Research and education at the Faculty address societal and human behaviour related themes, like the impact of new media on society, health care, urbanisation, human and child development, mental health, inequalities, diversity and social cohesion. The research, carried out in the Faculty's various research institutes, is extensive and innovative and has a strong international focus. The Faculty offers a large number of programmes and courses, some taught in English, at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. 

In the research institute of Child Development and Education (RICDE) at the University of Amsterdam, research is conducted to understand how education contributes to the development of cognitive and social-emotional skills, and to design and test methods that enhance this development.

https://www.uva.nl/en/

I’m an assistant professor at the University of Amsterdam. My research focuses on language and
literacy development and disorders. I’m a board member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the
Dutch Quality Institute for Dyslexia as well as the Dutch Dyslexia Foundation.

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Why knowing more about reading fluency apps matters to you and why did you get involved in the project?

At the research institute of Child Development and Education at the University of Amsterdam we try to understand why literacy acquisition is sometimes successful and sometimes not. Furthermore, on the basis of this knowledge, we aim to develop interventions that prevent or remediate literacy difficulties. Knowing which reading fluency apps can be used and why they are effective is therefore important. This relates both to the repeated practice of reading, as well as evaluating how the gamification part could impact on the experience of the exercise and amount of practice. The significance of being able to deliver quality interventions and assistance for people with dyslexia is also the core of the Scientific Advisory Board and the Dutch Dyslexia Foundation.

 

I’m not a science practitioner myself but hope to contribute to literacy instruction and assistance through my collaboration in A is for App. The cross-linguistic approach as well as the collaboration with (remedial) teachers, schools, literacy experts and game experts is inspiring and will hopefully yield useful outcomes!

Hi everyone,

My name is Vaike Scheijvens, I'm 23 years old and I was born and raised in the small town of Limbricht in the province Limburg.

After successfully completing my speech and language therapy study at Hogeschool Zuyd Heerlen with a Bachelor degree, I have started working part time and I am combining this with the Linguistics Master at VU Amsterdam. My speciality focusses on speech and language impairment, hearing problems and dyslexia. I'm very interested in the learning disorder dyslexia. That's why I am very happy to be doing my internship at the AisforAPP project. Within this programme I will be focusing on a literature study on excisting programmes for reading fluency. In addition to this I will be assisting in the execution of a pilot study with the Squla app and subsequently

mapping the results.

 

With kind regards,

Vaike Scheijvens