Presentations of recent and ongoing education research

Join us for a round of 10-minute research presentations each followed by a 5-minute Q&A, on a variety of relevant and thought-provoking topics.

*Details about each presentation available here: UM Education Research Day 2026 - Research presentations_round1.pdf

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Creative research-communication

by Laura Ogden  (FASoS)

In this hands-on workshop, we will explore creative research-communication practices for sharing the outputs and ideas of scholarship with broader audiences. Drawing from a menu of options including zines, multimodal websites, and exhibitions, we will brainstorm together and develop our own 'blueprints' for research-communication products. You will leave the workshop with a road-plan for turning your blueprint into a reality, including tips on funding and collaborations. No drawing skills or artistic flair are required, just enthusiasm for exploring new ways of sharing your research.

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Making room for the student as subject: Conditions, teaching and research

by Sjoerd Claessens (LAW), Nicole Kornet (LAW) and Nikki van Dijk (LAW), researchers at MILE (Maastricht Institute for Legal Education)

What is education for? Gert Biesta's work offers a framework for addressing this question by distinguishing three domains of educational purpose: qualification, socialisation and subjectification. In our research, we have found this framework to be a valuable starting point because it raises fundamental questions about the nature and purpose of legal education, and in particular about the place of subjectification within it.

Subjectification concerns students coming into their own, as subjects of their own action and judgment, able to take a stance and bear responsibility for it. Unlike knowledge and skills, it cannot be specified in advance, delivered or directly assessed. At most, education can create conditions in which it may occur. Despite its significance as an educational horizon, subjectification remains elusive. Across our projects, we encounter the challenges of creating such conditions from different angles and through different lenses. These challenges are not unique to legal education, and we believe they merit shared exploration.

This interactive session therefore invites colleagues from across UM to work through four connected questions. First, how can we identify the conditions, or spaces, for subjectification in our teaching, and recognise where they are undermined, for instance by tightly aligned outcomes, assessment that rewards the expected answer, or the smoothing away of difficulty? Second, how can we support students in taking up opportunities for judgment and responsibility, particularly when they have learned that success lies in meeting expectations? Third, how can we support teachers in creating and holding such spaces, given that this asks something different of them than transmitting content or facilitating tasks? Fourth, how should we approach research in this field, when the very thing we want to understand resists measurement and may be distorted by attempts to capture it?

We hope the session will generate shared insights, raise new questions and identify possible directions for collaboration across faculties.

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Bridging self-regulated learning research and educational practice

by Felicitas Biwer (FHML), Sina Gottschlich (FHML), Niklas Wenzel (FHML), Louise David (FHML)

Students, teachers, and researchers are warmly invited! 

It is well known that studying effectively is not only essential for students’ academic success, but also for their long-term learning and even well-being. However, despite existing research and interventions, many students continue to struggle to study effectively. In this interactive workshop, we will explore together what challenges keep us from translating scientific insights into practical results for our students. After a short overview of our research, we will break out into small groups. By sharing your perspective and expertise, you will collaborate with other participants to explore specific problems in more depth and begin brainstorming solutions that help bridge the gap between educational research and practice.

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Presentations of recent and ongoing education research

Join us for a round of 10-minute research presentations each followed by a 5-minute Q&A, on a variety of relevant and thought-provoking topics.

*Details about each presentation available here: UM Education Research Day 2026 - Research presentations_round 2.pdf

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PURPOSE, relational pedagogies for transformative learning

by Hans Savelberg (FHML), Diana Dolmans (FHML), Jur Koksma (Radboud UMC Health Academy)

Over the last decades the notion has arisen that extant pedagogies do not fit with societal demands. Looking at post-secondary (MBO-HBO-WO) education, we see that it hardly helps students to develop the agency and attitudes necessary to navigate the systemic interwovenness of today’s societal challenges. Many students feel lost; they learn extensive subject knowledge but lack a sense of purpose and meaning. Although, this mismatch has been acknowledged by educational innovators for many years, the status quo remains unchallenged. 

Current education has been designed for quasi-sequential development of knowledge-based expertise, before applying this expertise. It pivots around correctly answering given questions, primarily replicating knowledge and world view “packets” in the heads of students, rather than education based on a philosophy that postulates, that students have talents and potential, and engages student in what is authentic and important to them. 

We propose a pedagogical re-orientation, that ‘expose students to a transformative learning journey’. Crucial in this is personal development, a sense of purpose and the relation between self, others and the world.   

In this workshop we introduce the concept of purpose-based education and its relation to a transformative learning journey. We invite participants to discuss these ideas, share their Good, Relevant and Interesting Practices (GRIPS) of purpose-based education and distil from these GRIPS design principles for purpose-based education. 

Inquiry from within: Ethics, positionality and the value of researching our own educational practice

by Svenne Groeneweg (UvA)

What happens when the setting you want to research is also the setting in which you teach? Practitioner-led research and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) can offer rich insights into educational practice, but studying our own contexts also raises important ethical, methodological, and practical questions. 

What ethical questions arise when we research our own students, particularly given the power relations involved? How does being both educator and researcher shape how we interpret our findings? And if our findings are closely tied to our local context, how can we share them in ways that are useful to others?

In this interactive workshop, we will explore these questions through discussion and practical examples. We will reflect on how the challenges of researching our own educational contexts can also become opportunities for learning, and may help to build stronger connections between research and practice.

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Co-creating an educational teacher portal

by Raul Pârâu (FSE/EDLAB), Nikolaos Zouros (FSE/EDLAB), Martijn Boussé (FSE), Gaby Lutgens (EDLAB)

How can we help lecturers quickly find the right educational support and expertise without getting lost in an overload of information? During this session, we will share our process and progress in building an online teacher information portal to solve this problem. The portal combines a chatbot and a search feature, offering different ways of navigating educational resources, from quick access to deeper exploration.

During this session we invite you to help shape the portal by:

1. Giving your input about how and where education research can and/or should be included in it;
2. Developing and sharing your ideas for how the portal can support your work as a researcher, teacher and/or student.

You will be among the first ones to test the portal hands-on. Working directly with the chatbot and search tools, you will experience how they support real teaching questions and get a feel for their strengths and limitations. Afterwards we will open the floor for discussions in order to gather your valuable feedback. Your feedback will directly steer the development of the portal. 

Come ready to explore, question and critique!

You can also visit us in the poster gallery during lunch (directly following this workshop) to test the portal even more.

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Yes, I will be joining for lunch and the poster gallery walk

No, I will not be joining for lunch and the poster gallery walk

‘Those disengaged students!’: A collective exploration beyond the surface of (dis)engagement

By Alice Lupascu (FHML), Siem Schippers (RUG), Ulf Ebeling (RUG), and Niklas Wenzel (FHML) 

Everyone is welcome to join, especially students and educators. 

The lack of engagement in higher education is often portrayed as a student problem. But is it really that simple? When engagement becomes an issue, students and educators can easily end up blaming each other. In this 90-minute interactive session, we will take a step back and explore what we actually mean when we talk about student (dis)engagement. 

We will bring together experiences from students, educators, and researchers—including our own experiences and insights from our research—and use interactive exercises to explore different perspectives on (dis)engagement. Together, we will question some of the familiar ways we think and talk about engagement, without looking for someone to blame or a single right answer. 

The aim is to leave with a fresh perspective on student (dis)engagement—and perhaps see our own experiences of learning, teaching, and researching in a different light. 

Bring an open mind and a story, experience, or observation of (dis)engagement in education.  

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Coaching for meaningful reflection

by Niels van der Baan (FHML)

‘We do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience’ (Dewey, 1933). 

But how can we stimulate students’ meaningful reflection and help them transform their experiences into learning? Although reflection is widely considered essential for learning and professional development, stimulating meaningful reflection can be challenging. Simply asking students to reflect does not necessarily result in learning and may even turn reflection into a routine exercise rather than a meaningful process. 

During this interactive workshop, we will explore, based on research, how coaches, mentors, advisors, and teachers can support students in moving beyond superficial reflection. Together, we will examine what meaningful reflection entails, what may hinder it, and how our questions and coaching approaches can make a difference. Participants will apply these insights to practice and leave the workshop with concrete, research-informed strategies to stimulate meaningful reflection. 

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What does it mean to be a professional? Rethinking professionalism across disciplines

by Daniëlle Zijlstra (FHML)

What does it mean to be a professional, and does professionalism need to be taught?

This workshop starts from qualitative research exploring how Health Sciences alumni understand professionalism and how their education prepared them for professional practice. The findings suggest that professionalism goes beyond following rules and meeting formal expectations, involving responsibility, accountability, relationships, judgement and responding to the context of practice.

But what does professionalism mean outside Health Sciences? And should it be explicitly taught as part of a formal curriculum?

In this interactive workshop, we will use findings from the research as a starting point to explore what “professionalism” means across different disciplines. Participants will reflect on the expectations, behaviours and values associated with being a professional in their own field, and consider whether and how these can be developed through education. Together, we will explore different ways of making professionalism visible in curricula, while also questioning what should be formally taught and what may be better learned through authentic practice.

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Bridging the gap between research and teaching - sharing experiences and generating new ideas

by Kai Heidemann (UCM), Oscar van den Wijngaard (EDLAB), Lena Gromotka (EDLAB)

In this session we share examples of ‘bridging work’, ways of creating reciprocity between teaching and learning. Based on research done in the context of EDLAB ‘Mend the Gap’ project (see the presentation earlier today by Kai Heidemann), we present a simple framework based on two dimensions: the effort it takes to do bridging work, and the impact it has on your research. Particularly if you combine your research interest in education with other research responsibilities as well as teaching, this discussion session may provide you with new insights on how to connect those often seemingly competing dots.

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