Out-of-school science educational activities, such as school visits to a science center, aim at stimulating pupils’ science talent. Science talent is a developmental potential that takes the form of talented behaviors such as curiosity and conceptual understanding. This dissertation investigates whether and how out-of-school science activities contribute to the elicitation, emergence, and development of pupils’ science talent. The context of this thesis is the Northern Netherlands Science Network, an alliance of primary schools, out-of-school science facilities, the university of Groningen, and the Hanze University of Applied Sciences (www.wknn.nl). Interviews with the schools on their starting position showed that adequate communication between schools and out-of-school facilities is necessary to coordinate the participants’ educational goals. Secondly, the elicitation and expression of science talent was studied in the micro-interactions between pupils and their educator (classroom teacher or facility instructor). To do so, a multivariate coding scheme was developed to measure Pedagogical Content Knowledge expressed in real-time interaction (EPCK). The interaction shows a variable pattern over time. Sometimes episodes of high-level EPCK — so-called talent moments — emerge, in which talented pupil behavior in the form of pupils’ conceptual understanding, and talent elicitation by the educator in the form of open teaching focused on conceptual understanding, determine one another. These talent moments only occur in activities that were prepared in the classroom and with educators who were trained to evoke conceptual understanding. Under these conditions, out of school science activities can contribute to the elicitation and development of science talent in primary school pupils.AB - Out-of-school science educational activities, such as school visits to a science center, aim at stimulating pupils’ science talent. Science talent is a developmental potential that takes the form of talented behaviors such as curiosity and conceptual understanding. This dissertation investigates whether and how out-of-school science activities contribute to the elicitation, emergence, and development of pupils’ science talent. The context of this thesis is the Northern Netherlands Science Network, an alliance of primary schools, out-of-school science facilities, the university of Groningen, and the Hanze University of Applied Sciences (www.wknn.nl). Interviews with the schools on their starting position showed that adequate communication between schools and out-of-school facilities is necessary to coordinate the participants’ educational goals. Secondly, the elicitation and expression of science talent was studied in the micro-interactions between pupils and their educator (classroom teacher or facility instructor). To do so, a multivariate coding scheme was developed to measure Pedagogical Content Knowledge expressed in real-time interaction (EPCK). The interaction shows a variable pattern over time. Sometimes episodes of high-level EPCK — so-called talent moments — emerge, in which talented pupil behavior in the form of pupils’ conceptual understanding, and talent elicitation by the educator in the form of open teaching focused on conceptual understanding, determine one another. These talent moments only occur in activities that were prepared in the classroom and with educators who were trained to evoke conceptual understanding. Under these conditions, out of school science activities can contribute to the elicitation and development of science talent in primary school pupils.
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This dissertation aims to strengthen socioscientific issues (SSI) education by focusing on the resources available to students. SSI education is a type of science and citizenship education that supports students’ informed and critical engagement with social issues that have scientific or technological dimensions. This dissertation explores students’ SSI-related resources relevant to their engagement with SSI, such as their attitudes and social resources. The dissertation consists of four papers. The first is a position paper that introduces the concept of socioscientific capital and argues why it is important to pay attention to students’ resources in SSI-based teaching. The other three papers involve empirical, quantitative studies. Two questionnaires were developed that were used to investigate student differences regarding engagement with SSI: the Pupils’ Attitudes towards Socioscientific Issues (PASSI) questionnaire and the Use of Sources of Knowledge (USK) questionnaire. The final study is an exploration of the effects of SSI-based teaching on students’ attitudes toward SSI, considering socioscientific capital.
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During the 2024 Open Science Retreat, the Measuring Open Science team collected, reviewed, and analyzed existing research into open science practices. As a team, we developed an interactive overview of open science surveys, which may be used e.g. to reuse questionnaire items on different open science practices.
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MUSE supports the CIVITAS Community to increase its impact on urban mobility policy making and advance it to a higher level of knowledge, exchange, and sustainability.As the current Coordination and Support Action for the CIVITAS Initiative, MUSE primarily engages in support activities to boost the impact of CIVITAS Community activities on sustainable urban mobility policy. Its main objectives are to:- Act as a destination for knowledge developed by the CIVITAS Community over the past twenty years.- Expand and strengthen relationships between cities and stakeholders at all levels.- Support the enrichment of the wider urban mobility community by providing learning opportunities.Through these goals, the CIVITAS Initiative strives to support the mobility and transport goals of the European Commission, and in turn those in the European Green Deal.Breda University of Applied Sciences is the task leader of Task 7.3: Exploitation of the Mobility Educational Network and Task 7.4: Mobility Powered by Youth Facilitation.
Aeres University of Applied Sciences has placed internationalisation as a key driver in its overall strategy. By prioritising the internationalisation of education and educational consultancy the university has created solid opportunities for students, lecturers, and partners at regional, national, and international levels. Currently, more strategic development on internationalisation in applied research at Aeres is needed. There is an opportunity to utilise highly proficient researchers, state-of-the-art facilities, and an impressive national research portfolio, and for this, there is a need to develop international research agenda, a key priority for AeresResearch4EU. To address this need, Aeres University of Applied Sciences aims to strengthen its internationalisation efforts with its research activities, opening the door to many opportunities, and most importantly, creating an international research agenda spanning the university's three locations. The main objectives of AeresResearch4EU are to analyse the existing research strategy and professorships and develop them towards a global research agenda for the European Union. By focusing on international research projects, Aeres can further enhance its reputation as a leading institution for applied research in agriculture, food, environment, and green technologies. AeresResearch4EU aims to create new partnerships and collaborations with researchers and institutions across Europe, allowing Aeres to contribute to developing innovative and sustainable solutions to global challenges. With its strong commitment to internationalisation and its focus on applied research, Aeres University of Applied Sciences is poised to become an essential player in the European research landscape.
The pace of technology advancements continues to accelerate, and impacts the nature of systems solutions along with significant effects on involved stakeholders and society. Design and engineering practices with tools and perspectives, need therefore to evolve in accordance to the developments that complex, sociotechnical innovation challenges pose. There is a need for engineers and designers that can utilize fitting methods and tools to fulfill the role of a changemaker. Recognized successful practices include interdisciplinary methods that allow for effective and better contextualized participatory design approaches. However, preliminary research identified challenges in understanding what makes a specific method effective and successfully contextualized in practice, and what key competences are needed for involved designers and engineers to understand and adopt these interdisciplinary methods. In this proposal, case study research is proposed with practitioners to gain insight into what are the key enabling factors for effective interdisciplinary participatory design methods and tools in the specific context of sociotechnical innovation. The involved companies are operating at the intersection between design, technology and societal impact, employing experts who can be considered changemakers, since they are in the lead of creative processes that bring together diverse groups of stakeholders in the process of sociotechnical innovation. A methodology will be developed to capture best practices and understand what makes the deployed methods effective. This methodology and a set of design guidelines for effective interdisciplinary participatory design will be delivered. In turn this will serve as a starting point for a larger design science research project, in which an educational toolkit for effective participatory design for socio-technical innovation will be designed.
