More information about Fred Janssen

Fred Janssen is a Full Professor of Science Education. He  completed his Masters in Biology in 1992 (cum laude). In 1999 he received his PhD at the University of Utrecht on the basis of his thesis entitled: Learning Biology by Designing: Exemplified and Tested for Immunology. Since 1999 on he has worked as (biology) teacher educator and researcher at ICLON (the Leiden University Graduate School of Teaching). He is program director of the ICLON research program. He currently supervises  17 PhDs and 4 Postdocs.

His main interest is building an ecological perspective  on teaching repertoire development. In this ecological account  teaching practices in classrooms  can be seen as the result of two filtering processes. The first filter is the classroom setting that creates demands that delimit the number of theoretically possible actions to a feasible opportunity set. The second filter consists of teachers’ goal systems (goal-means hierarchies)  and select what is actually realized. Implemented (inter-)actions in turn influence classroom setting, goal systems and opportunities. Ambitious educational reforms can be supported by perspectives that open up and articulate feasible opportunity sets. They can be used as tools to activate and to build on existing resources and goals, stepwise bridging the gap between the current and desired situation.