Three Comenius Teaching Fellowships for Leiden lecturers
Innovation in teaching
Four lecturers from Leiden University have been awarded Comenius Teaching Fellowships to innovate within their teaching, together with their project teams. They have been awarded one €100,000 fellowship within the Senior Fellows programme and two €50,000 fellowships within the Teaching Fellows programme.
Democracy teaching: from theory to practice
Anar Ahmadov (Leiden University College) will receive a Comenius Teaching Fellowship as the main applicant for the project ‘Enhancing Democracy Education through Co-creation, Drama and Experience (DECODE)’.
Democracy teaching at Leiden University and Leiden University College (LUC) is often abstract. The courses remain largely theoretical, are monodisciplinary and miss opportunities to connect theory with practice. With youth knowledge and support for democracy across Europe declining, education that breaks this trend is lacking.
Ahmadov and his team will develop a teaching package in which students from different degree programmes will work together and practise democratic competencies through drama, mock trials and other creative learning methods. Partnerships with relevant civil society organisations aim to ground the project in practice and extend its educational impact.
Legal advice agency where students develop professional skills
Marije Schneider (Institute of Public Law) will receive a Comenius Teaching Fellowship as the main applicant for the project ‘The Practitioner’s Workshop: legal advice agency in co-creation between university and vocational education’.
The practitioner’s workshop will be a legal advice agency specialising in income and employment, where university students who are studying employment law and vocational students from various courses work together in an authentic professional setting. The aim is to prepare students for the labour market by developing their legal, communication and teamwork skills in a realistic working environment.
University students will acquire professional skills such as client-focused communication and decision-making, while vocational students will develop self-management and labour-market-oriented skills. Both groups will learn to collaborate across the boundaries of their respective programmes. The approach will be documented in a report and a practical guide for teachers.
Authenticity in language acquisition as the basis for language teaching
Eline Sikkema and Zhaole Yang (both from the Institute for Area Studies) will receive a Comenius Senior Fellowship as co-applicants for the project ‘From Textbook to Real Talk: Authenticity in Language Acquisition’.
This teaching innovation project will address a persistent challenge in higher education language learning, particularly for Chinese and Japanese. Students often report that what they learn in class differs significantly from real-world communication.
This has two causes: first, textbooks prioritise structural accuracy over exposure to diverse, context-rich discourse; second, pragmatic competence – the ability to select appropriate expressions and strategies in specific contexts – is underemphasised, despite its central role in effective cross-cultural communication.
Sikkema and Yang will analyse the gap between textbooks and authentic language use and develop modular learning materials, practical teaching tools and design principles for beginners. These materials will help prepare students for real-world communication, while offering a transferable model for across European higher education.