PhD Candidate: Assessing Children's Deep Reading Comprehension Processes and Outcomes

The project is a collaboration between the Behavioural Science Institute at Radboud University (BSI ) and the Research and Innovation at Stichting Cito (OK&I ). You will conduct the project partly at Radboud University and partly at Stichting Cito.

The BSI is a multidisciplinary research institute and one of three research institutes in the Faculty of Social Sciences at Radboud University. Our researchers collaborate across the boundaries of psychology, educational science, and communication science. Our mission is to strengthen people through understanding the foundations of human behaviour, by creating synergy between different paradigms and by facilitating craftsmanship, curiosity and connection in academic research.

BSI has seven research programmes covering three major research themes: 1) development and learning, 2) health and mental health, and 3) social processes and communication. BSI conducts fundamental as well as applied/translational research and  has excellent facilities and support for lab and field research.

You will work in BSI's Learning and Plasticity group, whose research programme focuses on learning and development in typical and atypical populations. Intervention studies on individuals with a variety of disorders as well as on those at risk are also conducted to yield a better understanding of the dynamic factors that can prevent or remediate learning problems.

Stichting Cito is a not-for-profit institution whose measurement and monitoring methods enable its clients to obtain optimal information on the knowledge, skills and competences of examinees and test takers. Founded in 1968 by the Dutch government, Cito was one of the pioneering national institutes for educational measurement. Since 2018, Cito has a specialist department dedicated to R&D: the Research and Innovation Department (in Dutch: OK&I - Onderzoek, Kennis en Innovatie). Through innovative research and innovation projects, OKI continuously works on the development of new assessment and monitoring tools for the classroom.

You will work in the Educational Research sub-unit. This sub-unit conducts applied scientific research in the field of educational measurement. Its research usually starts with a question or problem from practice and aims to develop new knowledge for use in the classroom. Innovative measurement is one of its focal points.