Participants in the ASSESS doctoral school
Doctoral students, supervisors and management council at the doctoral school of ASSESS.
ASSESS doctoral students admitted 2022
Markus Al-Afifi Norberg
My research interest revolves around educators promoting students' intercultural competence (IC), a subject of significant interest as Sweden faces challenges and opportunities in an increasingly multicultural societal context. The dissertation project aims to enhance the contemporary understanding of teaching and assessment practices related to IC, focusing on its practical applications in social studies. By utilising this subject's intercultural potential, social studies teachers can prepare students to participate in a multicultural society characterised by intercultural relations. To promote IC in education, it is essential to understand effective teaching and assessment practices to encourage and evaluate student learning, which this dissertation strives to contribute to.
Erica Aldenius
My research interest is about younger students' opportunities to demonstrate their knowledge and abilities in mathematics in a digital environment. As a first part of my thesis, I study the differences that the two different formats of paper and digital devices can provide. Furthermore, the importance of pre-understanding the assessment format will also be studied, as well as the inclusion opportunities that different formats can provide.
Virginia Beramendi Heine
I am a doctoral student in didactics with a specialisation in social studies at the Department of Education at Uppsala University. My research focuses on international comparisons of citizenship education. I study conceptions of citizenship and different teaching traditions and how these can influence students' views on their own active participation in politics. I am particularly interested in how the concept of citizenship is understood in different countries' curricula and syllabi for the social science school subject and how it is measured and assessed in national and international knowledge surveys.
Anneli Blomqvist
My research interest is in primary school mathematics, particularly focusing on algebra and its relation to functional thinking. Additionally, I'm interested in large-scale assessments and applying qualitative and quantitative methods. Within my PhD studies, I investigate various aspects of algebra knowledge among middle-grade students. This includes functions, relations, regularity, and change, which are components of functional thinking. Data collection involves large-scale assessments such as national tests and TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study). Through analyzing student performance on tasks related to functional thinking, my studies aim to identify patterns in students’ algebraic knowledge and discern different aspects of functional thinking.
Daniel Bolander Blomberg
My research interest concerns school results and mental health for students with autism and ADHD and specifically how this is affected by parental background.
Evgeniia Efimova
Johan Espenberg
My research interest lies in science education, specifically in teaching of content associated with the Nature of Science and validity of knowledge in the natural sciences. The possible effects of such content on subject specific critical thinking are also of interest. My thesis will build on two major parts. A study of data from PISA 2015 aims to find a single measure of the category, epistemic knowledge in science (EK). This category is not separately reported in official data. From there, connections between EK and some data from the student questionary can be examined. The second study of how (and if) epistemic knowledge changes during upper secondary school. The study aims to map the development of students’ EK during upper secondary school and factors related to this.
Zahra Hasani Yourdshahi
My research interests center around teacher and teaching quality, teacher effectiveness, educational equity, and the multifaceted factors influencing student achievement. Utilizing secondary data from International Large Scale Assessments (ILSA), I focus on analyzing the compensetory impact of teachers' instructional practices, professional experience, teachers’ educational backgrounds, and the socio-economic composition of classrooms. Specifically, I aim to discern the impact of these factors on student achievement in science.
Eun Jeong Lee
My dissertation endeavors to delve into the attributes of secondary school teachers in Sweden, specifically in the context of educational reforms. Using Swedish longitudinal teacher register data from 2013 and 2023; I intend to classify the characteristics of these teachers based on their educational experiences and backgrounds and compare them across various subjects, school types, locations, and student profiles. Ultimately, my research seeks to shed light on the correlation between teacher characteristics and student achievements.
Panagiotis Patsis
My research interests revolve around educational equity, measurement, and international large-scale assessments (ILSAs). I focus on the intricate relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and academic performance, exploring disparities across diverse educational contexts. In my thesis, I investigate socioeconomic achievement gaps among students, with Sweden as the primary focus. I aim to understand how societal and educational transformations affect educational equity. By analyzing data from assessments (PISA and TIMSS), employing techniques such as multilevel analysis and latent variable modeling, I seek to uncover underlying mechanisms shaping these inequalities. Ultimately, I strive to contribute insights for evidence-based interventions to enhance equity within education.
Erik Winerö
My research interest concerns how teachers' teaching and assessment practices are affected by digital technology. In my dissertation project, I am studying how generative AI influences teachers' assessment practices.
ASSESS doctoral students admitted 2020
Lena Asp
I am a doctoral student at the Department of Education and Special Education, Gothenburg University. My research examines teachers' pedagogical leadership in the classroom. More specifically, the relationships between teaching quality and students' academic achievement and affective achievement. Teaching quality primarily concerns two dimensions of pedagogical leadership, classroom management and instructional clarity. Classroom management refers to how well the teacher organizes and structures the classroom to create a positive climate that gives the students the opportunity to learn. Instructional clarity refers to how well the teacher provides each student with appropriate instructions, support, and scaffolding, depending on the individual student’s aptitude.
Lena Edander
I am a PhD student in didactics with a focus on Swedish at Uppsala University. My research interests concern in-depth reading comprehension in large-scale reading tests. I am also interested in the relationship between teaching and results in large scale reading tests.
Samantha Ehrlich
I'm interested in researching mathematics assessment, specifically how test questions work together to assess mathematical knowledge. This involves examining different aspects of test questions, such as the mathematical content embedded in them and the cognitive demands required to answer them correctly. My PhD project examines the relationship between question design and difficulty by analysing national and international test data. By analysing this data, I hope to identify patterns between question characteristics and student performance. My aim is to provide insights into the field of mathematics assessment, with implications for the development of more effective and equitable assessment tools that can be used to validly infer mathematical knowledge.
Elpis Grammatikopoulou
My research interests primarily focus on reading literacy, digital and on paper, large-scale international assessments like PIRLS, as well as national exams. My dissertation project delves into the differences between paper-based and digital reading from various perspectives. I utilize PIRLS data from different years for my research. My cumulative dissertation consists of three articles, each approaching the subject from different angles. Specifically, the first article examines the differences between the two modes in 14 different countries, the second article connects achievement with later performance, providing a longitudinal perspective and examining the predictive validity of achievement in these two modes, while the third article investigates the possible presence of a mode effect.
Mari Lindström
My research interests mainly concern teachers' knowledge, teaching practices, and student learning and performance. In my thesis, I use quantitative research methods and large-scale international as well as national assessments/data to investigate hos different teacher characteristics and teaching practices influence student achievment in Swedish middle school/upper primary school.
Tommie Petersson
I am a PhD student in Sociology of Education at Uppsala University. My research interests concern the impact of the expansion of the school market on social differentiation in the school system. For this work, I use the GOLD database at the University of Gothenburg. In addition to the aforementioned quantitatively oriented research, I also have an interest in philosophy didactics.
Deborah Siebecke
My primary research interests include educational equity and differences in cognitive, as well as non-cognitive, student outcomes. Within the scope of my thesis, I focus on a group of resilient students who demonstrate relatively high performance despite coming from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds, placing them at risk for low achievement. My research aims to enhance our understanding of how well-being and academic resilience intersect. To achieve this, I consider various well-being dimensions, including material, social, and psychological aspects, as well as individual and school-level resilience. I plan to conduct three to four studies using data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and Swedish national data.
Anna Soloveva
I am a doctoral student in the sociology of education at Uppsala University and work part-time as a statistician at the Department of Nordic Languages, the Group for National Tests in Swedish and Swedish as a Second Language. In my dissertation project, I am interested in the methodological questions of application of intersectional perspective in quantitative studies, and I apply quantitative intersectional perspective to examine inequalities in education. Specifically, I am interested in inequalities between intersectional groups in school performance and educational choices.
Mattias Vinnberg
My research interest lies in digital interactive mathematics items within summative assessment situations, focusing on the validity of these tasks in assessing students’ mathematical competencies. One of the primary challenges in digital assessment in mathematics concerns the balance between assessing the intended mathematics and students’ technical skills. My dissertation project utilizes both qualitative and quantitative data from mathematics assessments. In a qualitative study, I investigate students’ work with items that incorporate interactive spreadsheet tools. For future quantitative studies, I intend to explore students’ performance on similar items from the PISA 2022 assessment and forthcoming items in national mathematics tests in Sweden.
Supervisors
Mangagement council
Alli Klapp
Göteborgs universitet
alli.klapp@ped.gu.se
Maria Rasmusson
Uppsala universitet
maria.rasmusson@edu.uu.se
Samuel Sollerman
Stockholms universitet
samuel.sollerman@su.se
Lovisa Sumpter
Stockholms universitet
lovisa.sumpter@su.se
Emil Bertilsson
Uppsala universitet
emil.bertilsson@edu.uu.se
Stefan Johansson
Göteborgs universitet
stefan.johansson@gu.se
Other members
Mikael Börjesson
Uppsala universitet
mikael.borjesson@edu.uu.se
Thomas Nygren
Uppsala universitet
thomas.nygren@edu.uu.se