The KU Leuven is the largest university in Belgium. It is a research oriented university which is member of a.o. LERU. Next to research and teaching also ‘services to society’ are key activities of around 1500 professors.
Our Center of Educational Effectiveness and Evaluation which is part of the Research Group Education and Training of the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, has three professors and about 30 researchers, a.o. two post-docs and 12 Ph D students. Our center has been involved in several international projects, a.o. Tempus, ESF and a research project in Central Africa.
One focus of our research is longitudinal studies of students to study effects of schools, teachers and class groups. Also effects of educational systems are studied, mainly based on international achievement databases (PISA, TIMSS and PIRLS). A third part of our core business is research on test development and the methods to link tests (IRT) in the perspective of studying the growth (learning gains) of students. Recently we have developed an automated school performance feedback system to inform schools on their effectiveness (value added).
Within the new project we will constructively participate in all work packages, esp.
– to test and refine our School performance feedback system in a non-Belgian setting so that it can be made applicable in a broader variety of school systems,
– to analyze the TIMSS 2011 and National examinations tests in Serbia and provide over 150 Serbian schools with school performance feedback,
– to prepare and organize a professional development training for the school teams of 20 schools in Flanders, focusing on the improvement of school self evaluation and school functioning (esp. teachers within classes) based on school feedback reports and research findings. This will be done in close cooperation with counselors of the different umbrella organisations of schools (public school system, catholic school system,..).