Job description
Are you curious about the promises and challenges of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) in education? Are you fascinated by how secondary school students self-regulate their learning and develop reading comprehension skills? Are you eager to combine learning sciences research with classroom innovation? Then this PhD position may be of interest to you.
Job description
The Erasmus University Rotterdam together with an interdisciplinary team from Utrecht University, Hogeschool Rotterdam, and Vereniging voor Christelijk Voortgezet Onderwijs Rotterdam (CVO) is looking for a PhD researcher in the field of educational sciences, with a focus on GenAI, reading comprehension, feedback, and self-regulated learning (SRL). This 4-year PhD project is situated within a broader research programme on learning, instruction, and educational technology within the team Educational Sciences at Erasmus University Rotterdam. The project is enabled by research funding from the Dutch Knowledge Institute for Education (NKO; former Nationaal Regieorgan Onderwijs, NRO) for the project “AI-Regulate: Using GenAI-based Feedback to Support Reading Comprehension During Self-regulated Learning”. More detailed information is described below.
Project Description: The PhD researcher will investigate how GenAI can be used to support teachers in providing feedback on students’ reading comprehension during SRL in secondary education. The project adopts a participatory and design-oriented approach, involving close collaboration with secondary school teachers.
The project addresses key challenges in education, integrating reading comprehension, self-regulated learning, and GenAI. Reading comprehension is a fundamental skill for academic success and participation in society, yet many secondary school students struggle to reach the required proficiency levels. Research shows that effective reading comprehension relies heavily on students’ self-regulated learning skills, including monitoring and evaluating one's own understanding. High-quality, timely feedback is crucial for fostering these skills. However, providing personalised feedback is demanding and time-consuming, creating challenges for teachers in everyday classroom practice.
GenAI offers promising opportunities to support feedback processes at scale, but its educational use also raises concerns related to accuracy, trustworthiness, and the risk of superficial learning. Moreover, teachers often lack training in how to effectively integrate GenAI into pedagogical practices. Therefore, a key challenge is to understand how secondary school teachers, students, and GenAI can collaboratively engage in the feedback processes that support SRL during reading comprehension, while ensuring responsible and pedagogically sound use of GenAI. The concept of co-regulation of learning provides a valuable framework for examining these interactions and clarifying the roles of the different actors involved.
The research consists of two main phases. In the first phase, the researcher conducts qualitative studies with secondary school teachers to identify needs, challenges, and existing feedback practices, and co-develops pedagogical guidelines and prompt designs for GenAI-based feedback. In the second phase, the researcher conducts a series of empirical studies, including classroom-based research, to examine the effectiveness of GenAI-supported feedback on students’ SRL skills and reading comprehension performance. Rather than developing a single AI tool, the project focuses on equipping teachers with knowledge and skills to work effectively with mainstream GenAI applications.
The PhD researcher designs and implements the research independently, under guidance of the promotor(s)/supervisors Dr. Bjorn de Koning, Dr. Annemarie Neeleman, Dr. Sergey Sosnovsky, and Dr. Jacqueline Wong. This entails the set-up of the research, the selection of methods and theories, data collection, analysis, and output. Given the nature of the project, the researcher is expected to work closely with secondary schools, covering multiple stages of the study, including (co-)designing, monitoring and supporting the partnerships.
You will have the opportunity to follow courses at the Erasmus Graduate School for Social Sciences and the Humanities. This project offers a unique opportunity to contribute to an emerging and socially relevant field at the intersection of education, technology, and learning sciences, while generating both scientific knowledge and practical guidance for schools.