On 2 April 2026, Marloes Vreekamp, supervised by Piety Runhaar, Judith Gulikers and Perry den Brok, defended her thesis Unravelling teacher development. Exploring the mechanisms, conditions, and continuity of teacher learning in pedagogical development programmes in higher education at Wageningen University & Research.
In higher education, lecturers are expected to continuously improve their teaching and adapt to changing educational requirements. To support and recognise these efforts, universities offer teacher professional development programmes (PDPs), such as the Basiskwalificatie Onderwijs (BKO) in the Netherlands. This doctoral research, financed by 4TU.CEE, investigated teachers’ learning during these programmes and identified which programme characteristics are associated with different types of learning outcomes.
The thesis comprises several sub-studies, including a literature review, a large-scale questionnaire survey and in-depth longitudinal case studies using various forms of data collection, ranging from interviews to visual methods such as drawings. Together, the results provide a rich picture of how teachers’ learning unfolds during PDPs. They demonstrate how different programme characteristics and contextual factors influence teacher learning and stimulate diverse outcomes (e.g. knowledge, vision, practice and impact on students). Importantly, this research demonstrates that PDPs can significantly improve the quality of teaching. Learning often begins with small changes, which in many cases are sustained over time and lead to lasting improvement.
Do you want to discuss teacher development in higher education? Email Marloes Vreekamp at marloes.vreekamp@wur.nl
Find the project on the Innovation Map here: Unravelling teacher development