The research will be carried out within the research unit Education, Culture and Society (ECS) of the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences at KU Leuven. ECS studies upbringing, education and formation as historically, socially and culturally embedded phenomena, and aims to contribute to thinking through educational practices that can help shape how we live together today. Within ECS, there is room for both intellectual depth and collegial connection. Researchers regularly come together for research seminars, exchange and shared reflection. In addition, we consciously invest in a warm team atmosphere, including through team activities, informal moments of encounter and initiatives that strengthen collaboration and mutual involvement.
Within this research environment, you will work as a doctoral researcher on a four-year qualitative research project on the affective dimension of school-making in Flemish primary schools. You will conduct empirical and theoretical research independently and in close collaboration with the supervisor(s). You will work close to the practice of primary schools and connect theoretical and empirical insights with the realities of everyday classroom and school life.
Website unit
Project
We are looking for a motivated doctoral researcher for the research project “The Affective Grammar of Schooling in Times of Reform: A Window into the ‘New’ Primary School as Pedagogical Form”. The project investigates how pedagogical affects — emotions, feelings and moods — help shape what the primary school is and can be today, particularly within Flemish primary education in a context of far-reaching educational reforms.
In recent years, several persistent signals have shown that Flemish primary education is under pressure: declining performance on international assessments, persistent social, cultural and linguistic inequalities, teacher shortages, changing pupil populations, and an increasing policy emphasis on quality, effectiveness and measurable learning outcomes. These developments raise the question of how the primary school takes shape today, and which new ways of school-making are thinkable and desirable.
This project approaches schooling from a specific perspective. We do not primarily understand the primary school as a place where individual learning outcomes are optimized. Rather, we study the school as a shared time and space in which study, attention, care and engagement with the world become possible, and in which learning takes shape in freedom, equality, and focused on broad formation.
This shared space is not merely cognitive. It also presupposes affect: emotions, feelings, moods and affective relations that help shape how school and classroom life take form. Although the affective dimension is strongly present in educational practice and contemporary educational discourse, it is hardly given an explicitly pedagogical articulation. Affect often appears through a psychological or instrumental logic: as a matter of well-being, motivation, emotion regulation or management aimed at learning efficiency. As a result, we risk losing sight of how affect is not merely an individual characteristic of pupils or teachers but is constitutive of the pedagogical form of the school itself.
Against this background, the project investigates the affective grammar of the primary school: how pedagogical affects — emotions, feelings, moods and affective relations — contribute to bringing about the school as a shared space of care and attention to the world. The focus is on how daily practices of school-making — such as classroom rhythms, routines, space, forms of attention, moments of silence or unrest, care practices and assessment practices — pedagogically organize and “choreograph” affect: how they make certain affective relations possible, evoke them, orient them or delimit them.
The doctoral project also examines how this affective grammar may come into tension with contemporary policy developments and educational discourses around quality, effectiveness, measurable learning outcomes, behaviour policy, and classroom and self-management. The central question is how these developments reshape affective openness, wonder, attention and engagement with the world, and what this means for the possibility of making school.
During your four-year appointment, you will:
- further develop the theoretical framework on the affective grammar of the primary school;
- conduct a longitudinal, qualitative multiple-case study in primary schools;
- analyse policy documents related to recent educational reforms in Flanders;
- write and publish English-language scientific articles and a doctoral dissertation;
- present research findings at national and international conferences;
- actively participate in school life in Flemish primary schools;
- contribute to valorisation activities and dialogue with schools, policy actors and other stakeholders;
- actively participate in research seminars and activities of the research unit;
- provide limited teaching support within the faculty’s programmes in Psychology and Educational Sciences.
Profile
We are looking for a candidate who has:
- a master’s degree, preferably in Pedagogy, Educational Sciences, Education Policy, or a related discipline such as sociology, anthropology, philosophy, etc., combined with a strong interest in education;
- a strong affinity with pedagogical theory, primary education, educational policy and qualitative research;
- an interest in conceptual and slow empirical work: you want to learn how everyday school practices can be carefully described, distinguished and theoretically understood;
- a willingness to conduct long-term and careful fieldwork in primary schools;
- excellent analytical and writing skills;
- strong communication skills and the ability to build trusting relationships with schools, teachers, pupils and other stakeholders;
- the motivation to build bridges between research and practice;
- very good proficiency in Dutch, given the fieldwork in Flemish primary schools;
- good academic written and spoken proficiency in English;
- independence, accuracy, initiative and the ability to work as part of a team.
Experience with ethnographic research, interview research, focus groups or discourse analysis is an asset, but not a requirement. You do not need to be an expert yet, but you are motivated to immerse yourself thoroughly in these areas.
Offer
We offer:
- A full-time fixed-term appointment for one year, renewable after positive evaluation for up to a maximum of four years in total. The research is expected to result in a PhD after four years;
- Intensive supervision in your development as a researcher by a young and committed supervisor, together with a co-supervisor or supervisory team, tailored to your specific profile, interests and needs;
- Embedding in an academic research unit with expertise in (historical) pedagogy, sociology of education and school development;
- The opportunity to become part of an intellectually stimulating environment that offers space for depth, initiative and your own emphases;
- Opportunities to participate in national and international conferences and to present your research there;
- Support in further developing your theoretical thinking and methodological skills;
- A warm, collegial and caring work environment in which we value collaboration, open dialogue and your growth as a researcher, colleague and conversation partner for educational practice.
Remuneration is in accordance with the applicable scales for doctoral scholarship holders at KU Leuven. For more information about remuneration and benefits, see: https://www.kuleuven.be/personeel/jobsite/werken-bij-kuleuven/werken-bij-kuleuven
You will be supervised by Prof. Dr Graziela Dekeyser and embedded in the research unit Education, Culture and Society. Depending on your profile and research interests, a co-supervisor or supervisory committee may be appointed.
Interested?
Candidates are asked to submit the following documents:
(1) a motivation letter in Dutch of maximum 2 pages, explaining why this project appeals to you and how your profile fits the position. Convince us that you can do it and that you genuinely want to do it;
(2) a curriculum vitae of maximum 1 page;
(3) a copy of relevant diplomas and transcripts of records, both bachelor’s and master’s;
(4) a personal essay of maximum 1 page in which you reflect on the importance of investigating the affective grammar of primary school. This essay differs from the motivation letter: it is not about your personal profile or motivation, but about your substantive reflection on why emotions, feelings, moods and affective relations are pedagogically relevant to making school;
(5) the names and contact details of one or two referees.
Students who will obtain their master degree at the end of June 2026 are also warmly encouraged to apply, provided they have a demonstrable chance of success.
If AI tools were used in drafting the motivation letter and/or the essay, we ask you to briefly indicate how they were used.
The selection procedure consists of an initial assessment of the submitted documents, followed by an interview with selected candidates. Selected candidates will receive an assignment before the interview.
Selection interviews are scheduled on 3 July, live and in person in Leuven. The intended starting date is 1 October 2026.
For more information please contact Prof. dr. Graziela Dekeyser, mail: [email protected].
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