Research team

Expertise

- Speaking and listening skills: experimental research on the learning effects of exploratory talk during collaborative activities - Language study: development of learning tools by means of which, via an inductive approach, students develop linguistic insights through practical language skills - Media literacy: development of an assessment tool which enables students, teachers and teacher educators to map their media literacy competencies - Reading motivation: qualitative study on reading motivation in the Flemish teacher training curricula and education practice + development of tools which merge reading motivation with the use of e-media

Monitoring of author residencies 01/01/2023 - 31/12/2023

Abstract

International and national tests indicate that the reading skills of pupils from the work-oriented and transfer finality are below the desired level. Several meta-analyses indicate that instruction in writing skills has a positive impact on students' reading comprehension (Graham & Hebert, 2011; Graham et al., 2017; Graham & Santangelo, 2014). The Reading Offensive therefore introduces author residencies at a selection of schools with these pupils. To maximize the impact of the author residency project, we are introducing the ambassador concept. Teachers who participate in the author residencies undertake to act as ambassadors for fellow teachers who were unable to participate in the author residencies in the following months (maximum 18 months). These fellow teachers do not receive author visits at school, but do use the programs developed within the author residencies project. In this way we aspire to create a network of teachers, so that the insights from the programs are efficiently disseminated. The central research question of this project is therefore: To what extent does the author residencies project have an impact on the reading and writing education of the participating schools? Ultimately, the Reading Offensive expects that the author residencies and the role of ambassador will have an impact on the views of the teachers (and the didactics they apply) and the language competence of their students. For this specific target group of students, functional writing skills are an illustrative example of this language competence. Based on this, we can formulate the following research questions: 1) To what extent does the author residencies project have an impact on the project teachers (the so-called ambassadors)? a. To what extent is there an impact on the views on language teaching of these teachers? b. To what extent is there an impact on the language didactics used by the teachers? c. To what extent is there a difference in views on language teaching between the ambassadors and fellow teachers? 2) To what extent does the author residencies project have an impact on the students in the project? a. To what extent is there an impact on the literary, resp. functional writing skills of the students? b. To what extent is there an impact on students' beliefs about reading and writing?

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Project type(s)

  • Research Project