Sabrina Vandevelde

Former member associated with the research group 'Language, learning, innovation', within the Department of Educational Sciences, Ghent University.

Student tutoring

Self-regulated learning

Although the importance of self-regulated learning is increasing both in research and in practice, the focus within contemporary research remains  on secondary and higher education. In order to meet the demand for more research into self-regulated learning among primary school children, I focused on primary education within my doctoral research. A first goal within my PhD was to develop and validate a questionnaire to map the self-regulated behavior of primary school children (CP-SRLI) obtained by working out a think aloud protocol.

In addition, research shows that self-regulated learning doesn't develop  spontaneously for a substantial group, but that extra support and stimulating are necessary, especially for pupils with a vulnerable educational position. Given the complexity of self-regulated skills, individual guidance can play a major role. Within my PhD I studied student tutoring, a method where personal guidance and support are central. Student tutoring is a valuable method to translate the development of self-regulated learning. Hereby, I followed up the student tutoring program "TutorBabbel", a collaboration between Ghent primary schools and our research group. Within this project, the first Master's students in Pedagogy and Educational Sciences supervise underprivileged native / ethnic minority students from the 5th and 6th grade in small groups during 10 sessions, with a specific focus on self-regulated learning. Within the framework of this project, the package 'My TutorBabbel-book' was developed, which includes both didactic classroom material as learning material for the students and accompanying manual. In addition to investigating the effects of this method, I also focus on the interaction processes between students and pupils.

Publications and conferences