According to student-assistant Daniël van der Weijde of the Language Use and Learning professorship, valuable conclusions can be drawn from the analyses of data regarding this area. He finds the technical setbacks and the sheer volume of the data involved in research to be a real challenge.

“I work at the Language Use and Learning professorship as a student-assistant, and am now doing my Teacher in Training (Leraar in Opleiding, LIO) internship. What fascinates me about this particular theme is the pedagogical vision of ‘knowledge building’ proposed by the Canadian Carl Bereiter. Constantly actively improving knowledge is considered essential for the social progress in various areas and for resolving social problems.”

“Bereiter believes that in this light the fundamental task of education is to help children become familiar with this knowledge creating society. The pedagogy of 'knowledge building' is based on the condition that authentic creative (joint) knowledge building can take place within a ‘regular’ classroom setting. In my daily work in the classroom I try to reflect this through challenging lessons and project assignments.”

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Daniël van der Weijde

Valuable conclusions

“In practice-based research you work with, and develop, authentic and unique data sets that can say a great deal about the progress of interaction, the use of language, argumentative sequences and putting forward proposals. By analysing these, you can draw valuable conclusions, and perhaps work in a targeted fashion on interventions, new research projects or teaching methods.”

“The challenges you face include technical setbacks; the table microphone not working, empty batteries, you name it. The sheer volume of the data sets that you collected during the research means that a huge amount of your time is spent on analysing and transcribing it. That is certainly not the most interesting part of the research.”