Jan Elen
Biographic Data
| ID | 1500950 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jan Elen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jan |
| FAMILY NAME | Elen |
| SIGNATURE | ELEN J |
| AFFILIATIONS | KU Leuven |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1611-5075 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 29 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 23 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Investigating Students Perceptions of the Teacher
Teaching–learning environments have been widely developed across the globe to enhance student learning and academic achievement. While large-scale international surveys are commonly used to assess students’ perceptions of these environments, there remains a notable lack of instruments specifically designed to measure such perceptions at the classroom level, particularly within the Congolese context. In the initial phase of this research, an impor…
Approaches to educational curation
As the use of digital and open educational resources becomes more prominent in higher education, lecturers are increasingly expected to curate resources in pedagogically meaningful and contextually relevant ways. However, little is known about how this is done in practice. Through interviews with twenty-three lecturers at a Dutch University of Applied Sciences, this study investigates how lecturers approach educational curation. Six core curation…
Education and technology
Picturing’ instruction
Especially in higher education – but true for any setting – what students do within a learning environment determines their learning outcomes. Given that they regulate their own learning, students do not always act in accordance with the instructions and intentions of the designed learning environment, which in turn has implications for their learning and achievement. To better understand this phenomenon, a variety of research examined factors th…
Tinkering the Teacher–Technology Nexus
Teacher-driven personalisation can be challenging to facilitate, especially in large heterogeneous classes and during demanding courses. Because of the growing digitalisation, more possibilities arise towards technology-driven personalisation. Nonetheless, little is known about how teachers interact with or implement digital personalised learning (DPL) tools in the classroom. This study explores two research questions: (RQ1) what personalisation …
Fostering critical thinking
Critical thinking is a recurrent educational ambition. At the same time, it is not self‐evident how that ambition can be realised. This is partly due to the different perspectives from which Critical Thinking can be approached. The literature on critical thinking is extensive and diverse, different meanings and aspects of critical thinking have been explored. However, there is agreement among several researchers that critical thinking entails bot…
Fostering students’ motivation towards learning research skills
A structural equation model for determinants of instructors’ educational ICT use in higher education in developing countries
The Charm or Chasm of Digital Personalized Learning in Education
Context and agency
Critical thinking in electricity and magnetism
Critical thinking is one of the most desirable outcomes of education, yet it is often not well defined in curricula. Additionally, there are open questions concerning the domain specificity of critical thinking. In this work, we present two studies aimed at secondary education. Starting from Halpern’s conceptualisation of critical thinking we developed a test for assessing critical thinking within the domain of physics (more specifically electric…
An overview of 25 years of research on digital personalised learning in primary and secondary education
“Instructional disobedience”
Promoting the development of teacher professional knowledge
Student Academic Performance
The nature of motivation and learning strategy use is vital to improving student learning outcomes. This study was intended to explore the motivational beliefs and learning strategy use by Liberian junior and senior high school students in connection with their academic performance. It also solicited students' self-reports about presumed factors hindering their learning. Utilizing a cross-sectional quantitative research design, 323 participants t…
Teachers' general and contextualised research conceptions
The integration of research into teaching is a new and important focus in teaching-intensive institutions in higher education. Given the paucity of empirical insight into the research–teaching relationship in teaching-intensive institutions, teachers' research conceptions are studied as a first step in understanding the research–teaching relationship. In particular, teachers' general conceptions of what attributes constitute research and the cont…
Time for action! ICT Integration in Formal Education
Developing Pedagogical Content Knowledge
Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) is generally accepted as positively impacting teaching quality and student learning. Therefore, research on PCK development in (prospective) teachers is highly relevant. Based on a search in three databases (ERIC, PsycInfo, and Web of Science), a systematic review is conducted on intervention studies aiming at PCK development. The research questions are threefold: (1) How are the studies designed? (2) How are t…
Handbook of Research on Educational Communications and Technology
Interactive Whiteboards in Mathematics Teaching
An interactive whiteboard (IWB) is a relatively new tool that provides interesting affordances in the classroom environment, such as multiple visualization and multimedia presentation and ability for movement and animation. These affordances make IWBs an innovative tool with high potential for mathematics instructional environments. IWBs can be used to focus on the development of specific mathematical concepts and to improve mathematical knowledg…
The Assessment of Critical Thinking Critically Assessed in Higher Education
Although critical thinking (CT) is generally acknowledged as an important aim of higher education, no validated instrument to assess CT in Dutch is available. Moreover, most instruments are validated on a broad sample with people of diverse educational backgrounds. This possibly hampers the reliability of assessing effects of instructional interventions within educational programmes, where diversity is less. This study investigates the psychometr…
Task complexity, student perceptions of vocabulary learning in EFL, and task performance
Background. The study deepened our understanding of how students' self-efficacy beliefs contribute to the context of teaching English as a foreign language in the framework of cognitive mediational paradigm at a fine-tuned task-specific level.Aim. The aim was to examine the relationship among task complexity, self-efficacy beliefs, domain-related prior knowledge, learning strategy use, and task performance as they were applied to English vocabula…
Disentangling Teaching and Summative Assessment in Higher Education? Pros and Cons from Students’ Perspectives
The impact of the examiner on students' perspectives on learning and assessment is investigated. A disentangling of support and evaluation roles was implemented for two courses. The lecturer did not have the responsibility for the summative evaluation. Instead, this was the task of an examiner. Students' conceptions of the disentangling were investigated by means of focus groups (N = 21) before and open-ended questionnaires (N = 50 and N = 18) af…
Online Measurement Perspectives for Students’ Strategy Use
The current study investigates whether students’ tool use in a Content Management Systems (CMSs) for example, blackboard, WebCT, relates to students’ strategy use within a CMS-supported course. In this way, the study strives to explain the tool use differences, and furthermore, it strives to find (online) behavioral indications for students’ strategy use. Data were collected within a first-year undergraduate course “Learning & Instruction”. Stude…
Effects of a school reform on longitudinal stability of students’ preferences with regard to education
Background . Students’ perspective on education is of crucial importance for its effectivity, but students’ opinions are seldom acknowledged by teachers and designers. Student participation in the educational design process could be a suitable tool to better take students’ preferences into account. However, for effective participatory design, it is necessary to know whether students have stable preferences for the design of their education. Chang…
The 'research-teaching nexus' and 'education through research
This article presents and discusses the results of a literature review that was conducted in order to understand ambivalences observed in reflections on the research–teaching nexus. As a result of this literature review, it is possible to attribute these ambivalences to the mixed use of two approaches: on the one hand, a functional approach that regards research as a tool in the learning environment in order to develop competencies that are funct…
Developing Pedagogical Content Knowledge
Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) is generally accepted as positively impacting teaching quality and student learning. Therefore, research on PCK development in (prospective) teachers is highly relevant. Based on a search in three databases (ERIC, PsycInfo, and Web of Science), a systematic review is conducted on intervention studies aiming at PCK development. The research questions are threefold: (1) How are the studies designed? (2) How are t…
Student Academic Performance
The nature of motivation and learning strategy use is vital to improving student learning outcomes. This study was intended to explore the motivational beliefs and learning strategy use by Liberian junior and senior high school students in connection with their academic performance. It also solicited students' self-reports about presumed factors hindering their learning. Utilizing a cross-sectional quantitative research design, 323 participants t…
The Charm or Chasm of Digital Personalized Learning in Education
Promoting the development of teacher professional knowledge
Task complexity, student perceptions of vocabulary learning in EFL, and task performance
Background. The study deepened our understanding of how students' self-efficacy beliefs contribute to the context of teaching English as a foreign language in the framework of cognitive mediational paradigm at a fine-tuned task-specific level.Aim. The aim was to examine the relationship among task complexity, self-efficacy beliefs, domain-related prior knowledge, learning strategy use, and task performance as they were applied to English vocabula…
Investigating the myth of the relationship between teaching and research in higher education
The 'research-teaching nexus' and 'education through research
This article presents and discusses the results of a literature review that was conducted in order to understand ambivalences observed in reflections on the research–teaching nexus. As a result of this literature review, it is possible to attribute these ambivalences to the mixed use of two approaches: on the one hand, a functional approach that regards research as a tool in the learning environment in order to develop competencies that are funct…
Task card instruction
In physical education, task cards are often used in student-centred learning models. Consequently, a better understanding of how to deliver effective instructions by means of task cards would make a contribution to the literature. In this study, 80 right-handed university students in kinesiology were randomized across three experimental conditions and a control group to learn a forehand groundstroke in tennis. Experimental settings differed in th…
Disentangling instructional roles
While in some higher education contexts a separation of teaching and summative assessment is assumed to be self-evident, in other contexts the opposite is regarded to be obvious. In this article the different arguments supporting either position are analyzed. Based on a systematic literature review, arguments for and against are classified at the micro-, meso- and macro-level. Articles specifically discuss the way in which making use of an extern…
Disentangling Teaching and Summative Assessment in Higher Education? Pros and Cons from Students’ Perspectives
The impact of the examiner on students' perspectives on learning and assessment is investigated. A disentangling of support and evaluation roles was implemented for two courses. The lecturer did not have the responsibility for the summative evaluation. Instead, this was the task of an examiner. Students' conceptions of the disentangling were investigated by means of focus groups (N = 21) before and open-ended questionnaires (N = 50 and N = 18) af…
Online Measurement Perspectives for Students’ Strategy Use
The current study investigates whether students’ tool use in a Content Management Systems (CMSs) for example, blackboard, WebCT, relates to students’ strategy use within a CMS-supported course. In this way, the study strives to explain the tool use differences, and furthermore, it strives to find (online) behavioral indications for students’ strategy use. Data were collected within a first-year undergraduate course “Learning & Instruction”. Stude…
Effects of a school reform on longitudinal stability of students’ preferences with regard to education
Background . Students’ perspective on education is of crucial importance for its effectivity, but students’ opinions are seldom acknowledged by teachers and designers. Student participation in the educational design process could be a suitable tool to better take students’ preferences into account. However, for effective participatory design, it is necessary to know whether students have stable preferences for the design of their education. Chang…
The Assessment of Critical Thinking Critically Assessed in Higher Education
Although critical thinking (CT) is generally acknowledged as an important aim of higher education, no validated instrument to assess CT in Dutch is available. Moreover, most instruments are validated on a broad sample with people of diverse educational backgrounds. This possibly hampers the reliability of assessing effects of instructional interventions within educational programmes, where diversity is less. This study investigates the psychometr…
Task complexity, student perceptions of vocabulary learning in EFL, and task performance
Background. The study deepened our understanding of how students' self-efficacy beliefs contribute to the context of teaching English as a foreign language in the framework of cognitive mediational paradigm at a fine-tuned task-specific level.Aim. The aim was to examine the relationship among task complexity, self-efficacy beliefs, domain-related prior knowledge, learning strategy use, and task performance as they were applied to English vocabula…
Handbook of Research on Educational Communications and Technology
Interactive Whiteboards in Mathematics Teaching
An interactive whiteboard (IWB) is a relatively new tool that provides interesting affordances in the classroom environment, such as multiple visualization and multimedia presentation and ability for movement and animation. These affordances make IWBs an innovative tool with high potential for mathematics instructional environments. IWBs can be used to focus on the development of specific mathematical concepts and to improve mathematical knowledg…
Time for action! ICT Integration in Formal Education
Developing Pedagogical Content Knowledge
Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) is generally accepted as positively impacting teaching quality and student learning. Therefore, research on PCK development in (prospective) teachers is highly relevant. Based on a search in three databases (ERIC, PsycInfo, and Web of Science), a systematic review is conducted on intervention studies aiming at PCK development. The research questions are threefold: (1) How are the studies designed? (2) How are t…
Teachers' general and contextualised research conceptions
The integration of research into teaching is a new and important focus in teaching-intensive institutions in higher education. Given the paucity of empirical insight into the research–teaching relationship in teaching-intensive institutions, teachers' research conceptions are studied as a first step in understanding the research–teaching relationship. In particular, teachers' general conceptions of what attributes constitute research and the cont…
Student Academic Performance
The nature of motivation and learning strategy use is vital to improving student learning outcomes. This study was intended to explore the motivational beliefs and learning strategy use by Liberian junior and senior high school students in connection with their academic performance. It also solicited students' self-reports about presumed factors hindering their learning. Utilizing a cross-sectional quantitative research design, 323 participants t…
Promoting the development of teacher professional knowledge
“Instructional disobedience”
Context and agency
Critical thinking in electricity and magnetism
Critical thinking is one of the most desirable outcomes of education, yet it is often not well defined in curricula. Additionally, there are open questions concerning the domain specificity of critical thinking. In this work, we present two studies aimed at secondary education. Starting from Halpern’s conceptualisation of critical thinking we developed a test for assessing critical thinking within the domain of physics (more specifically electric…
An overview of 25 years of research on digital personalised learning in primary and secondary education
A structural equation model for determinants of instructors’ educational ICT use in higher education in developing countries
The Charm or Chasm of Digital Personalized Learning in Education
Tinkering the Teacher–Technology Nexus
Teacher-driven personalisation can be challenging to facilitate, especially in large heterogeneous classes and during demanding courses. Because of the growing digitalisation, more possibilities arise towards technology-driven personalisation. Nonetheless, little is known about how teachers interact with or implement digital personalised learning (DPL) tools in the classroom. This study explores two research questions: (RQ1) what personalisation …
Fostering critical thinking
Critical thinking is a recurrent educational ambition. At the same time, it is not self‐evident how that ambition can be realised. This is partly due to the different perspectives from which Critical Thinking can be approached. The literature on critical thinking is extensive and diverse, different meanings and aspects of critical thinking have been explored. However, there is agreement among several researchers that critical thinking entails bot…
Fostering students’ motivation towards learning research skills
Psychology (23 works) · Mathematics education (20 works) · Computer Science (17 works) · Pedagogy (16 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Evaluation of Teaching Practices (8 works) · Online and Blended Learning (7 works) · Educational technology (6 works) · Epistemology (6 works) · Higher education (6 works)