- I am a philosopher, linguist and social scientist who aims to improve education. Being an early adopter of digital te... moreI am a philosopher, linguist and social scientist who aims to improve education. Being an early adopter of digital technology, I am broadly interested in the impact new media have on our everyday lives. I like to think interdisciplinary and to combine sensible theorizing with empirical research while having a keen eye for ways to reform educational practice.
My research focuses on the informal learning practices children and young people engage in online. In my dissertation I examine the changing engagement of youth in the large variety of literacy practices they encounter out-of-school. Its central theme is how uses of old and new media are interwoven, which is based on a broad literacy approach I developed that was inspired by Wittgenstein’s notion of family resemblances. Other research topics I currently work on include preschoolers' oral communicative skills, teachers' use of online social networks, and children's well-being in relation to digital media.edit
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Studies into the way parents mediate their children’s (digital) media use are challenging. A reason for this is that parents are not always aware of what they do and why, as their choices do not necessarily involve rational... more
Studies into the way parents mediate their children’s (digital) media use are challenging. A reason for this is that parents are not always aware of what they do and why, as their choices do not necessarily involve rational decision-making. In the present study we adopted the notion of “tacit knowledge” (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995; Polanyi, 1966) to explore how and why parents of young children mediate digital media use. In-depth interviews were conducted with 24 Dutch parents from 15 families who were selected to represent a range of socioeconomic backgrounds and different family compositions. Through qualitative analysis we first distinguished three mediation styles of “regulation”, “guidance” and “space”. Furthermore, we revealed seven values that drive parental mediation: three core values of “balance”, “freedom” and “protection” that are foundational in the sense that they explain why parents mediate; three orientational values of “qualification”, “Bildung” and “health/fitness” that explain to which end parents mediate; and one additional value of “flexibility” that accounts for parents’ exception-making. Finally, we showed that the most important emotions associated with these values were anger and disapproval (with balance and protection) and love and joy (with orientational values); fear was mentioned occasionally (in relation to protection).
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This article describes an intervention – the MODEL2TALK intervention – that aims to promote young children’s oral communicative competence through productive classroom talk. Productive classroom talk provides children in early childhood... more
This article describes an intervention – the MODEL2TALK intervention – that aims to promote young children’s oral communicative competence through productive classroom talk. Productive classroom talk provides children in early childhood education with many opportunities to talk and think together. Results from a large-scale study show that productive classroom talk has a positive effect on young children’s oral language abilities. This is of great importance, as good oral communicative competence is related to later reading comprehension skills and social acceptance, and mediates learning, thinking, and self-regulation. How to promote productive talk in your classroom? Start by giving children more space to share their ideas, listen to one another, reason, think together, and reflect on their communicative performance. The examples in this article support teachers to adopt productive talk and move towards a classroom culture in which children think and communicate together.
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This paper reports on how teachers, from different cities in Brazil, used groups on Facebook and how communication between teachers and students was affected by using such groups. This study is framed under the Cultural Historical... more
This paper reports on how teachers, from different cities in Brazil, used groups on Facebook and how communication between teachers and students was affected by using such groups. This study is framed under the Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) perspective, and is conceived from a methodological background that invites participants to collaborate during the research. We examined posts from the groups on Facebook from February/2013 to June/2014 by a qualitative approach, including some quantification of part of the data, and analysed responses to a questionnaire for teachers by the end of the research. Our findings suggest the teachers used the groups for different purposes, which lead to an improvement in communication between teachers and students – online and in-classroom – and in students’ engagement in the classrooms.
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How do we teach children to philosophize? To think in a critical, agentive, creative, collaborative, and reflective manner? These are complex questions that are at the heart of the articles within this special issue in general and in Eva... more
How do we teach children to philosophize? To think in a critical, agentive, creative, collaborative, and reflective manner? These are complex questions that are at the heart of the articles within this special issue in general and in Eva Marsal’s contribution in particular. In our commentary we will not discuss what philosophizing with children is (or should be), but instead we will draw upon the notion of productive classroom dialogue, which is an elaboration of Sarah Michaels’ and Cathy O’Connor’s work on productive talk, to reflect on both these general questions and Marsal’s ideas on philosophizing and dialoguing with children in primary school classrooms.
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ABSTRACT This study investigated gender differences in the relationship between oral communicative competence and peer rejection in early childhood education. It was hypothesized that children with poorer oral communicative competence... more
ABSTRACT This study investigated gender differences in the relationship between oral communicative competence and peer rejection in early childhood education. It was hypothesized that children with poorer oral communicative competence would be more often rejected by their peers and that the strength of this relationship would differ for boys and girls. A sample of N = 54 children was tested on the Nijmegen Test for Pragmatics to measure their oral communicative competence, defined as their ability to use language appropriately in a particular situation. Further, a sociometric method was used to measure the level of peer rejection and peer acceptance. No relationship was found between oral communicative competence and peer rejection. However, a positive relationship was observed between oral communicative competence and peer acceptance. Interestingly, this relationship only applied to boys. It is suggested that early childhood education teachers trying to enhance peer acceptance should take the promotion of oral communicative competence into account.
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In this article, the concept of “media lifestyles” is adopted in order to develop a comprehensive approach toward youth engagement in communication media. We explore how 503 Dutch eighth grade students with full access to new technology... more
In this article, the concept of “media lifestyles” is adopted in order to develop a comprehensive approach toward youth engagement in communication media. We explore how 503 Dutch eighth grade students with full access to new technology combine a broad range of media by focusing on their engagement with media while taking various contexts of use into account. Four different media lifestyles of media omnivores, networkers, gamers, and low-frequency users are described. Furthermore, we show how the methodology we used is able to provide more insight into how the distinguished media lifestyles were codetermined by particular media, functions and social contexts. Finally, the implications for the Uses & Gratifications theory are discussed.
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ADHD is a psychiatric disorder characterised by persistent and developmentally inappropriate levels of inattention, impulsivity and hyperactivity. It is known that children with ADHD tend to produce incoherent discourses, e.g. by... more
ADHD is a psychiatric disorder characterised by persistent and developmentally inappropriate levels of inattention, impulsivity and hyperactivity. It is known that children with ADHD tend to produce incoherent discourses, e.g. by narrating events out of sequence. Here the aetiology of ADHD becomes of interest. One prominent theory is that ADHD is an executive function disorder, showing deficiencies of planning. Given the close link between planning, verb tense and discourse coherence postulated in van Lambalgen and Hamm (The proper treatment of events, 2004), we predicted specific deviations in the verb tenses produced by children with ADHD. Here we report on an experiment corroborating these predictions.
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The goal of this dissertation is to examine the changing engagement of youth in the large variety of out-of-school literacy practices, including uses of old and new media. The main focus is on Dutch youth from the lower tracks of... more
The goal of this dissertation is to examine the changing engagement of youth in the large variety of out-of-school literacy practices, including uses of old and new media. The main focus is on Dutch youth from the lower tracks of prevocational secondary education, who often struggle with the literacy demands of the school curriculum. In line with a socio-cultural perspective on literacy this dissertation moves away from a research tradition that approaches literacy as a set of individual reading and writing skills. An alternative way of conceptualizing literacy is proposed in terms of family resemblances, a notion borrowed from the German philosopher Wittgenstein: Literacy activities do not share one common set of features, but throughout activities similarities – great and small – crop up and disappear. From this perspective, which underpins the research presented in this dissertation, literacy is a broad and complex concept that encompasses traditional print-based media, new (digital) media and their various but sometimes interrelated uses.
This is the general introduction to my dissertation Changing Engagement of Youth in Old and New Media Literacy: Patterns, Functions and Meanings (2013). In line with a socio-cultural perspective on literacy the dissertation moves away... more
This is the general introduction to my dissertation Changing Engagement of Youth in Old and New Media Literacy: Patterns, Functions and Meanings (2013). In line with a socio-cultural perspective on literacy the dissertation moves away from a research tradition that approaches literacy as a set of individual reading and writing skills. In the general introduction an alternative way of conceptualizing literacy is proposed in terms of family resemblances, a notion borrowed from the German philosopher Wittgenstein: Literacy activities do not share one common set of features, but throughout activities similarities – great and small – crop up and disappear. From this perspective, which underpins the research presented in this dissertation, literacy is a broad and complex concept that encompasses traditional print-based media, new (digital) media and their various but sometimes interrelated uses. Furthermore, in the general introduction features associated with literacy are discussed, each influenced greatly by new technologies, which have increased the different ways of engaging in literacy. These features form the building blocks of the literacy concept adopted in the research presented throughout the dissertation. Information is also provided as to how Guttman’s Facet Theory was used to implement the definitional framework in research.
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This is a brief summary of my dissertation Changing Engagement of Youth in Old and New Media Literacy: Patterns, Functions and Meanings (2013).
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Het genie is dood. Niet individuen als Bill Gates, Steve Jobs en Mark Zuckerberg veranderen onze wereld, maar de teams van knappe koppen die zij zorgvuldig samenstellen. Hoog tijd voor een herealuatie van de individualistische manier... more
Het genie is dood. Niet individuen als Bill Gates, Steve Jobs en Mark Zuckerberg veranderen onze wereld, maar de teams van knappe koppen die zij zorgvuldig samenstellen. Hoog tijd voor een herealuatie van de individualistische manier waarop digitale media in het onderwijs gebruikt worden.
Belemmeren of bevorderen digitale media de ontwikkeling van kinderen? Daar is nog weinig over bekend. Toch kun je als leerkracht veel leren van de verschillende manieren waarop
ouders omgaan met het digitale mediagebruik van jonge kinderen.
ouders omgaan met het digitale mediagebruik van jonge kinderen.
Tegenwoordig is het in Nederland eerder regel dan uitzondering dat jonge kinderen opgroeien met digitale media. Een urgente vraag is in hoeverre de school mee moet gaan in deze ontwikkelingen of er juist tegenwicht aan moet bieden,... more
Tegenwoordig is het in Nederland eerder regel dan uitzondering dat jonge kinderen opgroeien met digitale media. Een urgente vraag is in hoeverre de school mee moet gaan in deze ontwikkelingen of er juist tegenwicht aan moet bieden,
bijvoorbeeld door middel van traditionele leesbevorderingsprojecten of mediawijsheidtrainingen,
waarin aandacht uitgaat naar het inperken van de tijd die
kinderen achter schermen doorbrengen. In dit artikel leg ik aan de hand van een kwalitatief onderzoek van de VU en de EUR de focus op de mogelijkheid die het onderwijs heeft om
te profiteren van kennis over de manier waarop jonge kinderen buiten school met digitale media omgaan en daarvan leren.
bijvoorbeeld door middel van traditionele leesbevorderingsprojecten of mediawijsheidtrainingen,
waarin aandacht uitgaat naar het inperken van de tijd die
kinderen achter schermen doorbrengen. In dit artikel leg ik aan de hand van een kwalitatief onderzoek van de VU en de EUR de focus op de mogelijkheid die het onderwijs heeft om
te profiteren van kennis over de manier waarop jonge kinderen buiten school met digitale media omgaan en daarvan leren.
Research Interests:
Het debat over de rol die digitale media al dan niet in het onderwijs zouden moeten innemen, wordt gekenmerkt door een tegenstelling tussen oud en nieuw, schrift en beeld, boeken en iPads. In dit artikel willen wij duidelijk maken dat... more
Het debat over de rol die digitale media al dan niet in het onderwijs zouden moeten innemen, wordt gekenmerkt door een tegenstelling tussen oud en nieuw, schrift en beeld, boeken en iPads. In dit artikel willen wij duidelijk maken dat hiermee geen recht wordt gedaan aan de enorme variatie die bestaat in nieuwe media en de wijzen waarop zij functies kunnen vervullen die voorheen sterk met oude media waren geassocieerd. In een longitudinaal onderzoek hebben wij onder jongeren, vooral die van het vmbo, bestudeerd hoe zij buiten school lezen en schrijven in brede zin en wat de onderwijskundige relevantie hiervan is. We lichten drie hoofdbevindingen uit: (1) er bestaat niet zoiets als een ‘Netgeneratie’, (2) jongeren gebruiken liever nieuwe dan oude media, en (3) het onderwijskundige potentieel van nieuwe media blijft onbenut. Jongeren moeten leren hoe zij nieuwe media voor meer dan hun plezier kunnen gebruiken.
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Het lees-en schrijfgedrag van leerlingen in het vmbo is doorgaans een bron van zorg. Lezen en schrijven: ze kunnen het niet, ze willen het niet en ze doen het niet, is het stereotiepe beeld. Maar klopt dat beeld wel? Wat weten we... more
Het lees-en schrijfgedrag van leerlingen in het vmbo is doorgaans een bron van zorg. Lezen en schrijven: ze kunnen het niet, ze willen het niet en ze doen het niet, is het stereotiepe beeld. Maar klopt dat beeld wel? Wat weten we eigenlijk over wat vmbo'ers kunnen, willen en doen? En wat weten we over de vraag hoe je leerlingen zo kunt uitdagen dat ze betere, meer gemotiveerde en actievere lezers en schrijvers worden?
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The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of productive classroom talk and metacommunication on the development of young children’s oral communicative competence. This study can be characterized as a quasi-experimental... more
The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of productive classroom talk and metacommunication on the development of young children’s oral communicative competence. This study can be characterized as a quasi-experimental study with a pre-test-intervention-post-test design. A total of 21 teachers and 469 children participated in this study. 12 teachers were assigned to the intervention condition and participated in a Professional Development Program on productive classroom dialogue. Multilevel analyses of children’s oral communicative competence pre- and posttest scores indicated that productive classroom dialogue has a significant and moderate to large effect on the development of young children’s oral communicative competence. The results of this study seems to indicate that dialogically organized classroom talk might be more beneficial than non-dialogical classroom talk for the development of children’s oral language skills.