Two Teaching fellow grants for the UG

The results of the 2020 round for the Comenius programme have been published. The Comenius is a grant programme for educational innovation projects by the KNAW. UG researchers Oksana Kavatsyuk and Jolien Mouw both have received a Teaching Fellow grant.

The project 'Gender inclusive education in the mathematics classroom' from dr. Oksana Kavatsyuk focuses on exploring how all students regardless of gender could be encouraged to explore their talents to their full potential in the domain of mathematics. "I would like to show that a course like Calculus can be gender inclusive with a number of small changes. Till now a lot of efforts were put by different organizations to increase the enrollment of girls into the STEM study programs, however, the research universities are still behind to take measures to retain female students."

Many pre-service teachers feel they are insufficiently prepared for effectively managing disruptive behaviors, especially when learning is situated in a dynamic setting such as a kindergarten. Moreover, they find it challenging to translate scientific theories on classroom management into every day kindergarten teaching practices. Therefore, the main aim of the project 'Keeping order in a Virtual Kindergarten Classroom' by dr. Jolien Mouw is to develop and evaluate an innovative and interactive Virtual-Reality kindergarten environment in which students of the Academic Teacher Training Program (AOLB) can safely experiment with different classroom management strategies.

The Teaching Academy Groningen will organise a webinar 'Get started with your Comenius grant proposal' for University staff on May 28. This webinar is meant for lecturers who would like to apply for the next Comenius round.