Mark Bos.

Nieske Vergunst works as a strategic communications consultant at the Faculty of Science and as a postdoc researcher in the Public Engagement & Science Communication group. She studies the impact of public engagement on audiences with different science capital.

Tugce Varol has a PhD in Health and Social Psychology, specializing in behavior change. She works as a postdoctoral researcher in the Public Engagement & Science Communication group. Her research focuses on public engagement with climate change.

Mark Bos has a PhD in Science Communication, specializing in visuals used in various contexts, but in general in climate and health communication. He works as an assistant professor in the Public Engagement and Science Communication group and coordinates the course Communicating Science with the Public.

References

Campbell, E., Uppalapati, S. S., Kotcher, J., & Maibach, E. (2023). Communication research to improve engagement with climate change and human health: A review. Frontiers in Public Health, 10, 1086858. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2022.1086858

Fernandez, M. E., Ruiter, R. A., Markham, C. M., & Kok, G. (2019). Intervention mapping: theory-and evidence-based health promotion program planning: Perspective and examples. Frontiers in Public Health, 209. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2019.00209

Ripple, W. J., Wolf, C., Gregg, J. W., Rockström, J., Newsome, T. M., Law, B. E., Marques, L., Lenton, T. M., Xu, C., Huq, S., Simons, L., & King, S. D. A. (2023). The 2023 state of the climate report: Entering uncharted territory. BioScience, biad080. https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biad080

Contact: Veerle Ottenheim (v.l.ottenheim@uu.nl), Ralph Meulenbroeks (r.f.g.meulenbroeks@uu.nl), Rogier Bos (r.d.bos@uu.nl)

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, all universities have used online and or hybrid education. However, not all teaching translates well from face-to-face to online and or hybrid education. There is limited research on the influence that the move from face-to-face to online or hybrid education has on scientific discourse as part of the teaching and learning process. A key role of scientific discourse in the classroom is to allow students to be persuaded or convinced that ideas are true or valuable. We are interested in how such a role takes shape in online and hybrid education.   

In a study on the experiences of teachers and students with hybrid education I am currently conducting, teachers mentioned that the use of argumentation is hard to implement when part of the class is online, as the interaction between the students and teachers is vastly different from a face-to-face classroom setting. We take up the challenge of designing a hybrid or online education setup that does allow and promotes argumentation in scientific discourse.

In this research project, you can contribute to investigating how we can implement scientific discourse in a hybrid education setting. The project is a design study, meaning that you will first dive into the literature on scientific discourse in the classroom and the affordances and limitations of hybrid education; then, based on this literature, you design a lesson (series) on a suitable science or mathematics topic. Finally, this design should be experimentally tested as part of a bachelor course at the science faculty. This project contributes to my PhD project on scientific discourse in hybrid education, and as such, we would collaborate closely.  If you are interested please send an email to Veerle Ottenheim (v.l.ottenheim@uu.nl), Ralph Meulenbroeks (r.f.g.meulenbroeks@uu.nl) or Rogier Bos (r.d.bos@uu.nl) and we will have a chat about this!

Literature

• Lakhal, S., Mukamurera, J., Bédard, M. E., Heilporn, G., & Chauret, M. (2021). Students and instructors perspective on blended synchronous learning in a Canadian graduate program. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 37(5), 1383–1396. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcal.12578
• Berland, L. K., & Reiser, B. J. (2009). Making sense of argumentation and explanation. Science Education, 93(1), 26–55. https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.20286
• Erduran, S., Simon, S., & Osborne, J. (2004). TAPping into argumentation: Developments in the application of Toulmin’s Argument Pattern for studying science discourse. Science Education, 88(6), 915–933. https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.20012

Visualization in mathematics education is an interesting and rapidly developing domain.  More and more educational developers/creators are producing animated videos on mathematics on e.g. YouTube. I am interested in how to develop such videos; see, e.g. this paper

ten Voorde, A., Piroi, M., & Bos, R. (2024). A taxonomy of didactic roles of dynamic visualization in animated mathematics videos. Teaching Mathematics and its Applications, Article hrae007. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1093/teamat/hrae007

that came from a master's thesis project by Abe ten Voorde. I am also interested in how students use such videos to learn mathematics; see, e.g. this paper

Bos, R., & Renkema, W. (2022). Metaphor-based algebra animation. In U. T. Jankvist, R. Elicer, A. Clark-Wilson, H.-G. Weigand, & M. Thomsen (Eds.), Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Technology in Mathematics Teaching: Making and Strengthening "Connections and Connectivity" for Teaching Mathematics with Technology (pp. 29-36). (Proceedings). Aarhus University.
https://dspace.library.uu.nl/bitstream/handle/1874/420787/Metaphor_based_algebra_animation.pdf?sequence=1

 that came from the master's thesis of Winand Renkema. Many issues are open: how can we make the next step, creating even better videos? What about 3D-videos and dynamic visualizations in VR? Also, the usual question for any learning activity: why and how do students benefit from watching dynamic visualizations? One could explore the link with cognitive theory on visualization.

 These visualizations so far are non-interactive: you just watch a video and don't interact with it. Your project could also focus on interactive visualization. I have recently worked on opportunities with touchscreens and opportunities with augmented reality. For the first option, a nice example is the use of touch screens to learn about functions in the context of so-called arrow graphs. This work led to this paper:

 Bos, R., & Brinks, L. (2024). Teaching the derivative using arrow graphs in GeoGebra. In E. Faggiano, A. Clark-Wilson, M. Tabach, & H.-G. Weigand (Eds.), Proceedings of the 17th ERME Topic Conference MEDA 4 (pp. 113-120). University of Bari Aldo Moro. https://www.uniba.it/it/ateneo/editoria-stampa-e-media/linea-editoriale/fuori-collana/meda4-proceedings-30.pdf

https://research-portal.uu.nl/ws/files/241658985/Binder1.pdf

 which was based on the thesis by Laura Brinks. Also, my work with my PhD student Hang Wei is in this direction; see https://embodieddesign.sites.uu.nl/activity/functional-thinking/. GeoGebra and similar software offers opportunities to drag objects and sliders, and your project could involve exploring new, creative ways to employ these functionalities.

 Finally, in my office, you find an augmented reality sandbox. I have been exploring how to employ this amazing learning environment for mathematics education. Here is a paper about this:

Bos, R., Doorman, M., Drijvers, P., & Shvarts, A. (2022). Embodied design using augmented reality: the case of the gradient. Teaching Mathematics and its Applications, 41(2), 125-141. https://doi.org/10.1093/teamat/hrab011

The importance of problem-solving and reasoning in mathematics education is evidenced by how these topics are more and more explicitly embedded in national curriculums across the globe.  However, an ages-old problem in mathematics education is how to foster these skills in students. Mathematics has this beautiful and important quality that procedures can be streamlined into multi-step plans for many problems in the curriculum, which invites a method of teaching that achieves pretty much the opposite of problem-solving and reasoning skills.  

My research in this direction has focussed mostly on teaching problem-solving, supporting students with so-called heuristic trees.  Two papers about this are

Bos, R., & van den Bogaart, T. (2022). Heuristic Trees as a Digital Tool to Foster Compression and Decompression in Problem‑Solving. Digital Experiences in Mathematics Education, 8, 157–182. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40751-022-00101-6

Bos, R., & van den Bogaart, T. (2022). Teachers' design of heuristic trees. Hiroshima Journal for Mathematics Education, 15(1). https://doi.org/10.24529/hjme.1502

An exciting recent development was the master's thesis project by Esther Zwennes, who showed that learning problem-solving with support of heuristic trees is more effective than working just with the answer-model. One major next challenge would be to scale up the use of heuristic trees. A possible project would be to develop series of problems with accompanying heuristic trees that would be usable for teachers and students together with the major textbooks in the Netherlands (or abroad). 

Recently, I have worked with colleagues to assess the quality of help-seeking episodes of students with their teachers but also with genAI chatbots. We are now at a stage where this assessment model can be used to compare various help-providers to see which provider has which qualities. This could be an interesting thesis project.

A major and urgent issue is how problem-solving should be assessed. If problem-solving is part of the new curriculum, then it should be assessed. However, posing challenging problems at central examinations only leads to worse results, which leads the examiners to abandon those items. How should it be done instead? This could be an excellent starting question for a research project.

On a different track, for a few years, I have organized the mathematics B-day, a contest where students across the country spend a full day on inquiring a mathematical situation. Generally, the starting point of the Mathematics B-day is usually a mathematical micro-world that can be explored by students, allowing them to discover patterns and produce insights. These findings should then be supported by reasoning, chains of arguments. However, it turns out that secondary school students are much better at exploring than at reasoning. A major issue is still: how can we foster reasoning skills in secondary school students? Data from the Mathematics B-day would also allow you to study to what extent students are able to reason and where the difficulties lie. However, another project, studying students' mathematical reasoning and how it can be fostered, would be very interesting. In particular, most students have embraced the use of large language models in their learning workflow. It would be interesting to see how this affects their reasoning skills and whether this could actually contribute positively.

A final option would be to focus more on university students and their reasoning, in particular, their proving skills. Recently, proof assistants have become more and more important in the work of mathematicians. The tendency is that proof assistants will become a standard ingredient of the mathematician's work. Moreover,  it could also become a standard ingredient of the mathematics student's work. Working with proof assistants organizes the student learning process, and also provides opportunities for automated feedback on tentative proofs. See, for example, this paper: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0020739X.2023.2227191. In collaboration with Johan Commelin from the mathematics institute and his PhD-student Pim Otte, you could work on a project investigating implementations of proof assitants (e.g. Cog, Lean) in university education.

Despite the Netherlands offering competitive salaries for teachers, there remains a persistent shortage of educators in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields with STEM graduates often overlooking teaching as a career option. This study will investigate this trend, examining societal perceptions, professional identity, and the economic value associated with STEM professions by identifying the underlying factors contributing to the reluctance of STEM degree holders to pursue teaching careers in the Netherlands, and understanding how these factors relate to the identity of a STEM teacher. The project aims to address teacher shortages by providing recommendations for policymakers, educational institutions, and other stakeholders in the Netherlands (and beyond). This study could also be conducted by international students, potentially comparing the situation to their home countries. The research questions you will strive to answer are the following:
 

• What are the primary factors influencing the career choices of STEM degree holders in the Netherlands?
• How is the identity of a STEM teacher perceived in the Netherlands, and how does this impact the attractiveness of the teaching profession?
• How do these factors and perceptions compare to those in the student’s home country? (in the case that the student is not from the NL)

Digital fabrication tools like 3D printers and laser cutters are becoming increasingly accessible and offer exciting opportunities to explore STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts, Mathematics) subjects. Students can create sophisticated projects that can be personally meaningful and shared with others. The use of such tools is receiving increasing attention from educators and policymakers thanks to their promising potential for learning through experimentation, creative expression, and authentic inquiry.

However, even though such tools are becoming commonplace in Dutch classrooms, it is still unclear how and in which learning activities they are used. For example, some educators fail at using 3D printing technologies as a means of invention/expression and rather use them for fabricating existing 3D models from open hardware repositories like Thingiverse. This raises concerns about promoting surface instead of deep-sustainable learning and promoting a consumer-oriented approach to STEAM education. This research project investigates how Dutch schools use digital fabrication (3D printing, laser cutters, CNC mills, etc.) in STEAM education through teacher surveys and interviews for:
 

• The collection and analysis of existing school projects/lessons of teachers
• The collection and analysis of teaching strategies and instruction models used
• Identifying the support needs of the teachers and students
• ...

Key Literature

*Pedagogies and emerging technologies in education

Blikstein, Paulo. "Digital fabrication and ‘making’ in education: The democratization of invention." FabLabs: Of machines, makers and inventors 4.1 (2013): 1-21.

Blikstein, P., & Krannich, D. (2013, June). The makers' movement and FabLabs in education: experiences, technologies, and research. In Proceedings of the 12th international conference on interaction design and children (pp. 613-616).

Halverson, E. R., & Sheridan, K. (2014). The maker movement in education. Harvard educational review, 84(4), 495-504.

Thematic content analysis

Mayring, P. 2000. Qualitative Content Analysis. Forum: Qualitative Social Research 1, 2

Pedagogical content knowledge and TPACK

Ball, D. L., Thames, M. H., and Phelps, G. 2008. Content Knowledge for Teaching: What Makes It Special? Journal of Teacher Education 59, 5, 389–407

Niess, M. L. (2011). Investigating TPACK: Knowledge growth in teaching with technology. Journal of educational computing research, 44(3), 299-317.

Basic coding and mathematical skills should be accessible to every individual for computational problem solving but also as a means for creative and personal expression. Over the last years, there have been global efforts to foster mathematical and computational thinking in K-12. However, many educators often fail at engaging and maintaining individuals' interest in mathematics by focusing exclusively on theoretical aspects of mathematics that are difficult for the students to connect to their lives. On the contrary, mathematical and computational concepts and practices should be introduced in parallel with creative and real-life applications rather than dull exercises.

This study suggests combining computational design and 3D printing as a means of fostering mathematical and computational thinking to students. The study includes the implementation and assessment/evaluation of an existing workshop concept that allows students to use mathematics and geometry knowledge as well as computational concepts (e.g., iterations and conditional statements) to generate 3D models that can be fabricated at our Teaching and Learning Lab and Lili’s Proto Lab of our university. The existing workshop concept needs to be adjusted according to the mathematics curricula standards of the workshop partipants. The analysis focuses on the evaluation of learning outcomes of lower secondary students in terms of mathematics knowledge and computational thinking (e.g., computational concepts, practices and perspectives).

The expected duration of the workshop is around 2-3 hours per day for 2-3 days. The fabrication of the projects will continue after the students leave our lab. The master student undertaking this project will contribute to implementing the workshops and facilitating the learning activity and fabrication phase along their supervisor. The assessment/evaluation of the workshop outcomes will include questionnaires, interviews and 3D artifact qualitative analysis. Master students with no coding experience are welcome to take the project, but they should be willing to invest a couple of days to get familiar with the computational design tools we use (BlocksCAD or BeetleBlocks or similar).

Links: https://www.blockscad3d.com/editor/

Key Literature

Computational Thinking Assessment 

Brennan, K., & Resnick, M. (2012, April). New frameworks for studying and assessing the development of computational thinking. In Proceedings of the 2012 annual meeting of the American educational research association, Vancouver, Canada (Vol. 1, p. 25).

van Borkulo, S., Chytas, C., Drijvers, P., Barendsen, E., & Tolboom, J. (2021, October). Computational thinking in the mathematics classroom: fostering algorithmic thinking and generalization skills using dynamic mathematics software. In The 16th Workshop in Primary and Secondary Computing Education (pp. 1-9).

Pedagogies 

Blikstein, P. (2013). Digital fabrication and ‘making’ in education: The democratization of invention. FabLabs: Of machines, makers and inventors, 4(1), 1-21.

Blikstein, P., & Krannich, D. (2013, June). The makers' movement and FabLabs in education: experiences, technologies, and research. In Proceedings of the 12th international conference on interaction design and children (pp. 613-616).

Evaluation of computational design learning activities

Jennifer Jacobs and Leah Buechley. 2013. Codeable objects: computational design and digital fabrication for novice programmers. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '13). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1589-1598. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/2470654.2466211

Chytas, C., Diethelm, I., & Tsilingiris, A. (2018, April). Learning programming through design: An analysis of parametric design projects in digital fabrication labs and an online makerspace. In 2018 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON) (pp. 1978-1987). IEEE.

Chytas, C., Brahms, E., Diethelm, I., Barendsen, E. (2022, May).

Youth’s Perspectives of Computational Design in Making-based Coding Activities. In FabLearn Europe / MakeEd 2022: 6th FabLearn Europe / MakeEd Conference 2022 (pp. 1–9). https://doi.org/10.1145/3535227.3535231

Bringing design practices to science and mathematics education is gaining interest with recent science curriculum reforms emphasizing design, and calls for integrated STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts, and Math) education. Design is a central practice in science and mathematics disciplines, and could potentially engage students in designing projects in digital formats or fabricating them into the physical realm. Fabrication tools commonly used in education (e.g., with 3D printing/laser cutting) allow students to create artifacts that have quality comparable to that of industrial products. Including such tools in project-based learning activities seems to be an effective strategy to empower and motivate students in using science and mathematics to create sophisticated projects and take a more active role with technology. Digital fabrication itself (e.g., with 3D printing/laser cutting) is also still viewed by many students as an innovative and exciting process.

Science and mathematics teachers are key in bringing design to STEAM classrooms, but little is known about their views on teaching and learning regarding design. This research project aims to better understand how design-based learning activities focusing on aspects like 3D design/printing can complement existing teaching/learning practices in science and mathematics from the perspective of both the teachers and students. 

Developed learning activities will be empirically evaluated in the classroom to investigate how design-based learning activities can be appropriate choices for equipping students with scientific literacies and practices like understanding scientific concepts, phenomena and processes, and applying new technical skills and knowledge to address scientific issues. Below you can find an example of a design-based learning activity:

Design of an instrument

Lower secondary school students get to use 3D technology and their understanding of sound waves, frequency, and amplitude. After an introduction on the topic and working with existing material, the students are expected to develop a basic understanding of waves, frequency, and amplitude and generate ideas/testing theories to solve authentic problems (how to make efficient design choices for their artifact to be functional). The students are called to interact with the artifacts we provide them with, as well as the ones they designed and fabricated in a lab/workshop (For example, the Teaching and Learning Lab at our university). The students are called to record and analyze their data and communicate their findings with their peers and tutor(s), discuss about testing strategies for their design considerations, and communicate their findings. The learning activity could end with a reflection on their learning experience.

Key literature:

Pedagogies, design, and technology in education

Blikstein, P. (2013). Digital fabrication and ‘making’ in education: The democratization of invention. FabLabs: Of machines, makers and inventors, 4(1), 1-21.

Blikstein, P., & Krannich, D. (2013, June). The makers' movement and FabLabs in education: experiences, technologies, and research. In Proceedings of the 12th international conference on interaction design and children (pp. 613-616).

Design practices and engineering in mathematics and science

Vossen, T. E., Henze, I., De Vries, M. J., & Van Driel, J. H. (2019). Finding the connection between research and design: The knowledge development of STEM teachers in a professional learning community. International Journal of Technology and Design Education.

Roehrig, G. H., Moore, T. J., Wang, H. H., & Park, M. S. (2012). Is adding the E enough? Investigating the impact of K-12 engineering standards on the implementation of STEM integration. School Science and Mathematics, 112(1), 31–44.

Methods 

Saldaña, J. (2016). The coding manual for qualitative researchers. Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications.

Pedagogical content knowledge

Rahimi, E., Barendsen, E., & Henze, I. (2016). Typifying informatics teachers’ PCK of designing digital artefacts in Dutch upper secondary education. In A. Brodnik & F. Tort (Eds.), Proceedings of the 9th international conference on informatics in schools: Situation, evolution, and perspectives (pp. 65–77). Cham: Springer.

Simulation and modeling tools are promising technologies for engaging students in inquiry-based learning activities to investigate and understand the world around them. In fact, in virtual spaces students can even conduct ‘dangerous’ experiments that they could not try in their class (e.g., learning about salmonella bacteria, which is an important topic that schools cannot teach in the lab for safety reasons).

There are several studies investigating the advantages of virtual experiments over physical experimentation as well as combining both. For example, students can explore scientific phenomena such as heat diffusion and wave propagation by conducting physical experiments and in parallel designing virtual models, and connecting the experiments with the models in real-time through iterative comparisons with empirical data. During the physical phase of the process, students design and develop their physical experiment, and they run the experiment while collecting data with embedded sensors or a time-lapse camera and try to model the phenomenon under investigation.

This study will examine how primary/secondary school students design and compare their own experiments in both the digital and physical realms and how to leverage this combination to promote authentic scientific inquiry. The suggested study could examine the applicability and challenges of this combination in formal, non-formal, or informal learning environments from the perspective of multiple stakeholders (teachers, educators, and students). The master students participating in the project can conduct observations of the students and teachers and their interactions in the Teaching and Learning Lab or Lili’s Proto Lab of our university.

Key literature

Bifocal Modeling Framework

Blikstein, P. (2010, June). Connecting the science classroom and tangible interfaces: the bifocal modeling framework. In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference of the Learning Sciences-Volume 2 (pp. 128-130).

Blikstein, Paulo. "Bifocal modeling: a study on the learning outcomes of comparing physical and computational models linked in real time." Proceedings of the 14th ACM international conference on Multimodal interaction. 2012.

Key studies:

Fuhrmann, T., Schneider, B., & Blikstein, P. (2018). Should students design or interact with models? Using the Bifocal Modelling Framework to investigate model construction in high school science. International Journal of Science Education, 40(8), 867-893.

Fuhrmann, T., Bar, C., & Blikstein, P. (2020). Identifying Discrepant Events as a Strategy to Improve Critical Thinking About Scientific Models in a Heat Transfer Unit in Middle School.

Fuhrmann, T., Fernandez, C., Blikstein, P., & de Deus Lopes, R. (2021). Making Students' Ideas Visible through Coding a Scientific Computational Model. In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference of the Learning Sciences-ICLS 2021. International Society of the Learning Sciences.

Recent advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the development of Large Language Models like ChatGPT have opened up exciting possibilities in the fields of personalized teaching, adaptive learning, and automated assessment in education. However, as we explore the potential benefits, it's crucial to consider both the advantages and drawbacks of integrating AI and LLMs into the educational landscape.

In this project, you will have the opportunity to contribute to ongoing research projects at our institute, gain expertise in AI's applications in education, and collaborate with faculty members and experts from different departments at Utrecht University. Our ongoing projects aim at investigating the influence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Large Language Models (LLMs) in Higher Education. You can choose one of the three research directions we focus on or suggest your own:

• Teachers and instructor support: Bubeck et al. (2023) has demonstrated the capacity of GPT-4 to generate teaching materials, exercises, feedback, graphics, and code, with further quality improvements expected. This research direction investigates how AI-powered tools can assist educators in creating personalized teaching materials, thereby enabling more effective, personalized, and engaging STEM lessons.
• Learning assistance: This direction Investigates how AI can support students' learning experiences. Whether through chatbots, virtual tutors, or adaptive learning platforms, AI-driven tools provide immediate feedback and individualized assistance. Your study could evaluate the impact of such tools on student performance and learning experience and derive best practices and design principles for supporting students learning with AI.
• Grading and assessment: The role of AI in grading and assessment is an area of growing interest. This research direction examines how automated grading systems influence student evaluation, the integrity of grading processes, and the evolving role of educators in this context.

The focus of the ongoing projects is on Higher Education but your project could also focus on K-12 if this is more relevant to you and your personal/professional development. Such interventions could involve several programs at Utrecht University including lectures and seminars, tutoring programs, teacher qualification courses, and professional development workshops for staff, among others. Whether you have questions, want to discuss research opportunities, or simply want to chat about these topics you can email: c.chytas@uu.nl

To investigate and identify promising practices in equitable STEM education, the capacity for education researchers to conduct this research must be rapidly built globally, particularly in light of concerns that have arisen over the quality of research and the lack of a strong focus on equity.

To address these issues, our consortium, composed of eight researchers from six countries and educational knowledge from an additional eight countries, investigated how existing research standards can inform high-quality, equity-focused K-12 STEM education research. We have meticulously synthesized key features from these standards (McGill et al., in press) in the context of equity-focused education research, with the aim of providing a comprehensive framework that ensures not only the quality of research but also its alignment with equity principles.

This project aims at understanding how these synthesized recommendations are applied in educational research, identifying successful practices, and highlighting areas where further refinement of the recommendations is needed.  

The division between science and art has been a subject of interest throughout the history of human civilization. In his inspiring book, Douglas Hofstadter argues that such division is, in fact, artificial (Hofstadter, 1980). Geometrical and mathematical patterns such as the Fibonacci sequence can be found practically everywhere (from the number and configuration of petals in flowers to the spiral patterns of shells), although they are often unnoticed by an untrained eye. Concepts such as the golden ratio and congruences have inspired generations of artists, from the sculptures of Phidias, the Islamic geometric ornaments of Alhambra, the paintings of Leonardo Da Vinci to the most recognizable brand logos designed by modern graphic designers. Apart from sculptures and paintings, mathematical properties also shaped tensions in architecture, poetry, music and dance.

In recent years, there has been a growing recognition of the importance of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education in preparing students for the 21st century. At the same time, there is an increasing interest in incorporating the arts into educational curricula to foster creativity and critical thinking, among others.

In this project you will investigate the impact of arts integration on STEM education, aiming to provide empirical evidence and insights into the potential benefits of a more holistic approach to education. This project is highly adaptable and open to customization. If you have a background in a specific STEM discipline, e.g., such as biology, physics, or computer science, you can focus your research on how arts integration impacts that specific field. Think of Biomimicry Fashion Design, Bacterial Painting and Bio Art, Algorithmic Music Composition, Mathematical Origami, Geometric Art, Computational Design, Kaleidoscope Making, 3D Printing for Mathematics and Science, and more. 

Literature

• Kafai, Y. B. (2020). Twenty Things to Make with Biology. Proceedings of Constructionism 2020.
• Chytas, C., Diethelm, I., & Tsilingiris, A. (2018, April). Learning programming through design: An analysis of parametric design projects in digital fabrication labs and an online makerspace. In 2018 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON) (pp. 1978-1987). IEEE.
• Liao, C. (2016). From interdisciplinary to transdisciplinary: An arts-integrated approach to STEAM education. Art Education, 69(6), 44-49.

This research project explores how AI-driven tools, such as ChatGPT, can support students and educators in reflecting on and improving their inclusive communication skills in socio-scientific and technical disciplines. The study aims to assess the effectiveness of AI-generated feedback in identifying and addressing biases, while also examining the ethical and practical challenges of AI integration in educational settings.We aim to tackle the following research questions:
 

• Q1: How does the integration of AI-powered tools, such as ChatGPT, as a self-evaluation tool impact the use of inclusive language in socioscientific/technical disciplines over a semester/period?
• Q2: What challenges do students and instructors face when using AI-powered tools like ChatGPT for self-evaluation, particularly concerning data privacy, transparency, and feedback accuracy on inclusive communication?
• Q3: What limitations and risks exist in using these tools that might unintentionally reinforce biases in classroom communication, and how can these be mitigated through human oversight?

Women are underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM): only 15% of the people in the STEM industry is women, with only 2,4% in the tech sector (Starr, 2018). This is problematic, as diversity is important for new breakthroughs, deeper research and fresh perspectives: research showed that diverse groups of problem-solvers outperform groups of high-ability problem solvers  (Hong & Page, 2004) .

In an attempt to increase the representation of women in STEM, Utrecht University organizes a pre-university program (Girls Club WIN, note: this program is facilitated in Dutch) for girls. Girls aged 13-15 years old visit Utrecht University five times in a year, to delve into the subjects mathematics, informatics and physics and to get acquainted with female role models from these study areas. They do this in a safe and positive environment.

We are interested to get more insight in the effects of (programs like) the Girls Club WIN. Possible research questions for a master thesis could be:

• To what extent does participation in girls-science-intervention-programs impact the academic subject selection (profielkeuze) of 2nd and 3rd-year pre-university (vwo) students, relative to non-participating peers within the same school context?
• What are the underlying factors influencing students' decisions to engage or abstain from participation in such a program as an extracurricular activity?
• What is the efficacy of integrating components of the program into standard curricular offerings for 2nd and 3rd-year students in terms of increasing participation rates?

It is also possible to set up your own research question. For researching your research question, you may observe, survey and/or interview participants from the next group of high school students within this program.

For more information about the Girls Club WIN, you can visit the website: https://u-talent.nl/leerlingen/meerjarige-programmas/girlsclub/. The contact persons for this research project are Michiel Doorman (m.doorman@uu.nl) and Marjolein Gelauff (m.n.a.gelauff@uu.nl).

References:

Hong, L. & Page, S.E. (2004) Groups of diverse problem solvers can outperform groups of high ability problem solvers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 101(46), 16385–16389. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0403723101

Starr, C. R. (2018). “I’m Not a Science Nerd!”: STEM Stereotypes, Identity, and Motivation Among  Undergraduate Women. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 42(4), 489-503. https://doi.org/10.1177/0361684318793848

Inquiry-based learning (IBL) has been advocated by science and mathematics educators as a means to make students be actively engaged in content-related problem solving processes and in reflecting on the nature of science. Several reasons created the need for IBL varying from improving content-learning, fostering motivation, creating opportunities for learning 21st century skills like creativity, critical thinking and working collaboratively. However, a discrepancy can be found between the need to make IBL accessible to students and teachers’ current classroom practices. Three research projects are proposed in close cooperation with these running projects on this issue.

The first research project accompanies the implementation process of IBL by selected teachers within a case study design. The teachers will be guided in this process and data is retrieved on their beliefs and implementation strategies (e.g., necessary aids and evaluation tools), classroom implementation is observed and students’ responses during and after the implemented unit are considered (e.g., creativity and levels of inquiry). A sample collection of students’ responses is available for an initial explorative study.

In the second project, the central focus is on the redesign of traditional tasks within teacher professional development units. Teachers will be supported and observed during the process of redesigning a closed textbook task into an IBL-oriented task and interviewed afterwards. The aim is to extract the determinants for successful redesigning processes to be able to enhance a research-based tool kit containing redesigning aids to guarantee successful implementation of tasks. The tasks can be selected from subjects within the science or mathematics domain.

The third project concerns a textbook analysis in one or more science domains. You will analyze to what extent textbooks provide opportunities for inquiry-based learning and opportunities for experiencing how scientists think and work. This textbook analysis can be performed in close collaboration with a PhD student who investigates similarities and differences between China and the Netherlands on this issue in lower secondary mathematics education.

References:

Capps, D. K., & Crawford, B. A. (2013). Inquiry-based instruction and teaching about nature of science: Are they happening?. Journal of Science Teacher Education, 24(3), 497-526.

Minner, D. D., Levy, A. J., & Century, J. (2010). Inquiry‐based science instruction—what is it and does it matter? Results from a research synthesis years 1984 to 2002. Journal of research in science teaching, 47(4), 474-496.

Swan, M., Pead, D., Doorman, L.M. & Mooldijk, A.H. (2013). Designing and using professional development resources for inquiry based learning. ZDM - International Journal on Mathematics Education, 45 (7), (pp. 945-957) (13 p.).

Master Theses from previous students in the project:

Nur Rahmah Sangkala (2018). The influence of inquiry based learning on Indonesian students’ attitude towards science.

Lysanne Smit (2016). A better understanding of 21st century skills in mathematics education and a view on these skills in current practice.

Contact: Ralph Meulenbroeks and Michiel Doorman

Men and women are regularly treated as unequal in society, but also in science. Quite often the presence of gender-bias in science and society hampers girls to become who and what they want to become. This research topic aims to study the issue in the domain of (secondary) science education.

While the overall gender-gap in the Netherlands has been decreasing in the last couple of decades, females have not yet reached an equal footing in the different fields of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). One of the reasons may be the fact that there are less female role models available in educational methods and in popular media.  

Role models have been found to have a lasting impact on the feeling of belonging and sense of possibilities for a career in a certain industry or field. They give students the idea that a career path is something that they could pursue and achieve too. Without proper role models in STEM, female students tend to feel that they do not belong in STEM fields and that a career in the fields of physics, computer science and engineering “just isn’t for them” (Kalender et al., 2019).

So in this research topic one can study for instance at what stage of education the gender-gap in STEM becomes apparent. This can be done for the different disciplines, or different school types in the Netherlands or elsewhere in the world, and for different aspects of gender bias in different media, be it visual, audio or written.

Depending on interest in theme / practice / target audience the influence of communication or education (interventions) on gender-issues or gender-bias in education will be studied. An approach suitable for the issue under investigation will be selected: the study may be descriptive or may use a design based approach (production of an intervention) in combination with qualitative interviews with a target audience of choice.

A recent master thesis focused on an explorative study on the availability of role models for physics and computer science students in Dutch high schools. New projects can be developed inspired by the findings of this study. Maybe you would like to design new educational content featuring female role models and test how that influences students’ perception of STEM subjects?

Interested? Please contact Ralph Meulenbroeks or Michiel Doorman for more information: R.F.G.Meulenbroeks@uu.nl; m.doorman@uu.nl

Core literature

Bax, J. (2021) Gender bias in secondary education – An explorative study on the availability of role models for physics and computer science students in Dutch high schools, Master thesis UU.

Kalender, Z. Y., Marshman, E., Schunn, C. D., Nokes-Malach, T. J., & Singh, C. (2019). Why female science, technology, engineering, and mathematics majors do not identify with physics: They do not think others see them that way. Physical Review Physics Education Research, 15(2), 020148. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.15.020148

Supervisors: Wouter van Joolingen (FI, W.R.vanJoolingen@uu.nl),  Roland Geraerts (CS)

This project is a collaboration between Department of Computer science, University Museum and Freudenthal Institute.

At big events, such as pop concerts, sports events and demonstrations, large numbers of people get together in a relatively small space. This can cause problems: due to congestions, people may not be able to reach their goals in time, emergency services (ambulances, fire fighters) may not be able to get through the crowds and even accidents due to suffocation may occur. For this reason it is important to study how such crowds can be managed.

In order to understand how such large numbers of people can be controlled to ensure fluid passage and avoid dangerous situations, the department of computer science develops a crowd simulation that allows for specifying the characteristics of a situation (roads, obstacles, sources and targets of people (e.g. entrances and exits, toilets, viewing positions for a sports event, …). The simulation then computes and visualizes the flows of people in the environment, indicating people flow and problematic points. By adjusting the environment, users can see how the environment influences the flow of the crowd.

The crowd simulations can also have an educational function. By interacting with the simulation, students (the target group is 8-14 year old children) can study the effects of the environment on the people flows and, moreover, study the properties of the model behind the crowd simulation. In such a way, students engage in inquiry-based learning and learn to assess the role of models and modeling in scientific understanding.

The University Museum plans to include a large scale model of the crowd simulator in its new exhibition. This model will allow for physical interaction with the simulation, by moving blocks that represent buildings and other obstacles. Scenarios of use of such a setup are (1) free interaction and exploration by museum visitors in the target age and (2) guided interaction under supervision of a museum guide.

The goal of this master student project will be to investigate the constraints and possibilities for these two scenarios and develop and evaluate test scenarios. For instance, a question is what good starting questions are for students, or how a guide can engage children in active exploration. The scenarios developed will be tested in practice in the Teaching and Learning Lab.

Biology textbooks typically depict molecular and cellular processes such as enzyme operation and protein synthesis with iconic representations of macro-molecules. Whereas this representation is useful to obtain a global view of the processes there are aspects that are not covered but are important for understanding the essence of the processes involved. For example, apart from the ‘lock and key’ idea of enzyme that is involved in order for molecules to ‘snap’ into each other, the molecules themselves are dynamic structures and their movement within the cells adds to the dynamics. Whereas the textbook representation may give rise to the misconception that molecules display purposeful behavior, a representation that incorporates dynamics can give rise to a more accurate ‘mechanistic way’ of reasoning that is capable of explaining the effects of external factors such as temperature and pH value in the cell.

Virtual reality can provide such a dynamic representation. In an environment where students can play with 3D models of molecular processes and in which they can modify the model, students can experiment with the molecular processes and literary see how they come to life and operate together. In this project we will use SimSketch as a modeling tool with which students can modify the dynamic behavior of the molecules and VR software from the lab of Prof. CAI Yiyu at NTU to display the 3D behavior. The research question is how this combination of representations can be integrated in the biology class.

In a team in which you will work together with students from Windesheim University of Applied Sciences (Zwolle), supervised by Dr. Teresa Dias Pedro Gomes and students from Nanyang Technical University (Singapore), you will develop and evaluate lessons around this topic. The validation of the designed pedagogies and lesson plans will be done via the Lesson Study method as developed by Professor Sui Lin Goei (Windesheim) implementing this method widely in Dutch schools in the Netherlands. The student teams will meet using videoconferences and once a year face-to-face during conferences and workshops to discuss the design of the lessons. Both master theses will focus on subtopics of the study, one will be related to the way students use and appreciate the VR aspects in learning about the molecular processes; the second will focus more on the modeling aspect and the specification of the dynamic behavior of the processes.

Project supervisors: Erik van Sebille and Wouter van Joolingen

In 2013, we developed the website plasticadrift.org[1], where visitors can explore how ocean currents transport floating material such as plastic litter around the globe. While the website is a huge success, more than 350,000 visitors and exposure on platforms including the Guardian[2], the website is not much more now than a fun tool for most visitors.

Ideally, the plasticadrift.org website would have more background and for example a lesson plan associated with it, that schoolteachers can use to discuss the problem of plastic pollution with their pupils. Content can be drawn from the ‘All about plastic soup’ webportal, hosted at Utrecht University[3]. Also, students could get interested in the backgrounds and methods behind the model that drives the site; this could also more clearly be explained.  

In this project, you will develop, implement and test a lesson plan for either primary or secondary school (tbd), based around the plasticadrift.org website. You will make sure the lesson plan aligns with the relevant curricula. You will create a set of questions and assignments based on the plasticadrift.org website and research how they influence students’ reasoning about the way plastics are transported over the oceans and/or how we are able to predict these plastic flows, i.e. understanding the science behind plastic pollution.

[1] See http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jembe.2014.09.002 for a scientific publication on the method behind the tool

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jun/29/if-you-drop-plastic-in-the-ocean-where-does-it-end-up

[3] https://plasticsoep.sites.uu.nl/en/

Project supervisors: Erik van Sebille and Wouter van Joolingen

Climate Change and Plastic Pollution are two of the most pressing environmental problems. Both are linked to overconsumption and our wasteful lifestyle. Hence, for many people the two are expressions of the same underlying cause.

On the other hand, effective solutions to Climate Change might increase the amount of Plastic Pollution. An example of this is the case of the shrink-wrapped cucumber in the supermarket: the extra plastic wrapper increases shelf life and hence reduced spillage in the supermarket, and thereby the amount of energy per sold cucumber[1]. Similarly, effective solutions to the Plastic Pollution problem, such as glass recyclable containers, might increase carbon emissions for transport, thereby exacerbating Climate Change.

In the public discussion, the two topics are also differently viewed. Where the causes and impacts of climate change are (still) fiercely debated in some communities and media, plastic pollution is far less contested; there are hardly any ‘plastic-sceptics’.

For academics working on climate change and plastic pollution, these ‘confusions’ in the public perceptions and debate complicate engagement. The two topics are intertwined in some respects but clearly different in others. The question is thus how the public perceives this nexus between plastic pollution and climate change. How can the relation between climate change and plastic pollution best be discussed?

In this project, you will work within the ‘Tracking Of Plastics In Our Seas’ (topios.org) project and the Freudenthal Institute to explore the nexus between plastic pollution and climate change in public engagement, and to help the team with their outreach activities.

[1] https://www.packagingnews.co.uk/news/why-shrink-wrap-a-cucumber-16-10-2012

Contact: Wouter van Joolingen (W.R.vanJoolingen@uu.nl) and Ad Mooldijk A.H.Mooldijk@uu.nl)

In the first round of the physics Olympiad for lower secondary education whole classes participate. The percentage of girls is then around 50%. In the second round of 2018 and 2019, the percentage of girls already diminished to about  20%. Boys score better on the digital questions in the first round. In the final round the girls percentage is still about 20% and the score on the questions is the same as that of the boys.

In the Physics Olympiad for upper secondary education, the percentage of women in the first round is about 40%. In the second round with about 100 students, the percentage of girls is only 15%. In the final round only 1 girl out of 20 participants was present.

When 40% of the girls in lower secondary education in the Netherlands choose for a more science oriented path in upper secondary, you may expect that at least 40% of the girls will reach the second round of the lower secondary Physics Olympiad. What is the course of the lower achievement?

In this project you will search for possible causes of this lower achievement. A former project investigated the questions but found no indications that the kind of questions or formulation is a cause. Some schools score better with girls, what makes the difference in these schools that girls score better? Are there other possible causes? We can use one or two students in this research.

The preliminary rounds of the Physics Olympiads are digital now. The answers can therefore be used for research on gender, preconceptions and alike.

Literature

McCullough L (2004) Gender, Context, and Physics Assessment, Journal of international Women’s Studies 5-4, p 20-30

OECD. (2016b). PISA 2015 results: Excellence and equity in education (Vol. 1). Paris, France: Author.

Lorenzo M etal (2006) Reducing the gender gap in the physics classroom, am j phys 74-2, p 118-122

Nafis I Karim et al (2018) Do evidence-based active-engagement courses reduce the gender gap in introductory physics? Eur. J. Phys. 39-2,

Mooldijk A & van der Laan J (2019) De Natuurkunde Olympiade Digitaal, NVOX,  44-1, p 8-9

Contact: Rayendra Bachtiar

Supervisor: Ralph Meulenbroeks or Wouter van Joolingen

Mechanistic reasoning is a valuable thinking strategy, in which physical phenomena are systematically organized in “entities” and “activities of entities” (Russ, Scherr, Hammer, & Mikeska, 2008). Many studies show that engaging students in certain types of modeling stimulates them to reason mechanistically. However, full mechanistic reasoning appears to be difficult to reach.

In the present study we ask students to construct a model of a physical phenomenon by having them create a stop-motion animation and ask them to explain their animation afterwards. So far we have found that the nature of the construction of a stop-motion animation, chunking and sequencing” (Hoban & Nielsen, 2010), does induce students reasoning in mechanistic ways. We found that 9th-grade students’ level of mechanistic reasoning increased during the construction of stop-motion animations about a ball’s parabolic movement. Furthermore, students appeared to be stimulated to use more abstract reasoning, i.e., make more use of abstract entities, during the course of the process.

A further study is proposed to investigate how the development of concrete and abstract levels of mechanistic reasoning using stop-motion animations occurs. Furthermore, we want to see how the use of stop-motion animation works in an actual classroom. For these challenging projects, we have room for one or more research students.

Reference

Hoban, G., & Nielsen, W. (2010). The 5 Rs: a new teaching approach to encourage slowmations (studentgenerated animations) of science concepts. Teaching Science, 3(3), 33–38.

Russ, R. S., Scherr, R. E., Hammer, D., & Mikeska, J. (2008). Recognizing mechanistic reasoning in student scientific inquiry: A framework for discourse analysis developed from philosophy of science. Science Education, 92(3), 499–525. https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.20264

Development in science and technology such as, artificial intelligence and renewable energy impact society and our personal lives. They often improve our wellbeing but also carry with them scientific uncertainties and social risks. This asks for scientifically literate citizens who are able to make informed decisions about these emerging socio-scientific issues (SSIs); an important aim of our current science curricula.

Education through an inquiry approach in science and technology prepares young citizens to participate in socio-scientific debate. For this purpose, students need to have an understanding of the process and products of science and technology and to appreciate them as human endeavour. In addition, students need to exercise informed decision-making, i.e. considering and balancing relevant facts, interests, values, costs and benefits.

The PARRISE project, aimed to introduce the concept of Responsible Research and Innovation in science and mathematics education to contribute to a scientifically literate society (21st century skills). It does so by combining socio-scientific issues (SSI) and inquiry-based learning (IBL) to foster citizenship (CE) in science education; The SSIBL-approach.

Implementing the SSIBL-approach in science classrooms and teacher training programs is challenging. Many aspects still have to be investigated .We are in need of evidence-based teaching and learning activities to foster informed opinion forming and decision-making in the classroom. Focus of your study can be on aspects such as:
 

• Fostering democratic dialogue in the classroom
• Dealing with uncertainty
• Reliability of sources/ fake news
• Dealing with the complexity of SSIs / multiple stakeholders
• Introducing students to authentic (local) SSIs
• Involving local stakeholders in students inquiry
• Scaffolding inquiry-based learning
• Dealing with personal values and beliefs, and societal and ethical aspects of science

Literature

• Levinson, R. (2018) Introducing socio-scientific inquiry-based learning (SSIBL). School Science Review, 100(371), 31-35.
• Ariza, M.R.; Christodoulou, A.; van Harskamp, M.; Knippels,M.-C.P.J.; Kyza, E.A.; Levinson, R.;Agesilaou, A. (2021)Socio-Scientific Inquiry-Based Learning as a Means toward Environmental Citizenship. Sustainability, 13, 11509. https://doi.org/10.3390/
• Knippels, M.C.P.J. & van Harskamp, M. (2018). An educational sequence for implementing socio-scientific inquiry-based learning (SSIBL). School Science Review, 100 (371), 46-52.

Within our platform we have a code editor for Python that is used in our Python course. Within this editor, the standard error messages of Python are shown in case of an error. However, these are not always clear to students and they struggle sometimes to proceed to fix the problems. Within this project you are going to study how to make these error messages more accessible for students: should there be hints to help students, or should we create custom error messages? Moreover, you can study whether the code editor could be improved to help students. For example by adding colours or suggestions.

Within this project you can combine technical skills (by making a prototype) with educational skills (how to give the right feedback at the right moment). Your research question could be: How can you support students to interpret error messages better?

It is possible to combine this topic with one of the other suggested topics. 

We currently have a visualization of learning goals in a graph, but during a pilot study we found that students did not use the graph and found it hard to understand. Based on an existing learning goals graph for computer science you will design a visualization that can be used by students and teachers. To design this graph you will work with the target audience and build different mock-up visualizations to evaluate.  

Your research question could be: How to visualize learning goals to students & teachers? 

It is possible to combine this topic with one of the other suggested topics.

Students in the Co-Teach Informatica program can only receive remote support as their teacher does not have any content knowledge. 

You will study, together with the target audience, how you can help those students with their problems, for example by providing (personalized) hints during assignments. Aside from that you will think about ways to help students to verbalize their problems so that they can efficiently communicate those problems with the student assistants. You can create prototypes of additional features that can be added to the platform we are developing. 

Your research question could be: How to provide students with support in their tasks and how to facilitate easier communication with TA’s? 

It is possible to combine this topic with one of the other suggested topics. 

Programming activities are currently often self-assessed by the students. Problems with this approach are that students might incorrectly evaluate themselves and we cannot determine which learning goals were and were not met. Therefore, we would like to add some form of autograding that can be linked to learning goals. 

You will work on an algorithm that can detect which learning goals are met in an assignment to create a more precise evaluation. You can test this using existing data and talk with the target audience. 

Your research question could be: Can an autograding tool correctly detect learning goals in programming assignments? 

It is possible to combine this topic with one of the other suggested topics. 

Currently, we have to create all programming assignments by hand, which limits the number of assignments that students can use to practice. You will build a tool, using existing tools like ChatGPT if helpful, to automatically create additional practice assignments. It is important that the created assignments are correct and suitable alternatives for existing assignments and the learning goals linked to these assignments. You will also study how this can be applied to other modules in our platform that are not related to programming.  

Your research question could be: Can we generate practice assignments as suitable alternatives to existing assignments? 

It is possible to combine this topic with one of the other suggested topics. 

The use of Virtual and Augmented Reality technologies is an fast emerging aspect in education. Several nice applications have been developed for the subjects of geography and history in which students can interactively learn about concepts or their environment. In the field of chemistry the introduction of this technology has mainly been restricted to the 3D visualization of molecules. In this institute, several projects have been started to determine the effectiveness of this technology with respect to learning effect in the understanding of both models and concepts in biology and chemistry secondary education. For this reason applications are developed and build. Topics are scrutinized and evaluated using the principle of design cycle for further investigation and construction. Upon completion of the design cycle the obtained product is tested and analyzed using the Lesson Study approach or cycle. With this approach the product (an app) is tested in a classroom setting, whereby several teachers meticulously devise a research lesson. During the execution of the research lesson several students are the closely monitored to see if predicted behaviour is observed. This cycle is repeated after evaluation and revision of the lesson. This approach is furthermore a beneficial tool for teacher professionalization. It should be noted that several research projects are conceivable within the research into the effectiveness of AVR technologies in science education. One of the participating partners in this project is www.epic-xs.eu.

Nico Rutten, Wouter R. van Joolingen, Jan T. van der Veen (2012) The learning effects of computer simulations in science education, Computers & Education 58  136–153, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2011.07.017

Dunleavy, M., Dede, C. & Mitchell, R. J Sci Educ Technol (2009) 18: 7. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10956-008-9119-1

Fer Coenders & Nellie Verhoef (2018): Lesson Study: professional development (PD) for beginning and experienced teachers, Professional Development in Education, DOI: 10.1080/19415257.2018.1430050

If you have an idea that does not fit with any of the proposals below, but for which you feel very strongly, please contact me and we will have a chat about your views. Very often we can find a way and create a new project together. Feel free to contact me!

Mathematics teachers view assessment and grading generally as one of their most important and demanding tasks outside of teaching (Moons & Vandervieren, 2022). However, there is remarkably little research on what choices teachers make when assigning partial scores to student responses. While there is indeed a broad theoretical framework on what quality requirements good assessments in mathematics should meet, remarkably little is known about the grading process itself. 

Filip Moons' doctoral research has already shown that teachers, for example, use two calculation methods to convert the sub-scores of a question into a total score: some - the so-called "adders" - start counting from 0 and add points when they see good (partial) steps, some - the so-called "subtractors" - start from the maximum and then subtract points for every error found. Many teachers are somewhere in between. 

In this thesis, using an existing dataset in which 45 mathematics teachers assigned partial scores and feedback to 3 questions from 1 test taken from 60 students, you look for patterns, similarities and differences in improvement methods. You link the analysis of this dataset to theoretical models from your literature review. 

In the thesis, you synthesize your findings into a new framework that gives insight into which improvement styles are common in Flemish mathematics education. 

Relevant literature

• Moons, Filip, Ellen Vandervieren, en Jozef Colpaert. ‘Atomic, Reusable Feedback: A Semi-Automated Solution for Assessing Handwritten Tasks? A Crossover Experiment with Mathematics Teachers.’ Computers and Education Open 3 (december 2022): 100086. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.caeo.2022.100086 .
• J. Stenmark. Mathematics Assessment: Myths, Models, Good Questions and Practical Suggestions. NCTM (1991). 
• Romagnano, L (2001). lmplementing the Assessment Standards for School Mathematics. The Mathematics Teacher. NCTM. 
• Lewis, C. H. (1982). Using the "Thinking Aloud" Method In Cognitive Interface Design (Technical report). IBM. RC-9265. 
• Mogens N. Assessment in Mathematics Education and Its Effects: An Introduction (1993). Investigations into Assessment in Mathematics Education, Volume 2 

Feedback is the most powerful engine of any learning process. In mathematics education, the possibilities to assess automatedly are thoroughly explored. However, students face difficulties expressing themselves mathematically on a computer and learning systems can often only assess the outcome, not the solving method. Research indicates that automated tests focus too much on procedural fluency at the expense of higher-order thinking questions. It takes much effort to develop digital tests, and teachers are skeptical of using automated assessments, meaning that paper-and-pencil tests still dominate mathematics classrooms. One of the characteristics of mathematical assessment is that wrong answers tend to exhibit patterns among the student population. Consequently, teachers often repeat their feedback and grades, bringing us to the idea of semi-automated feedback and assessment: by correcting handwritten tasks digitally, feedback can be saved and reused. This could lead to more elaborate feedback, time savings, and enhanced inter-rater reliability.  

One developed & researched semi-automated assessment approach consists of teachers writing feedback for a student, and the computer saves it so that it can be reused when subsequent students make the same or similar mistakes. The concept of atomic feedback has been introduced to train teachers on how to write reusable feedback. Atomic feedback consists of a set of format requirements for mathematical feedback items, which has been shown to increase the reusability of feedback. A remarkable result was discovered during a crossover experiment with 45 mathematics teachers: the semi-automated approach led teachers to give significantly more feedback instead of saving time. Moreover, the teachers’ feedback with the semi-automatic tool did not always have better properties than classic pen-and-paper feedback.  

However, many teachers acknowledged they sometimes forget how they had phrased feedback items using the SA tool. As such, they could not find the feedback item they needed, although they knew they had already written a fitting item. This caused them to formulate already given feedback again instead of reusing feedback, which was confirmed by the identification of nearly identical feedback items in their databases. This was due to the non-intelligent suggestion system: it only literally matched what teachers were typing with their items in the database. Improving the suggestion system by incorporating ideas from the extensive literature on recommender systems (Mohanty et al., 2020) is a priority for further research. It is a vital gap to make the semi-automated approach described in the first part valuable and adopted by teachers. It is also a necessary step before making the software available. To feed such a recommender system with information on which feedback items might be appropriate, one solution is to allow teachers to indicate where an error has occurred in a handwritten solution, which provides helpful information about which feedback items are appropriate. Additionally, patterns of the use of feedback items can be unravelled (e.g. which items are popular, which often co-occur together) and added to the suggestion system’s predictive ability to suggest appropriate items. 

You will also test your improved system with teachers. 

Relevant literature

• Moons, F. (2023). Semi-automated assessment of handwritten mathematics tasks: Atomic, reusable feedback for assessing student tests by teachers and exams by a group of assessors. https://hdl.handle.net/10067/1980770151162165141 .
• Moons, Filip, Ellen Vandervieren, en Jozef Colpaert. ‘Atomic, Reusable Feedback: A Semi-Automated Solution for Assessing Handwritten Tasks? A Crossover Experiment with Mathematics Teachers.’ Computers and Education Open 3 (december 2022): 100086. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.caeo.2022.100086 .
• Mohanty, S., Chatterjee, J., Jain, S., Elngar, A., & Gupta, P. (2020). Recommender system with machine learning and artificial intelligence: Practical tools and applications in medical, agricultural and other industries. Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119711582 .

During the initial seminar of Subject Methodology 2 of Mathematics at our teacher training at Utrecht University, the newly arrived students have to fill in a ‘Science-Beliefs’ questionnaire that maps their scientific beliefs to three dimensions: the epistemological, the ontological and the relational- epistemological dimension. This questionnaire is a foundational tool, paving the way for an enlightening philosophical lecture that delves into diverse perspectives on mathematics and mathematics education. However, the questionnaire is focused on science beliefs and not specifically on mathematics, making some connections a bit far-fetched.  

Therefore, in this project, you aspire to refine and elevate this questionnaire that maps prospective mathematics teachers' beliefs to the philosophical dimensions of views on mathematics and mathematics education. To achieve this, you make an overview of the relevant literature, create a test questionnaire and validate the developed questionnaire with prospective mathematics teachers in the Netherlands and Flanders using Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA). You will get support to get the data collection running. 

If you are interested in the more philosophical side of mathematics (education) and don’t fear a little statistics, this project is for you! 

Relevant literature 

• Mohamad Adam Bujang, Hon Yoon Khee, & Lee Keng Yee. (2022). A Step-By-Step Guide to Questionnaire Validation Research. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6801209
• Sierpinska, A., Lerman, S. (1996). Epistemologies of Mathematics and of Mathematics Education. In: Bishop, A.J., Clements, K., Keitel, C., Kilpatrick, J., Laborde, C. (eds) International Handbook of Mathematics Education. Kluwer International Handbooks of Education, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-1465-0_23
• Ernest, P. (2023). The Ontological Problems of Mathematics and Mathematics Education. In: Bicudo, M.A.V., Czarnocha, B., Rosa, M., Marciniak, M. (eds) Ongoing Advancements in Philosophy of Mathematics Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35209-6_1

Sustainability has become a prominent theme in society and having a grounded opinion on this can be considered as an integral part of scientific citizenship. In the last decades, several strategies have been proposed to make society more sustainable, such as the cradle-to-cradle (C2C) design, green engineering and eco-technology. These movements are focussed on the design of products and processes which maximise resource and energy efficiency, minimise - or preferably eliminate - waste and cause less harm to the environment. In order to achieve a more sustainable future, it is important that the current generation lives in such a way that they do not jeopardize the opportunities for future generations. Education about and for sustainability is one of the routes to address sustainability issues among students. Central concepts in Education for Sustainability (ESD) are skills related to validation and justification of claims, argumentation, morality, decision making and the ability to discuss. Chemistry education takes a central role in teaching future generations on sustainability and to motivate them to act sustainable. In this institute, several projects have been started the aim to design high-quality teaching materials, addressing above mentioned concepts and skills related to sustainability. The design of the teaching materials follows several stages, i.e. a conceptual analysis of the sustainability issue at hand, mapping prior knowledge in students, iterative design of teaching materials followed by empirical testing of developed materials (mostly secondary school chemistry classes). 

Anastas, P. T., & Zimmerman, J. B. (2003). Design through the 12 principles of green engineering. Environmental Science & Technology, 37(5), 95A–101A. https://doi.org/10.1109/EMR.2007.4296421

Burmeister, M., & Eilks, I. (2012). An example of learning about plastics and their evaluation as a contribution to Education for Sustainable Development in secondary school chemistry teaching. Chemistry Education Research and Practice, 13(2), 93–102. https://doi.org/10.1039/C1RP90067F

Juntunen, M. K., & Aksela, M. K. (2014). Improving students’ argumentation skills through a product life-cycle analysis project in chemistry education. Chemistry Education Research and Practice, 15(4), 639–649. https://doi.org/10.1039/c4rp00068d

Molecular Modeling is one of the fastest growing fields in science. It may vary from building and visualizing simple molecules (in 3-Dimensions) to performing complex computer simulations on large protein molecules. Using various molecular modeling software, one can visualize, rotate, manipulate, and optimize models on a computer display. Molecular Modelling is used, for instance, for designing drugs and new materials. In secondary chemistry education students should become acquainted with and gain insights in the technique of Molecular Modelling. This urges for high quality teaching materials in which students are meaningfully engaged in molecular modelling. In our institute an innovative curriculum unit has been developed, in which students perform a lead optimalisation for designing a new drug against the malaria disease. The authentic practice of drug design is used as a context for learning. The designed curriculum unit, however, is only tested once among students grade 11. The results were positive, although it became apparent that the unit needs a thorough revision and a second try-out using the method of educational design research.

Dori, Y. J., & Kaberman, Z. (2012). Assessing high school chemistry students' modeling sub-skills in a computerized molecular modeling learning environment. Instructional Science, 40(1), 69-91. doi: 10.1007/s11251-011-9172-7.

Prins, G. T., Bulte, A. M. W., Driel, van J. H., & Pilot, A. (2009). Students' involvement in authentic modelling practices as context in chemistry education. Research in Science Education, 39, 681-700. doi: 10.1007/s11165-008-9099-4.

Teacher noticing, also known as teacher professional noticing of students’ mathematical thinking, is a responsive teaching practice. Broadly, this practice consists of:

1) Attending to students’ statements during classroom interactions and perceiving them as representations of the students’ mathematical thinking that can be built upon. 

2) Interpreting the mathematical thinking underlying these statements. 

3) Responding in accordance with the interpretation to advance the students’ mathematical thinking. 

This practice is one of the most researched in mathematics education and is considered to advance students' mathematical understanding. Despite the importance of this practice, research shows that teachers face challenges in responding to students' ideas in-the-moment. Nonetheless, GenAI presents some exciting new directions to support teachers in practicing these expertise. This research investigates how teacher noticing can be promoted and developed through interactions with an AI chatbot. 

Some broad directions for this research include:

• Developing a workshop for teachers to interact with an AI chatbot and exploring their learning after the workshop.
• What are the limitations of AI interactions when introduced in teacher preparation programs?
• What are the possible influences of such AI interactions on teachers' practices in their own classrooms? 

Literature

Amador, J. M., Bragelman, J., & Superfine, A. C. (2021). Prospective teachers’ noticing: A literature review of methodological approaches to support and analyze noticing. Teaching and Teacher Education, 99, 103256.‏

Jacobs, V. R., Lamb, L. L., & Philipp, R. A. (2010). Professional noticing of children's mathematical thinking. Journal for research in mathematics education, 41(2), 169-202.‏

Van Es, E. A. (2011). A framework for learning to notice student thinking. In Mathematics teacher noticing (pp. 164-181). Routledge..‏

Contact: Sigal-Hava Rotem (s.h.rotem@uu.nl); Anna Shvarts (a.y.shvarts@uu.nl) 

Teaching requires teachers to engage in the classroom in many different ways—explaining, interacting, facilitating discussions, scaffolding content, and more. How teachers perform these roles depends on their knowledge, teaching resources, beliefs, ideologies, physical presence, and movement. Indeed, a big part of this role is the teacher's movement in the classroom through walking and gesturing. Yet teacher movement while teaching is usually overlooked. The goal of this project is to explore how teachers use their bodies when they teach, particularly exploring conscious and unconscious movements.

This project offers a unique opportunity to participate in a novel and ambitious study that views teaching as an embodied practice. The project can involve different data collection procedures: analyzing video recordings of mathematics classrooms (using existing data), researching your own teaching using action research methods, and engaging advanced tools such as eye-tracking devices.

Some research questions that can be explored in this project:

• What are the hidden practices used when teaching, and how do they impact students’ learning?
• What are mathematics teachers’ conscious and unconscious movements when they teach, and how do these movements impact students' learning? 

Literature

Coles, A., & Brown, L. (2021). Differentiation from an Advanced Standpoint: Outcomes of Mathematics Teachers' Action Research Studies Aimed at Raising Attainment. Mathematics Teacher Education and Development, 23(3), 166-181.

Kosko, K. W., Egbedeyi, T., & Gandolfi, E. (2023). Exploring Preservice Teachers' Embodied Noticing of Students' Fraction Division. North American Chapter of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education.

Mason, J. (2002). Researching Your Own Practice: The Discipline of Noticing. Routledge.

Scheiner, T. (2021). Towards a More Comprehensive Model of Teacher Noticing. ZDM–Mathematics Education, 53(1), 85-94.

Schoenfeld, A. H. (2010). How We Think: A Theory of Goal-Oriented Decision Making and Its Educational Applications. Routledge.

For far too long, there has been a gap between mathematics classroom teaching and the socio-ecological issues we experience in our everyday lives. Responding to this gap, reformed secondary mathematics curricula around the world introduce new mathematics tasks that primarily focus on everyday STEM-related issues. However, current tasks typically reflect middle-class everyday contexts rather than socio-ecological issues. Socio-ecological issues are culturally dependent, and different communities face different issues. In particular, the issues faced by marginalized communities are rarely found in common textbooks and school materials globally.

In response to the problem, this project aims to map the socio-ecological issues that local marginalized communities are concerned with. 

Some possible research questions for a master's thesis could include:

• What are the socio-ecological issues that different communities are concerned with, and what are the ways these issues can be incorporated into mathematics teaching?
• To what extent are these mathematical tasks, designed by teachers and students, aimed at solving these socio-ecological issues? Both at the design stage and when solving the tasks.
• What does such a curriculum imply for the teachers' teaching? What characterize teaching practices that align with teaching mathematics using authentic socio-ecological tasks?

This study has significant potential for promoting social and ecological justice, as it highlights the socio-ecological concerns of marginalized communities—who often receive little attention in mathematics education research—and transforms these concerns into mathematical tasks taught in secondary schools.

Literature

Coles, A. (2023). Teaching in the new climatic regime: Steps to a socio-ecology of mathematics education. In M. Ayalon, B. Koichu, R. Leikin, L. Rubel & M. Tabach (Eds.), Proceedings of the 46th Conference of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (Vol. 1, pp. 17-33). Haifa: PME.‏

Foster, C. (2023). Problem solving in the mathematics curriculum: From domain‐general strategies to domain‐specific tactics. The Curriculum Journal, 34(4), 594-612.‏

Hunter, J. (2022). Challenging and disrupting deficit discourses in mathematics education: positioning young diverse learners to document and share their mathematical funds of knowledge. Research in Mathematics Education, 24(2), 187-201.

Liebenberg, L. (2018). Thinking critically about photovoice: Achieving empowerment and social change. International journal of qualitative methods, 17(1), 1609406918757631.‏

Marco, N., & Palatnik, A. (2024). Teachers pose and design context-based mathematics tasks: what can be learned from product evolution?. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 115(2), 223-246.‏

Project supervisor: Erik van Sebille

Oceanographers use instruments called drifters to measure the ocean currents and transport patterns of plastic pollution; but they typically don’t pick them up at the end of their experiments. In that way, the oceanographic research contributes to the problem it tries to tackle. This ethical problem requires a careful communication strategy.

In this project, you will work with a team of oceanographers who will deploy 1000 drifters in the North Sea next year, to explore how they can best communicate about the pollution caused by these drifters.

Project supervisors: Erik van Sebille and Wouter van Joolingen

Climate Change and Plastic Pollution are two of the most pressing environmental problems. Both are linked to overconsumption and our wasteful lifestyle. Hence, for many people the two are expressions of the same underlying cause.

On the other hand, effective solutions to Climate Change might increase the amount of Plastic Pollution. An example of this is the case of the shrink-wrapped cucumber in the supermarket: the extra plastic wrapper increases shelf life and hence reduced spillage in the supermarket, and thereby the amount of energy per sold cucumber[1]. Similarly, effective solutions to the Plastic Pollution problem, such as glass recyclable containers, might increase carbon emissions for transport, thereby exacerbating Climate Change.

In the public discussion, the two topics are also differently viewed. Where the causes and impacts of climate change are (still) fiercely debated in some communities and media, plastic pollution is far less contested; there are hardly any ‘plastic-sceptics’.

For academics working on climate change and plastic pollution, these ‘confusions’ in the public perceptions and debate complicate engagement. The two topics are intertwined in some respects but clearly different in others. The question is thus how the public perceives this nexus between plastic pollution and climate change. How can the relation between climate change and plastic pollution best be discussed?

In this project, you will work within the ‘Tracking Of Plastics In Our Seas’ (topios.org) project and the Freudenthal Institute to explore the nexus between plastic pollution and climate change in public engagement, and to help the team with their outreach activities.

[1] https://www.packagingnews.co.uk/news/why-shrink-wrap-a-cucumber-16-10-2012

Project supervisors: Erik van Sebille (e.vansebille@uu.nl) and Mark Bos (m.j.w.bos@uu.nl)

The KlimaatHelpdesk is a unique and accessible communications platform that connects the general public with scientists and experts, run by a volunteer group and meant to become the go-to place for people with climate-related questions. These may cover the whole range of academic disciplines and range from physics, economy, geography, psychology, history, biology, etc. As such, it highlights the need for a multi- and interdisciplinary approach to address climate change. The questions are answered by a network of active experts who write evidence-based responses in an accessible language and each answer will be reviewed by at least one other expert.

The aim of the KlimaatHelpdesk is to provide an easily accessible source of reliable and evidence-based information, as well as insight into how science works. This is of crucial importance in a time in which the validity of available information is difficult to check for non-specialists and sometimes deliberately undermined  [Howe et al 2019, Petersen et al 2019].

The general public submits the questions, drawn to the KlimaatHelpdesk via social media (twitter, Instagram), national media (e.g. NOS.nl) and partnerships with klimaatakkoord.nl and Teachers4Climate. The platform stores the exchange of questions and answers, thereby becoming a source of easily accessible and reliable information. This procedure improves the quality of information and demonstrates to a broad audience how research works.

Since the official launch of the KlimaatHelpdesk in November 2020, it has assembled a database of 200 enthusiastic experts ready to answer questions, published more than 100 questions and answers on the website and attracted more than 10,000 visitors.

By lowering the threshold of engagement for a variety of leading experts, through providing access to a well-developed platform and broad audience, the platform motivates high level public scientific communication. The KlimaatHelpdesk is run by approximately 40 (UU) volunteers, with two part-time student-assistants to coordinate them. While all tiers in academia are represented in the team, most are (MSc) students or PhD candidates.

However, it is unclear how effective the method and vision of the KlimaatHelpdesk is [Corbett 2021]. Which target groups are reached with the KH (are people that ask the questions the same as those that are using the website as a source for reliable information) and what are they using the information for? What are key factors that can be used to predict whether a question (as well as an answer) is effective?

In this project, you will work together with the KlimaatHelpdesk team to measure and assess the effectiveness of the platform. 

Interested? Just get in touch with Erik (e.vansebille@uu.nl) and/or Mark (m.j.w.bos@uu.nl).

References

Corbett JB (2021) Communicating the Climate Crisis: New Directions for Facing What Lies Ahead (Lexington Books)

Howe LC, B MacInnis, JA Krosnick, EM Markowitz and R Socolow (2019) Acknowledging uncertainty impacts public acceptance of climate scientists’ predictions. Nature Climate Change, 9, 863–7

Petersen AM, EM Vincent and AL Westerling (2019) Discrepancy in scientific authority and media visibility of climate change scientists and contrarians. Nature Communications, 10, 3502

Mathematics is the basis for science and technical education, but many students find mathematics  too abstract, a stumbling block that causes them to fail or avoid science programs. There is room for improvement in the way mathematics is taught. Related subjects regularly use hands-on activities that stimulate the senses, such as building circuits in physics or nature excursions in biology. Mathematics in secondary education is an exception to this. Contemporary cognitive theories and educational research support the idea that physical, embodied interactions with materials improve the understanding of secondary mathematics. Despite this evidence, hands-on activities are rarely used in secondary classrooms because they require new skills from teachers and the availability of suitable learning materials.

MATHerials® https://matherials.nl/ are hands-in materials and activities based on the findings from several dissertation projects on mathematics education at Utrecht University. Solving problems with MATHerials®, students rediscover seemingly abstract mathematical concepts and make them tangible, movable, and very concrete. They start from working with hands-on materials and gradually arrive at the formalization present in their mathematical books. As a result, the students feel that mathematics is understandable and alive.

Master students are invited to contribute to the further development of the project through investigating the learning outcomes with existing MATHerials toolkits and/or developing their own low-tech learning environments inspired by the embodied learning approach.

Imagine a traditional classroom: a teacher is giving a lecture and the students are trying hard to follow the explanations. For some students, the material is boring, as they know everything ahead, and the others are barely able to follow as new terms are popping up all the time in the teacher’s speech without any obvious connection with drawings on the blackboard. New interactive technology promises to provide adaptive education by paving individual learning trajectory for any student. The problem is that technological tools are still much slower than the dynamics of individual tutors’ scaffolding of the students (Belland, 2017). This project aims to understand the complexity of effective student-tutor interaction in one-to-one settings with a distant aim of contributing to the technologically supported adaptive learning. 

Joint visual attention between a student and a tutor means focusing on the same objects and similar understanding of their meanings. How do students come to see and name mathematical objects in a way that is similar to the teachers? Investigation of infants shows that naming the objects, which are in the focus of infants' attention is more effective for vocabulary learning than redirecting their attention to new objects (Tomasello & Farah, 1986). Theoretically, this project relies on an embodied approach to teaching and learning that stresses the complexity of student-teacher interaction. A student does not just follow the teacher, but actively participates in multimodal flow of teaching-learning interaction, where speech is combined with gestures to the visual display. It is crucial for the student to connect different modalities into one meaningful node (Radford, 2009). To understand the key aspect on this interaction, we introduce a notion of micro-zone of proximal development, which is a moment when a student and a tutor are coordinated in one modality (e.g., attending to the same visual display), but are discoordinated in other modality (e.g., they do not have a shared language to refer to it) (Shvarts & Abrahamson, 2019). In this project, we will investigate if micro-zone of proximal development is a moment when a teacher's intervention is particularly effective and lead to joint attention to the same mathematically meaningful object.

The methodology of the project lies on the crossroads of two technological innovations: touchscreens’ advantages for mathematical learning and dual eye-tracking’ advantages for investigation of the interaction between students and teachers. The tutors will support students’ problem-solving in technological activities for trigonometry (Shvarts, Alberto, Bakker, Doorman, Drijvers), that are designed in the Digital Mathematics Environment (DME) of the Freudenthal Institute. Dual eye-tracking, namely a synchronous tracking of two people's overt attention, will provide information about the visual perception of a student and a tutor's (see a video with a sample of data). At the same time, video and audio records will provide information about the participant's verbal and gestural utterances. Analysis of coordination and discoordination between modalities will shed light on the teaching-learning progress. 

The study is a part of a broader experimental investigation of embodied processes in the introduction of mathematical tools. We invite the mastery students, who are interested in technology in mathematics education, in embodied processes and/or in acquiring skills of conducting research with innovative equipment such as dual eye-tracking.   

Belland, B. R. (2017). Instructional scaffolding in STEM education. Cham: Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02565-0

Radford, L. (2009). Why do gestures matter? Sensuous cognition and the palpability of mathematical meanings. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 70(2), 111–126. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10649-008-9127-3

Shvarts, A., & Abrahamson, D. (2019). Dual-eye-tracking Vygotsky: A microgenetic account of a teaching/learning collaboration in an embodied-interaction technological tutorial for mathematics. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 22, 100316. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.LCSI.2019.05.003

Shvarts, A., Alberto, R., Bakker, A., Doorman M., Drijvers P., (in press) Embodied instrumentation: Reification of sensorimotor activity into a mathematical artifact. In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Technology in Mathematics Teaching

Tomasello, M., & Farrar, M. J. (1986). Joint attention and early language. Child Development, 57(6), 1454. https://doi.org/10.2307/1130423

Gender differences in mathematics learning attract intensive attention due to the under-representation of women in STEM professions, including the fields tightly related to mathematics. This issue has a long history of investigation in mathematics education research, and now researchers question the mechanisms of how gender differences arise (Leder, 2019).

One of the theoretical visions of gender differences comes from theories of embodiment that assume different bodies are being treated differently in culture (de Freitas, 2008). Embodied cognition is a quickly developing approach that highlights that knowing anything, including very abstract notions, is grounded in the personal experiences of solving problems with their bodies, not just brains (Wilson & Golonka, 2013).

Applying this theory to practice, we can expect that embodied design—special activities designed to build mathematical knowledge from personal sensory-motor experience (Abrahamson et al., 2021)—can help create opportunities for people with various bodies to study mathematics fruitfully. Within the embodied design approach, we develop technological embodied activities to promote students’ deep understanding of mathematical concepts (Alberto et al., 2021). Those activities account for various idiosyncratic experiences and, theoretically, should open space for various bodies. However, we do not know yet how students of different genders approach embodied activities. More specifically, we need to know what kind of different support they might need when describing their experiences depending on the gender differences.

In the research project, you will work with one of the embodied activities developed in our previous studies. You may focus on investigating gender differences in experiencing and/or on teaching support needed to facilitate such diversity in embodied learning.

Sources:

Try out embodied activities at https://embodieddesign.sites.uu.nl/         

Abrahamson, D., Nathan, M. J., Williams-Pierce, C., Walkington, C., Ottmar, E. R., Soto, H., & Alibali, M. W. (2020). The Future of Embodied Design for Mathematics Teaching and Learning. Frontiers in Education, 5, 147. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2020.00147

Alberto, R., Shvarts, A., Drijvers, P., & Bakker, A. (2021). Action-based embodied design for mathematics learning: A decade of variations on a theme. International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction, 100419. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijcci.2021.100419

de Freitas, E. (2008). Mathematics and its other: (dis)locating the feminine. Gender and Education, 20(3), 281–290. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540250801964189

Leder, G. C. (2019). Gender and Mathematics Education: An Overview In G. Kaiser & N. Presmeg (eds.) Compendium for Early Career Researchers in Mathematics Education  (pp. 289–308). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15636-7_13

Wilson, A., & Golonka, S. (2013). Embodied Cognition is Not What you Think it is. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 58.

New technologies can help in achieving the ambition to make mathematics learning an exciting and memorable experience. Students have an opportunity to study mathematical content in a new form by manipulating mathematical objects on tablets or interactive whiteboards and smart tables, which become more and more accessible in ordinary classrooms. These technological enhancements require educational researchers to provide clear answers about the efficiency and limitations of interactive educational designs.

Context-based approaches generally improve students’ engagement by situating science learning in contexts that represent the real world, which helps students appreciate the role science plays in their lives and in society. This research project focuses on one specific form of context-based education: the concept-context approach. According to this approach, a context is defined as a representation of an existing scientific, professional, or real-life community of practice in which participants perform goal-oriented activities.  

One of the challenges in biology education is changing the educational practice towards the intended context-based innovation. So far, several new editions of biology textbooks have been introduced with a rich variety of sources that refer to authentic social practices. It is a challenge for biology teachers to transform such an authentic social practice into usable contexts for classroom use, to engage students in meaningful learning tasks in which they develop a coherent conceptual understanding (Wieringa et al., 2011; Ummels et al. 2015). 

This project aims to design, conduct and evaluate learning-teaching (LT) activities for context-based biology lessons. Students learning goals for these lessons could be focused on domain-specific thinking skills, such as biological system thinking, biological (causal) reasoning, or understanding of biological models and modeling. An example of a recent design study in this project shows how secondary students learn causal reasoning using evolutionary concepts through a place-based approach creating a meaningful context for learning biology (Hoogland & Ummels, 2023).  

If you are interested please contact me.  

Micha Ummels, M.H.J.ummels@uu.nl
 

Nienke Wieringa, Fred J. J. M. Janssen & Jan H. Van Driel (2011) Biology Teachers Designing Context-Based Lessons for Their Classroom Practice—The importance of rules-of-thumb, International Journal of Science Education, 33:17, 2437-2462, https://doi.org/10.1080/09500693.2011.553969

Ummels, M.H.J., Kamp, M.J.A., De, Kroon, H. and Boersma, K.T. (2015), Promoting Conceptual Coherence Within Context‐Based Biology Education. Sci. Ed., 99: 958-985.  https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.21179

Hoogland, E. E., & Ummels, M. H. J. (2023). Fictional placemaking creating meaningful contexts for  causal reasoning in secondary school biology education. Journal of Biological Education, 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/00219266.2023.2244975 

With PhD candidate Simone van der Maeden (s.l.g.vandermaeden@uu.nl)

The new national objectives for primary and secondary school mathematics in the Netherlands, describe a novel goal on stimulating students’ mathematical attitude. However, little is currently known about what mathematical attitude precisely entails or how it can effectively be stimulated. To address this, a literature study is conducted to improve understanding of how mathematical attitude could look like in practice. Furthermore, we explore how students’ mathematical attitude (stimulation) is present in current intended, planned, and implemented educational practices. The findings inform the development and testing of teaching materials aimed at fostering students’ mathematical attitude. This research contributes to the theoretical understanding of mathematical attitude and provides practical examples for educators to work on primary school students’ mathematical attitude.

In this research project, you can contribute to different aspects of this study. A tangential investigation, in a design research approach, in secondary school into the operationalization of mathematical attitude would be possible, just as well as other approaches we could think about together.

For an overview of some of the research we have been doing into this see, for example (in Dutch): Veldhuis, M. (2025). Wiskundige attitude en wiskundeangst: hoe zit het nou? [Mathematical attitude and anxiety: what do we know?] Keynote presentation at Onderwijs meets Onderzoek, Utrecht, Sept. 19. https://www.nvvw.nl/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Veldhuis_2025_OmeetsO_Wiskundige-attitude-en-wiskundeangst.pdf

Number lines, in different representations, are ubiquitous in (primary) mathematics education. An educational designer has determined that all the extant representations (especially the concrete variants) lack a particular design principle: the concurrent showing of the number symbols on the number line and the tangible material for the development of conceptual understanding. In several rounds, new material in which this design principle is included has been developed with good results on motivation and mathematical achievement in casestudies. 

In this research project the theoretical comparison of the new representation with extant representations, its piloting, possible adjustment, and evaluation of usefulness and effectiveness for learning are possbile to investigate. We can also look together where your interests lie and whether that leads to new avenues!

Almost every day, press officers, communications consultants and editors from all over Utrecht University publish news articles on the university website. These articles are very diverse in form and content: press releases, interviews, background stories, about academic publications, research facilities, PhD defences, awards, grants, education… Some of these stories get tens of thousands of views over the span of a few days, while others are hardly read at all.

Even though the number of views is not the main indicator of a story’s success, we are still curious if there’s anything we may be able to learn from it. For example: are news items with portrait photos generally read more than those without? How about the length of the article, the presence or absence of a name in the title, or the link to a topic that’s currently in the news? Such insights could help us tweak our news articles to be more interesting for our readers.

In this project, you will be supervised by Nieske Vergunst and Aike Vonk. Nieske works as a strategic communications consultant at the Faculty of Science and as a postdoc researcher in the Public Engagement & Science Communication group. The factor that most strongly connects these two jobs is the analytical look at science communication: what are we doing, what are the outcomes and impacts, and what can we learn from that? Aike is doing her PhD research on the uptake of science press releases in the media. She investigates how frames and storytelling are used to communicate about ocean plastic and ocean climate change research. Moreover, she analyses how these communication tools influence the eventual representation of ocean scientific studies in the media.

In this master’s thesis project, you will create a dataset consisting of news articles that were recently published on UU.nl. Analytics data, such as the number of views over a certain period of time can be used to asses the ‘success’ of the news articles. You will conduct a content analysis on the news articles text and look for certain properties, such as the use of (different types of) image material and news factors: the textual elements that make a story more attractive for journalists to write about (Badenschier & Wormer, 2012; Harcup & O’Neill, 2017), and calculate the influence of these properties on the number of views.

Badenschier, F., & Wormer, H. (2012). Issue Selection in Science Journalism: Towards a Special Theory of News Values for Science News? In S. Rödder, M. Franzen, & P. Weingart (Eds.), The Sciences’ Media Connection –Public Communication and its Repercussions (Vol. 28, pp. 59–85). Springer Netherlands. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2085-5_4

Harcup, T., & O’Neill, D. (2017). What is News?: News values revisited (again). Journalism Studies, 18(12), 1470–1488. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2016.1150193