I (Renske de Leeuw) was born on the 2nd of May 1987 in Drachten, the Netherlands. After obtaining my HAVO diploma in 2004 at the Bataafse Kamp in Hengelo, I started the Bachelor Speech and Language Therapist at the Hanze University of Applied Sciences in Groningen. During the Bachelor, I became acquainted with Evidence-Based Practice and developed a critical attitude towards how evidence-based practice is implemented in the field of speech and language therapy. During my Bachelor, I attended additional courses in statistics and reading development and problems at the University of Groningen and Radboud University. After obtaining my Bachelor degree (2008), I have worked in different settings as a speech and language therapist, with a focus on reading problems. Because I wanted to do more with research and dyslexia, I enrolled in the Pre-Master Psychology and continued with the Master program Instruction, Learning and Development, both at the University of Twente. In my Master thesis, I studied the effect of the font Dyslexie on the reading performances of students with and without dyslexia. After my Master graduation (2010) I have worked as a speech and language therapist and as a junior researcher on the project “Learning gain and added value in primary education” under the supervision of Dr. Hans Luyten, at the University of Twente.
In 2014, I was appointed as a junior researcher on a two-year project at the Department of Special Needs Education at the University of Groningen, under the supervision of Dr. Anke de Boer. This project was funded by the Dutch Foundation Kinderpostzegels. This project focused on the social participation of students with social-, emotional and behavioural difficulties in the (Dutch) regular primary education system. This project has led to this dissertation under the supervision of Prof. Alexander Minnaert and Dr. Anke de Boer.
Because a good PhD only ends with more questions (and any well-conducted research), I am very motivated to follow up on the results of my dissertation and support teachers and other stakeholders with how they can include students’ perspectives in educational developments.
Currently, I am working part-time as a researcher at the Applied University of Science, Saxion. I have joined the research project that evaluates the effect of the teacher professionalization training: i-Self. This training is designed to provide primary school teachers with knowledge and skills to teach self-regulated learning skills to pupils.
Download my (academic) curriculum vitae here (last updated February 2020).
Photo credits: Annika Eenshuistra