Fien Depaepe

KU Leuven | ku leuven · Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences

Digital games for learning have been introduced as a motivating way for children to learn as they can provide immediate feedback, embed the learning content in an attractive narrative, and adapt item difficulty to learners’ performance in the game. Although studies showed positive benefits of using digital educational games compared to other teachi...

Math anxiety (MA; i.e., feelings of anxiety experienced when being confronted with mathematics) can have negative implications on the mental health and well-being of individuals and is moderately negatively correlated with math achievement. Nevertheless, ambiguity about some aspects related to MA may prevent a fathomed understanding of this systema...

Although digital personalized learning (DPL) is assumed to be beneficial for the student as well as the teacher, the implementation process of DPL tools can be challenging. Therefore, the aim of our study is to scrutinize teachers’ perceptions towards the implementation of DPL in the classroom. A total of 370 teachers from primary and secondary edu...

Historical thinking has gradually become a central goal for history education. Its complexity, however, makes it difficult to foster among students and little is known about the role of students’ epistemological beliefs. At the same time, several history education scholars have argued that historical thinking may not only contribute to disciplinary...

Research Findings: Shared-picture book reading can stimulate children’s mathematical development. Evidence of learning-supportive characteristics in picture books is limited in this domain. A first step is systematically analyzing the occurrence of domain-specific features in publicly available picture books. We analyzed the occurrence of general b...

History teachers’ epistemological beliefs are considered to be greatly influential on their instructional practice and a necessary requirement to foster their students’ historical thinking skills. In examining this relationship, two issues arise. First, adequately capturing teachers’ epistemological beliefs remains a challenge as existing instrumen...

Background/Purpose: Reciprocal Peer Learning is an instructional model characterized by students working in pairs exchanging roles of tutor and tutee (Mosston & Ashworth, 2008). This model has proven to be effective for teaching Basic Life Support (BLS) (Madou & Iserbyt, 2020). Effective student tutoring requires different types of content knowledg...

The home learning environment (HLE) has been considered to contribute to children’s early math and reading development. Previous studies examined the HLE by examining the influence of parent-child math and reading activities on math and reading outcomes, however also parents’ own perceptions of math and reading and their math anxiety (MA) and readi...

Cognitive load plays an important role during learning and working, as it has been linked to well-functioning cognitive processes, performance, burnout and depression. Nonetheless, attempts to assess cognitive load in real-time by means of physiological data have been proven difficult, and interpreting these data remains challenging. The aim of thi...

Due to the increasing digitisation, interest in digital personalised learning (DPL) continues to grow. Many empirical studies on the effect of adaptive tools have used a wide variety of conceptualisations and operationalisations of DPL. This systematic review aims to address the lack of consensus by presenting an analysis of empirical studies on te...

During the last decade, many governments and ed‐tech companies have demonstrated an increased interest in digital personalised learning, which resulted in a variety of often game‐like adaptive learning environments. However, there has been limited attention for the impact of these personalised learning technologies on children's learning efficiency...

Despite the general agreement regarding the importance of stimulating young children’s early mathematical skills, mathematical learning opportunities in preschool are limited. Educational technology (ET) may be an effective tool to address this problem. Taking into account the weaknesses of previous reviews, we conducted a systematic and comprehens...

Computer vision has shown great accomplishments in a wide variety of classification, segmentation and object recognition tasks, but tends to encounter more difficulties when tasks require more contextual assessment. Measuring the engagement of students is an example of such a complex task, as it requires a strong interpretative component. This rese...

Math is fundamental to many situations in everyday life such as managing money, preparing food, or making music. Therefore education aims to learn children and adolescents number and math concepts, to enhance math fluency, and to obtain more advanced mathematics. However, a lot of learners have problems with reaching these goals, or even worse, the...

In today’s complex world, the acquisition of research skills is considered an important goal in education. Consequently, there is a growing body of literature that recognizes the value of well-designed learning environments for effectively supporting the development of this complex set of skills. However, a clear consensus on how these research ski...

More and more higher educational institutions invest in technology-enhanced learning spaces, which raises the question of how these environments can be shaped to be as effective as possible. A specific new learning space is the synchronous hybrid or blended learning environment in which both on-site and remote students can simultaneously attend lea...

Digital personalised learning is on the agenda in national educational policy programmes across the world. In Flanders, (Belgium), it is the central goal of the i-Learn programme. One of the educational challenges of this form of learning is to develop pupils with a sense of ownership over their learning. As part of the i-Learn programme, a user-fr...

For the training of academic skills, digital educational games with integrated adaptivity are promising. Adaptive games are considered superior to non‐adaptive games, because they constantly assess children's performance, and accordingly adapt the difficulty of the tasks corresponding to the children's individual level. However, empirical evidence...

Children differ in various aspects such as prior knowledge, learning pace, socio-economic status, interests etc. It has been argued that when we take these differences into account when we develop learning environments, children will benefit from it in terms of learning outcomes, learning experience, and attitudes towards particular subjects. The e...

Adaptive educational games provide new opportunities to train early numerical skills. However, empirical evidence for the effectiveness of adaptive educational games is scarce. This study investigated the effectiveness of an adaptive game compared to a nonadaptive game in terms of cognitive, noncognitive and efficiency outcomes. In total, 84 childr...

To have insight into cognitive load (CL) during online complex problem solving, this study aimed at measuring CL through physiological data. This study experimentally manipulated intrinsic and extraneous load of exercises in the domain of statistics, resulting in four conditions: high complex with hints, low complex with hints, high complex without...

This paper provides a survey of the research on the relationship between teachers’ professional knowledge and their instructional quality in the domain of mathematics education. First, an overview is provided of the way in which mathematics professional knowledge has been conceptualized. Second, the relation between mathematics teachers’ profession...

The acquisition of research skills is an important goal of secondary education. Still, insights on what learner characteristics stimulate and hamper research skills are lacking. Therefore, this study investigates the relationship between students’ research skills (assessed by means of the Leuven Research Skills Test (LRST) and students’ gender, edu...

This study investigates technology acceptance over time of two specific technologies in a university setting, namely interactive quizzes and screen sharing. This topic is investigated in the framework of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) that includes the perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and behavioural intention as main concepts. Th...

Agency is considered a key concept in historical thinking. Understood in a sociological way, it addresses the question of who has the individual or social potential to act purposefully and to effectuate change in society. Teaching about agency is also assumed to influence civic behaviour, as reflection on the various agents in the past and how they...

Indicate your track Academic research: comprehensive evaluations of recent innovations in learning and student analytics approaches. 1 Purpose Increasing numbers of universities provide videos to their students. Analyzing video watching patterns provides an unique opportunity to understand how students learn with multimedia. Prior studies have indi...

This article encompasses a systematic review of the research on ICT-based learning environments for metacognitively oriented K-12 mathematics education. This review begins with a brief overview of the research on metacognition and mathematics education and on ICT and mathematics education. Based on a systematic screening of the databases Web of Sci...

Teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) importantly contributes to instructional quality and student outcomes. We aimed to complement the limited insights into preservice preschool teachers’ PCK, and its association with opportunities to learn (OTL), during teacher training. We offered 162 first-to-final-year preservice preschool teachers fro...

To deal with the current need for flexible learning trajectories giving access to a more diverse group of learners, synchronous hybrid virtual classrooms have been designed to connect both on-site students and remote students during synchronous teaching. Given synchronous blended learning is relatively new, there are only few studies that have inve...

Research presented at the 2019 AIESEP conference in New York, USA. The presentation showcases observational research on teaching behavior and student learning following a blended professional development workshop on the topic 'Basic Life Support'.

In today’s complex world, the acquisition of research skills is considered an important goal in (upper secondary) education. Consequently, there is a growing body of literature that recognises the value of well-designed (online) learning environments for effectively supporting the development of this complex set of skills. However, a clear consensu...

Based on current societal transitions and in the context of lifelong learning, both upper secondary education, higher education and vocational training are invited to think about how to enable people, at any stage of their life, to take part in stimulating learning experiences. The expectancy to be present at one core location is getting more and m...

Online courses are becoming ubiquitous and increasingly tend to use authentic learning tasks as the driving force for teaching and learning. Nevertheless, designing online courses that incorporate real– world tasks is more challenging as these problems require more cognitive processes (van Merriënboer Sluijsmans, 2009). This phenomenon can be expla...

Cognitive load theory is one of the most influential theoretical explanations of cognitive processing during learning. Despite its success, attempts to assess cognitive load during learning have proven difficult. Therefore, in the current study, students’ self-reported cognitive load after the problem- solving process has been combined with measure...

This exploratory study challenges the current practices in cognitive load measurement by using multichannel data to investigate cognitive load affordances during online complex problem solving. Moreover, it is an attempt to investigate how cognitive load is related to strategy use. Accordingly, in the current study a well- and an ill-structured pro...

It is increasingly relevant that online learning environments reflect the complexity of the real life and deal with authentic, complex tasks. Carrying out complex learning tasks requires students to actively engage in different problem-solving skills. Therefore, it is important that learning environments are designed in a way that complex learning...

According to (inter)national policy and curriculum documents, the acquisition of research skills is an important objective of secondary education. However, the conceptualization and hence the operationalization of this concept seems ambiguous. Furthermore, no test exists to assess students’ proficiency in (a broad range of) research skills in a 11t...

German pre-service teacher education aims to foster the concurrent formation of content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and pedagogical content knowledge. Accordingly, the coordination, sequencing, and prioritization of learning opportunities for the three areas of professional knowledge represent vital issues of the organization of teacher educa...

Equipping students with scientific reasoning skills (SRS) is an important mission of twenty-first-century education and part of the national curriculum in Flemish secondary schools. Therefore, we need to gain a better understanding of ways in which the development of these skills can be promoted. To date, empirical research on learning environments...

The transition from natural to rational numbers is difficult for most elementary school children. A major cause for these difficulties is assumed to be the “conceptual change” they need to undergo in order to see that several natural number properties do not apply to rational numbers. To appropriately handle pupils’ difficulties, teachers need well...

The study investigates the explicit and integrated presentation of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), pedagogical knowledge (PK), and content knowledge (CK) in teacher education. We compare learning environments to study whether only presenting PK and CK is sufficient for PCK development, whether only presenting PCK is sufficient for PK and CK de...

Integrated Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education is an emerging approach to improve students’ achievement and interest in STEM disciplines. However, the implementation of integrated STEM education depends strongly on teachers’ competence, which entails, among others, teachers’ attitudes. Nonetheless, not much is known ab...

Given the growing use of online learning environments in higher education, it is important to further unravel how students’ use is influenced by their perceptions towards these learning environments. This study includes the perceived quality of the instructional design based on the First Principles of Instruction of Merrill and students’ acceptance...

More and more universities invest in technology-enhanced learning which raises the question of how these environments need to be shaped. A specific type are synchronous hybrid learning environments in which face-to-face and remote students receive simultaneous and synchronous instruction. These new settings ask for a redefinition of the instruction...

The Need for STEM Professionals We are increasingly exposed to complex societal and technological problems. Qualified Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) professionals are needed to solve these problems and cope with contemporary demands such as sustainable energy and efficient healthcare [1]. It is not surprising then that the...

A promising approach to increase students’ motivation for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is integrated STEM education (iSTEM). This is an instructional approach that emphasizes the deeper connections between the STEM disciplines by involving students in design challenges centered around real-world problems. However, the su...

The shortage of graduates in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), has led to numerous attempts to increase students’ interest in STEM. One emerging approach that has the potential to improve students’ motivation for STEM is integrated STEM education. Nonetheless, the implementation of this new instructional strategy is not strai...

This paper uses structural equation modelling (SEM) to examine the influence of teachers' attitudes and school context on reported instructional practices in integrated STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). Instead of using an overall measure for integrated STEM, five specific characteristics (integration, problem-centered, inqui...

Research has revealed that the design of online learning environments can influence students’ use and performance. In this study, an online learning environment for learning French as a foreign language was developed in line with the four component instructional design (4C/ID) model. While the 4C/ID-model is a well-established instructional design...

Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) is an important predictor of educational quality. PCK develops from various sources, such as teaching experience. Studies investigating the effects of teaching experience on PCK development mainly focus on the question whether experienced teachers differ from novices in the amount of PCK. In a mixed methods study...

The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) is regularly used to investigate students’ acceptance of virtual learning environments and the impact on students’ intention to use. Past TAM studies barely investigated students’ actual use of virtual learning environments, neither how actual use relates to their performance in an ecological valid educational...

Teachers’ professional competence is composed of cognitive (professional knowledge) and affective (professional beliefs) components. These components are generally assumed to be related and to impact instructional practice. However, studies simultaneously relating cognitive and affective components to instructional practice are scarce. The present...

Omwille van de sterke invloed van professionele kennis van leraren op hun onderwijskwaliteit en op de leerresultaten van hun leerlingen is het belangrijk dat de lerarenopleiding optimaal inzet op de ontwikkeling van professionele kennis bij toekomstige leraren. Het is echter onduidelijk hoe de lerarenopleiding zo goed mogelijk kan bijdragen aan de...

De wereldwijde trend naar een meer geïntegreerde benadering van schoolse vakken, is er één die ook Vlaanderen niet aan zich wil laten voorbijgaan. Zo wilden we met het initiatief STEM@school onderzoeken op welke manier de STEM-disciplines (Science, Technology, Engineering en Mathematics, de zogenaamde bètavakken) geïntegreerd kunnen worden aangebra...

An important goal of teacher education (TE) is to improve pre-service teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), pedagogical knowledge (PK) and content knowledge (CK). It is not always clear what kind of opportunities to learn (OTL) in TE contribute to pre-service teachers’ knowledge development. We compared different cohorts (N = 360) in TE, a...

This study examines the effects of an online learning environment on preservice teachers' pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), content knowledge (CK) (related to French in primary teacher education), and pedagogical knowledge (PK) in a quasi-experimental design. More specifically, the following research question is addressed: Is a systematically de...

Since the early nineteenth century, western governments have expected history education to play a vital role in the formation of a national identity and the pursuit of national cohesion, by fostering shared knowledge and a shared (master)narrative of the national past. This article reports on a qualitative study that examines which narratives young...

Working with sources in secondary school history education has become a common practice over the last few decades. However, researchers have concluded that teaching practices relating to the educational use of sources cause difficulties. Teachers often only examine sources for/in relation to their content, and tend to ignore author and context info...

In this systematic review, 17 articles were analyzed focusing on three research questions: (1) How is pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) conceptualized in empirical research on foreign and second language (FL/L2) education? (2) How is PCK studied in empirical research on FL/L2 education? (3) What are the main conclusions of empirical research on F...

Over the past 25 years, PCK has become widely accepted as a useful construct in understanding the unique nature and development of teachers’ knowledge, and PCK research in the field of teacher education has rapidly accumulated. Yet while there is consensus in the literature about the importance of the construct in bringing together specific types o...

This article first describes the nature of mathematics as an intellectual domain and how several general theoretical perspectives in educational psychology as well as mathematics-specific theories have influenced and still influence research on mathematics education. Subsequently, we review the current research-based views on (1) mathematical compe...