Which teacher did an outstanding job in not only transferring knowledge in novel ways but also in getting students enthusiastic and connecting a course to current research themes?

Students of the Faculty of Science have chosen Dennis Claessen (IBL) as the best teacher of last year.

Students of the Science Faculty of Leiden University have chosen Frank Takes, researcher and teacher at the Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science, to be the Teacher of the Year. Impressively enough, Takes also became the runner up Discoverer of the Year.

Ayo Adedokun, Assistant Professor at Leiden University College (LUC) in The Hague, is one of the four finalists in the running for the title ‘Teacher of the Year 2022’. The yearly election is organized by the Interstedelijk Student Overleg, the largest national student organization in the Netherlands,…

Last January, the education assessors of the different study associations chose Fouzia Lghoul-Oulad Saïd of the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (LACDR) as teacher of the year. Her passion for teaching extends beyond her classes, according to the students who nominated her: ‘ She is always ready…

Festival, Uitreiking

At the New Year’s reception of the Faculty of Science on 6 January, it was announced that Annelien Zweemer, Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research, has been awarded the ‘Discoverer of the Year 2014’ prize. Matteo Brogi, Leiden Observatory, wrote the best dissertation in 2014 and Dennis Claessen, Institute…

During the Faculty of Science New Year's reception, Daniël Rozen was named Discoverer of the year 2015. Nienke van der Marel and Koen van der Maaden both won the prize for the best dissertation and Jeroen van Smeden was named Best Teacher of 2015.

Since 2000 the Leiden Student Council (LSR) yearly awards a prize for the best teacher of the university at the Dies Natalis.

Next to the selected nominees there were more candidates for the Teacher of the Year Award.

'I did not know that I could become even more proud of you.' Kristian Rietveld's father responded to the news that his son was appointed Teacher of the Year 2017.

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

Which brilliant scientist will be our Discoverer of the Year 2019? Will it be a physicist, biologist, drug discoverer or an astronomer? Or an environmental scientist, a mathematician, chemist or computer scientist? As of now, you can cast your vote.

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…

Which brilliant scientist will be our Discoverer of the year 2018? Will it be a physicist, biologist, drug discoverer or an astronomer? Or an environmental scientist, a mathematician, chemist or computer scientist? As of now, you can cast your vote.

Fascinated by science since high school, Alireza Mashaghi Tabari is driven to explore new ways of thinking in medicine. With a strong academic network, he educates students and gives public lectures. For his research at LACDR, he won the C.J. Kok Public Award 2018, making him the Faculty of Science's…

Michiel Veldhuis received the most public votes for the C.J. Kok Public Award and may therefore call himself Discoverer of the Year. Veldhuis researches how climate change affects savannah ecosystems in Africa and how we can protect them.

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

With a large majority of votes, drug researcher Alireza Mashaghi Tabari was chosen Discoverer of the Year 2017 of the Faculty of Science. This was announced by Rector Carel Stolker during the faculty’s New Year's reception on 9 January. Computer scientist Kristian Rietveld became Teacher of the Year…

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?

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.

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

Teaching reading comprehension in secondary education

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.

How to keep 80 students with different backgrounds motivated for 3 hours? Stefano Cucurachi knows how! By incorporating current developments, lively discussions and even some improvisation theatre, this assistant professor managed to become Teacher of the Year 2018. ‘You have to find ways of gaining…

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.

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.

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

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?

We work on individual courses, programs, learning spaces and methods. Both with University faculties and with public & private organisations.

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.

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.

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…

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.

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…

'I am very honored to be nominated for the Teacher of the Year Award,’ says dr. Jan van Rijn. Every autumn he teaches the course Automated Machine Learning, which he set up himself at Leiden University.