Education and meaningful living / education for a just and caring society - place for three external PhD candidates
Chair group
EducationYou can also have a look on the Dutch website.
Supervisor
Prof Doret de Ruyter, Professor of Education
| Chair | Education |
| Supervisors | Dr. Isolde de Groot & prof. dr. Doret de Ruyter |
Field of Research: Teacher disclosure in discussing moral-political issues in schools |
Discussions of open (unsettled) moral-political issues arguably represent one of the most potentially meaningful tools for developing democratic citizenship skills. Yet, even experienced teachers tend to avoid topics about which they have strong views, or choose silence or neutrality to protect themselves against charges of dogmatism or indoctrination. To deepen insight into how teachers can best cultivate democratic citizenship and promote well-being for all students in schools, PhD students are invited to investigate teacher disclosure practices and student experiences around morally or politically sensitive issues, such as support for LGBTI identities, religious identities or minority culture identities. |
| Examples of research questions | What teacher disclosure related issues do teachers and students in Dutch schools experience? |
| Place for: | 1 external PhD candidate PhD students may be interested to investigate teachers’ experiences as well as students’ experiences through interviews and observation and analysis of course materials to discover how the teachers and students respond to and collaborate with each other in discussing unsettled moral-political issues. Schools can be secondary schools or schools for vocational education |
Contact and information | i.degroot@uvh.nl |
2.
| Chair | Education |
| Supervisors | Dr. Wouter Sanderse & Prof. dr. Doret de Ruyter |
Field of Research: Education for personal and moral formation |
There is widespread agreement that schooling involves more than simply transmitting knowledge and skills about core subjects to pupils. But what is this ‘more’? Over the last two decades, part of the answer has been that on all levels schools should pay attention to students’ personal and moral formation. To describe what this means, a variety of terms has been used, ranging from ‘persoonsvorming’, ‘morele vorming’, ‘karaktervorming’, ‘subjectificatie’, ‘identiteitsontwikkeling’ and ‘Bildung’. It is not always immediately clear what these notions (most of which were introduced a long time ago) mean for students living in the 21st century. For example, they need to be rethought to fit the liberal, pluralistic and technological societies we live in today. Also, the approaches need to be adjusted to a specific educational level and professional domain. For, example, personal formation will mean something else for a pupil in primary school than a student in vocational education. The main question animating the field is what does it mean to cultivate oneself personally and morally in today’s society? |
| Examples of research questions | Character education o What does character education mean in schools in a late modern society? o To what extent can citizenship education be understood in terms of character education Bildung o What is the relevance of the German Bildung tradition for vocational education today? o Can Bildung provide an alternative framework that challenges the dominant discourse in education? |
| Place for: | 1 external PhD candidate PhD students may be interested to investigate teachers’ experiences as well as students’ experiences through interviews and observation and analysis of course materials to discover how the teachers and students respond to and collaborate with each other in discussing unsettled moral-political issues. Schools can be secondary schools or schools for vocational education |
Contact and information | w.sanderse@uvh.nl |
3.
| Chair | Education |
| Supervisors | Dr. Wouter Sanderse & Prof. dr. Doret de Ruyter |
Field of Research: Role modelling in schools |
Moral education refers to more or less intentional efforts to enable (young) people to live a good life, individually and with others. Most approaches to moral education recognise that role modelling is an important method to promote young people’s moral development, also in schools. It is fundamental, in the sense that if teachers do not model the behaviour they expect from children, other methods are not likely to be effective. Moreover, when asked how young people morally develop in schools, role modelling is mentioned most by teachers. However, it remains a mystery how role modelling works, when it is justified, and what effects may be expected from it. |
| Examples of research questions | There are conceptual and normative questions to be asked about the desirability and possibility of (un)intentional role modelling by teachers in a pluralistic society. In addition, there is hardly any knowledge about how teachers model capacities such as moral perception, reasoning, motivation and action in the classroom, and whether students recognise their teachers’ (un)intentional efforts. Finally, it would be interesting and useful to find out how (preservice) teachers can be stimulated to develop their function as moral exemplars further. |
| Place for: | 1 external PhD candidate |
Contact and information | w.sanderse@uvh.nl |
4.
| Chair | Education |
| Supervisors | Dr. Isolde de Groot & prof. dr. Doret de Ruyter |
Field of Research: Promoting Political self-efficacy in Vocational Education |
The main theme of this research is promoting efficacy beliefs of vocational students in political matters. Students in vocational education tend to underestimate their ability to influence political processes and therefore tend to shy away from politics (also at a local political level). This also means that their voices are not heard. So far, scientific research has missed this group of youngsters, even though they are large part of the population. This research wants to fill the gap and gain more insight into the development of these students’ political self-efficacy. Furthermore, the research that has been done focuses on individual students, while it might be better to enhance the sense of political self-efficacy of these youngsters through collective efficacy. But how does individual and collective political efficacy mutually enforce or undermine each other? |
| Examples of research questions | How does individual and collective political efficacy mutually enforce or undermine each other? How does research based education program X impact the efficacy of vocational students in political matters? |
| Place for: | 1 external PhD candidate PhD candidates may be inspired by these questions to develop an intervention study to be conducted within schools of vocational education, involving the students themselves, but also teachers, career coaches and the leadership. This could be primarily qualitative, but also quantitative. |
Contact and information | i.degroot@uvh.nl |
5.
| Chair | Education |
| Supervisors | Prof. dr. Doret de Ruyter (with a (co-)promotors to be selected, dependent on the particular question the PhD student wants to address) |
Field of Research: Education for flourishing | ||||||
Increasingly, the purpose of education is described as the teachers’ assistance to the possibility that the new generation will be able to flourish as adults. However, various conceptions abound in academic and professional literature. So, if teachers pursue the flourishing of their pupils, what do they actually aim for and how do they do it? The relation between education and flourishing also requires further theoretical and empirical research. It could be argued that education enables flourishing – children beings need to be introduced into the social, cultural and natural world by and in relation to teachers, for they need to be able to make sense of their world. But what is the educational implication precisely? On the other hand, flourishing enhances education – when teachers and students flourish in their teaching and learning, their relations will prosper and both the teaching and learning will have a higher quality. But when are teachers and students flourishing?
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6.
| Chair | Education |
| Supervisors | Dr. Isolde de Groot, dr. Wouter Sanderse & prof.dr. Doret de Ruyter |
Field of Research: Wisdom of teachers and school leaders in cultivating democracy in schools |
This study focuses on the moral/political issues that teachers face in the context of cultivating democracy in schools, i.e. providing students and teachers with opportunities to engage in school politics, promoting a culture of interpersonal respect and equity, and discussing democratic principles and outlooks. Cultivating democracy in schools requires not only national citizenship curricula and research-based experiential and dialogical methods, but also teachers and school leaders to have the wisdom to deal with the moral/political issues involved, i.e. the ability to assess what is desirable in the concrete situations that a professional encounters. However, we still know little about teachers’ and school leaders’ experiences with moral/political issues in schools and the extent to which these issues are utilized to promote their wisdom in cultivating democracy in schools.
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Supervised by professor Doret de Ruyter.
