Healthcare professionals are offered a variety of continuous professional development initiatives to adequately prepare them for a variety of teaching roles, such as formal workshops. In addition, coaching at the workplace is often included to promote the application of knowledge about teaching in a variety of contexts aimed at preparing teachers to adapt their teaching to novel, ambiguous, unknown, and complex situations. In other words, faculty development is aimed at advancing their routine and adaptive expertise. But, how should we design professional development activities aimed at expanding adaptive expertise and encourage them to be creative and able to respond to novel situations?

The PhD position that we offer provides opportunities to explore and investigate this challenge. Together with a team of experienced supervisors from the School of Health Professions Education and the Task Forces within the Department of Educational Development and Research, you will have freedom to explore this topic and define an innovation and research project leading to four international peer reviewed publications. An Educational Design Research approach/Design Based Research approach will be used, consisting of three phases, analysis and exploration, design and construction, and evaluation and reflection. Both the stakeholder’s practical perspective as well as theoretical perspectives will be explored in the different studies.

We are looking for a candidate with a (research) master of science (MSc) in education, psychology, the health or any related domain, with an interest in practice-oriented educational research, and a team-player with strong communication skills. Being creative, flexible, and independent and having any experience with qualitative research as well as the ability to speak and write Dutch is an advantage.

Fixed-term contract: 1+3 (4 total) or 1+4 years (5 total).

We offer a position for 4 years of 1.0 FTE or 5 years of 0.8 FTE.
The first year will be a probation period, after a positive assessment the position will be extended for another 3 years (at 1.0 FTE) or 4 years (at 0.8FTE).

Your salary will be € 2,541 gross per month in the first year up to € 3,247 gross per month in the fourth year according to the PhD-candidate salary scale (with full-time appointment). An 8% holiday and an 8.3% year-end allowance is also provided.

In addition to good primary employment conditions, UM also offers an attractive package of secondary employment conditions.
Each year an evaluation will take place.

The terms of employment of Maastricht University are set out in the Collective Labour Agreement of Dutch Universities (CAO). Furthermore, local UM provisions also apply. For more information look at the website www.maastrichtuniversity.nl > About UM > Working at UM.

Maastricht University

Maastricht University is renowned for its unique, innovative, problem-based learning system, which is characterized by a small-scale and student-oriented approach. Research at UM is characterized by a multidisciplinary and thematic approach, and is concentrated in research institutes and schools. Maastricht University has around 22,000 students and about 5,000 employees. Reflecting the university's strong international profile, a fair amount of both students and staff are from abroad. The university hosts 6 faculties: Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences, Faculty of Law, School of Business and Economics, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience. 
For more information, visit www.maastrichtuniversity.nl.

School of Health Professions Education (SHE)
The School of Health Professions Education (SHE) is a graduate school for research, education and innovation in health professions education. SHE’s ambitions are captured in our vision: excellent healthcare requires evidence-informed models for the education of future and current healthcare professionals.

https://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/research/school-health-professions-education-0

Department of Educational Development and Research
This department supports innovation and research of bachelor’s, master’s and postgraduate training programs within the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences (FHML), Maastricht University in various domains, such as instruction and e-learning, assessment, faculty development, and evaluation or quality improvement.

https://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/research/educational-development-research