At a technical university, thousands of students are welcomed every year into engineering education programs. The transition from high school to university is an exciting milestone, but it also presents significant academic, social, and personal challenges. The team is interested in how the university best supports students during this critical period and what successful transitioning actually embodies.
In this postdoctoral project, you will investigate student success from an integrated perspective, considering study progress, well-being, and competency development as interconnected factors. Through design-based research, you will develop, implement, and evaluate innovative approaches that help students thrive during their transition to higher education.
An education academy has recognized student transition as a key theme within an innovation program for engineering education. This project seeks to identify factors that contribute to a successful transition and explore evidence-based practices that support it.
What you do
- Conceptualize what a ‘successful transition’ to higher education entails.
- Identify key factors influencing student success.
- Analyze and evaluate evidence-based practices that support student transition.
- Design and evaluate new practices that support student transition.
You will work as part of a team focused on transition, consisting of 20 members from various faculties and educational services of the university. The supervision team will consist of three staff members. You will be working in a dynamic team with scientific and educational staff, another postdoc and a PhD candidate for this project, supported by the education academy.
The education academy is a network for and by lecturers with the mission to collaboratively enhance engineering education and drive education innovations across faculty boundaries.
While the chosen candidate will work in the transition team, they will be appointed to a section for science and engineering education, which is part of a department within the faculty of applied sciences. This will create the opportunity to discuss your research with colleagues and exchange ideas on science and engineering education. The section for science and engineering education is an academic group that conducts education, research, and outreach in the field of STEM education.
The section investigates science and engineering education across primary, secondary, and tertiary levels with a focus on pedagogical approaches of monodisciplinary science subjects and more interdisciplinary forms of teaching and learning.
What they ask
- A PhD degree in one of the social sciences such as Educational Studies or Cognitive Psychology, with a strong interest in engineering and engineering education.
- Experience with educational design-based research is a plus.
- Skills to organize the research work in consultation with a multidisciplinary team; ability to work through ambiguities, inconsistencies, and uncertainties that come when interacting with multiple stakeholders with different interests and values.
- Acquaintance with the secondary and higher educational system, with interest in the Dutch system, is a plus.
How to apply
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