Title Promoter Affiliations Abstract "Profiles of university students with reading difficulties in the learning of Spanish as a foreign language Profielen van universiteitsstudenten met leesproblemen bij het leren van Spaans als vreemde taal" "Carmen Fonseca-Mora, Kris Buyse" "Leuven Language Institute (ILT)" "This research is confined to the analysis of the silent reading fluency and its role in the identification of reading profiles with difficulties among a population of adult and university learners who learn Spanish as a foreign language. The objective of this study is to understand how the development of the silent reading fluency —the main activity on expert readers— intervenes with reading comprehension and which is their causal relationship, that is, to a better understanding of the learning process of Spanish as a foreign language and to an identification of profiles of learners with reading comprehension difficulties in higher education.  The main hypothesis of this research work lies in the premise that, in the first year of higher education, a significant number of learners of foreign languages still have difficulties in silent reading fluency, which hampers a good reading comprehension. The source of these difficulties can come, in part, from the transfer of reading sub-skills from L1 to L2 or certain cognitive aspects. The main objective of this study aims to show that understanding the relation of competences in the analysis of silent reading fluency in non-native university learners, both young and adult, could help in the identification of their reading profiles and the elements that have a negative performance in the comprehension of silent read texts. This understanding would assist on the elaboration of educational intervention programs according to their needs. Our group of study will be constituted by European university students who learn Spanish as a second language and hold a level A1+, A2 or B1 according to CEFR (2002)." "Collocations in a Flemish Learner Corpus: an approximation to the concept from a pedagogical perspective and its language teaching implications" "Kris Buyse" "Leuven Language Institute (ILT)" "This thesis proposal is aimed at studying collocations employed by Flemish learners of Spanish as a foreign language (FL). The main purpose is to analyse how Spanish collocations are produced by undergraduate Ll Flemish learners and which collocations they produce accurately or cause them difficulties. I will rely upon a learner corpus created at KU Leuven called Aprescrilov (Aprender a escribir en Lovaina), as a result of the ElektraRed project. The corpus has been compiled at KU Leuven between 2005 and 2011 (Buyse and Gonzalez, 2013) in order to analyse the command and production of collocations by Flemish students. At present, there is a lack of research in Spanish which deals with collocations from these sources. In this way, Learner Corpora also provides an opportunity to continue investigating in fields such as error analysis (EA), which does not base its results on the comparison of two different languages, but focuses on real productions written by L2 learners considering errors a mandatory step on the learning process as a mean to achieve a proper linguistic command in their foreign language (Fernandez, 1997).Moreover, the results obtained are expected to contribute to the creation of new pedagogical material and to provide useful guidelines to deal with collocations in Spanish language teaching (Nesselhauf, 2004, 2005; Perez-Avila, 2006; Cruz, 2012)." "What works for high risk students? Looking for clues to improve their academic outcomes" "Bieke De Fraine" "Educational Effectiveness and Evaluation" "What works for high-risk students? Looking for clues to improve their academic outcomes. Gudrun Vanlaar (Supervisors prof. B. De Fraine & prof. J. Van Damme)Educational research shows that students with a low socioeconomic status (SES), an immigrant background, and/or special educational needs are more vulnerable for academic underachievement. This doctoral project focuses on the question how the gap between high- and low-risk students can be narrowed. We try to gain insight in how to improve classes and schools in such a way that all students, including high-risk students, can benefit from it.Study 1 applied repeated measures multilevel regression models to investigate the effect of class practices that have previously demonstrated to be effective on students’ achievement and learning gains in reading comprehension: discovery learning, cooperative learning, teaching learning strategies, effective class management, well-organised and attractive instruction, and differentiated instruction. Data was retrieved from the Flemish, longitudinal SiBO-project in which about 6000 students were followed from kindergarten till grade 7. Most class practices turned out to have a similar effect for both low- and high-risk fifth graders. However, ‘discovery learning’ and ‘well-organised and attractive instruction’ appeared to be more beneficial for low-risk than for high-risk students. Group composition in terms of social and ethnic background turned out to have no significant effect on learning gains in reading comprehension.Study 2 used the same data and method as Study 1, to test effects on mathematics achievement and learning gains. We investigated whether ‘active learning’, ‘cooperative learning environment’, ‘attractive instruction’, ‘class management’, and ‘structured instruction’ contribute to narrowing the achievement gap between high- and low-risk students, while controlling for student characteristics and socioeconomic class composition. We focus on two groups of high-risk students: low-SES students and foreign-language speaking students. Results indicate that for both high- and low-risk students, mathematics achievement at the end of grade 5 is positively associated with all tested class practices. Concerning the learning gains however, we found that foreign-language speaking students profit even more from ‘active learning and metacognitive training’, and ‘a cooperative learning environment’. No significant interaction effects were found between the students’ SES and the use of class practices.Study 3 tests the impact of teacher and school factors of the Dynamic model of educational effectiveness (DMEE) on mathematics and science achievement and identifies factors with equalising qualities in terms of helping initially low-achieving classes to catch up with their better-achieving peers. Data were retrieved from a large-scale, longitudinal project conducted in 6 European countries (Belgium/Flanders, Cyprus, Germany, Greece, Ireland, and Slovenia). Tests in mathematics and science were administered to all grade 4 students (N=10,742) at the beginning and end of the school year. Two-level regression models were applied. Interaction effects between the factor and the group composition were estimated, while controlling for prior achievement. Our results confirm the importance of most tested teacher factors (except for modelling and qualitative structuring) and all tested school factors of DMEE for effective math and science education. The majority of these factors appear to make an even greater difference for low-achieving student groups.Study 4 uses the same data as Study 3 and investigates the impact of the teacher factors included in the DMEE on student achievement in mathematics, but this time, differential effects were tested applying multilevel structural equation models. Our results provide further validity to the DMEE at classroom level, and suggest that most factors have differential effects for low- and high-achieving classes. We compare the methods used in Study 3 and 4.Study 5 evaluates the effectiveness of segregated special education on math learning by exploiting two matching designs: (1) propensity score matching and (2) many-to-one matching based on the school-track advice at the end of kindergarten. Mathematics achievement in grade 1 and 2 of students who transferred to a special school after kindergarten (age 5-6) is compared to the math achievement of equally at-risk peers who promoted to the first grade in mainstream education. Our results indicate that students who transferred to special education achieved, on average, a lower attainment in mathematics in the following two years, than students equally at risk but following mainstream education." "Project Spanish Federal Research Fund: ""Musical aptitude, reading fluency and intercultural perception among european university students""" "Kris Buyse" "Leuven Language Institute (ILT)" "This research (funding by the Spanish Federal Research Fund (FFI2016-75452-R; Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad. I+D+i Orientada a los Retos de la Sociedad; PI: M Carmen Fonseca Mora (Universidad de Huelva), 85.000€) is confined to the analysis of the silent reading fluency and its role in the identification of reading profiles with difficulties among adult and university learners who learn Spanish as a foreign language in different European countries. The objective of this study is to understand how the development of the silent reading fluency —the main activity on expert readers— intervenes with reading comprehension in general and which is the impact of certain factors, such as musical aptitude and training, as well as the knowledge of and reading comprehension in different languages.This project hosts two doctoral projects at KU Leuven: José Manuel Foncubierta (cotutelle Huelva, thesis defended on 24/9/2020), Helena Legaz (30/11/2017 - 30/11/2021)."