Everyone agrees that university students need to learn academic skills. But what exactly are we talking about? The Leiden Teachers’ Academy organised a conference on 7 November on this topic.

On the brand-new Leiden Teachers Blog, Leiden teachers share their experiences with educational innovation. They show colleagues, students, and everyone else who is interested the different facets of creating university education.

In October 2014, Leiden University established the ‘Leiden University Teachers’ Academy’. Helen Westgeest, who lectures in the BA and MA Art History and MA Media Studies, was put forward by the Faculty of Humanities for appointment in the so-called ‘LTA’.

The Leiden Teachers Academy (LTA) was founded to help collaboration between excellent teachers. Osteoarchaeologist Dr Rachel Schats has been one of the latest additions to the Academy, nominated by the Faculty Board for the position as a Teaching Fellow. ‘In the LTA we talk about new innovations in…

On 29 October, seven innovative lecturers from different faculties will join the existing ten fellows of the Leiden Teachers' Academy. The current fellows have been engaged for the past year in implementing their innovation projects. How are these progressing?

University-school partnerships are important constellations for teachers’ professional learning. The present study investigates how both teacher characteristics and contextual factors are related to teachers’ motivation to participate in the university-school partnership, and the relationship between…

How do secondary school teachers’ professional learning preferences relate to teaching experience and the school context?

What are relationships between student teachers’ personal characteristics, learning experiences and perception of external environmental aspects impacting teacher career and their commitment to teaching?

Anyone who knows Aris Politopoulos will be aware of his passion for teaching. Almost winning the Leiden University Teaching Award in 2020, he is known for his use of digital tools to improve his classes. Now he has been accepted to the Leiden Teacher’s Academy. ‘Here I can meet people with innovative…

Five innovative and excellent teachers have joined the Leiden University Teachers' Academy (LTA). Members of the Academy exchange experiences and share their knowledge and expertise within Leiden University. Frank Takes, assistant professor at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science (LIACS)…

To what extent do beginning teachers use, create and claim agency at their school?

The aim of this thesis was to examine what teachers want to learn themselves. The main research question was: what, how and why teachers want to learn? And does this depend on their years of teaching experience and the school at which they work?

Hanne Cuyckens, Michiel Dam, Anja van der Voort, Daan Weggemans and Paul Gobée have joined the Leiden University Teachers’ Academy. Lecturers from the academy can exchange experiences, develop themselves and share their knowledge and expertise with the rest of the university, for example through the…

The motivation of student teachers for the teacher's profession depends on various factors. Teacher training can influence the commitment of students.

Collaboration is increasingly common among teachers in schools. As such, teacher education should prepare prospective teachers to effectively interact with other teachers in different types of communities or groups.

Social aspects of the learning environment, also called classroom climate, are important for students’ cognitive and affective learning outcomes. In this thesis the classroom climate is operationalised by means of two components: the teacher-class relationship and classroom discipline.

The objective of this project is to understand the content and structure of science teachers’ knowledge and beliefs, and how these change in the context of pre-service teacher education and educational innovation.

The present project aims to provide valuable insights for the professional development of international teachers, and also for improving the quality of foreign language education.

The aim of this thesis was to develop and evaluate a Ecological Professional Development Model to support preservice biology teachers to direct their own subject-specific ecological professional development route.

How can formative assessment be used to promote teacher professional learning? This book contains various studies into professionalization approaches and courses in which formative assessment is used with a view to teacher learning.

This dissertation set out to provide both an integrated framework for the practices of teacher peer feedback and an in-depth understanding of teacher peer feedback in the Chinese vocational education context.

Professional learning communities are useful for professionalization but also for the development of induction programmes. In this project, we combine these two worlds into a professional learning communities in which mentors or novice teachers learn about mentoring and at the same time develop an induction…

This thesis reports on the influence of induction programs on beginning teachers’ well-being and professional development, and the essential characteristics of an induction program. These topics were explored by means of an interview study and large scale survey study.

What are ‘missing links’ in research on teacher professional development trajectories? We focus on the role and development of teacher facilitators in designing and implementing (collaborative) professional development trajectories.

How is collaborative learning in teacher education designed and implemented? How do students experience those collaborative learning assignments? What aspects of the design and the implementation lead to which perceived learning outcomes?

In this study we aimed to examine teacher learning within a context of collaboration in interdisciplinary teams.

This study looks at the question of how and at what level students in primary teacher education can integrate theory and practice, and how the organisation of their learning environment, focusing especially on mathematics and pedagogy, can contribute to that.

Teachers of English as a foreign language in China and the Netherlands have different notions of themselves as teachers in relation to cultures associated with the English language.

The topic of this study is the portfolio that is being used in a teacher education institute as an instrument for stimulating reflection on their development as teachers by student teachers.

Social relationships of students are important. Especially for students with problem behavior. How can a teacher support students in their social relationships via their own interactions with students? A lot, as is shown by a meta-analyses of Hinke Endedijk. She assessed almost 300 studies about teacher-student…

The World Teachers Programme (WTP) is a bilingual profile of the Initial Teacher Education programme geared towards bilingual and international education.

ICLON provides several programmes for second and first degree teaching qualifications.

The aim of this research is to gain insight into the approaches of learning to teach. Teacher learning processes, feedback in novice-expert interaction and the impact of the interaction are explored.

Dissatisfied older teachers regularly quit teaching before reaching retirement age. In her dissertation, Ietje Veldman advocates specific coaching for this group to retain them for education.

Work placement as a professional development programme for vocational teachers has been widely implemented. This dissertation provides insight into vocational teachers’ learning process in this programme within Chinese vocational education.

Teaching reading comprehension in secondary education

The literature indicates that teacher professional development and learning may be improved by using formative assessment procedures. This thesis focuses on a specific form of formative assessment, negotiated assessment, which is characterised by the exchange of views between assessor and assessee and…

The studies reported in this thesis were situated in the context of an innovation of Dutch secondary school biology curricula. As in any innovation, the practical knowledge of teachers determine the outcomes through the decisions they make while planning and teaching their lessons. The aim of the studies…

How can collaborative participatory action research by student-teachers and their students enhance student participation, improve educational practices, and generate knowledge about these practices that can be used for improving teacher education as well?

How do university lecturers perceive and exercise teacher agency, and what approaches can effectively explore agentic actions and underlying beliefs?

The Minor in Teaching was introduced in 2009 as a new initiative to introduce and prepare bachelor students for teaching. Student numbers are low, however, especially of mathematics and science students.

This doctoral thesis comprises four studies on the content and structure of physics teachers’ belief systems about teaching and learning physics in secondary education in the Netherlands.

To what extent are university teachers' individual learning paths influenced by their teaching experience, motivation, and conceptions of teaching and learning through educational technology?

How can teachers best learn from each other and develop? Jacobiene Meirink is conducting research on professional development for teachers in secondary education. She is particularly interested in how teachers collaborate on and learn from the development of teaching programmes. More insight into effective…