Renske Bouwer has a multidisciplinary background in Psychology (MSc), Linguistics (PhD) and Educational Sciences (Postdoc). She combines theories from these different fields to improve writing education and the assessment of writing.
During her PhD from 2012-2016 at Utrecht University she developed Tekster, an evidence-based writing program aimed at improving the writing skills of upper elementary students. The effectiveness of this program was tested in two large-scale intervention studies at 52 schools. After her PhD, she obtained a postdoc position at University of Antwerp, in which she studied the merits of an innovative digital tool for comparative judgment: D-PAC. She investigated how this tool can be used by teachers to assess complex competences like writing in a credible way, and how it can be used by students to foster their learning.
Since September 2018 she is Assistent Professor in Educational Sciences at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She coordinates and supervises BA and MA theses. In her current research she investigates how peer and teacher-student interactions can improve students’ writing performance. In particular, her focus is on how peer and teacher feedback can improve the writing process and product.
ICE lab 