How can we prepare students for their future work and lives? Teachers should challenge students to learn deeply, so students are able to relate new learning content to what they already know, think critically about what they are learning, and apply knowledge and skills in new situations. 

Maaike Koopman is an associate professor at the Eindhoven School of Education. Her research is in the domain of "teaching for 21st century learning". She focusses on teachers' role in enhancing students' deep learning processes. Her research projects entail, amongst others, evaluation of students' goal orientations, learning strategies and outcomes, generally in innovative learning environments in secondary education. Her research aims to provide insight into how deep learning can be stimulated and also into how (student) teachers can learn how to do this. For this purpose, she uses both qualitative and quantitative research methods.   

Maaike Koopman obtained her degree as an elementary school teacher from Hanze University of Applied Sciences Groningen (the Netherlands) in 2001. She then studied educational sciences at the University of Groningen where she obtained her MSc in 2004. In 2005, after a year of working as a freelance educational researcher in the field of school choice, she started her PhD research on learning processes of pre-vocational secondary education students at Fontys University of Applied Sciences and Eindhoven School of Education at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e, the Netherlands). In 2010, she obtained her doctorate with her thesis 'Students’ goal orientations, information processing strategies and knowledge development in competence-based prevocational secondary education'. In 2010, she started postdoctoral research at TU/e. In 2019, she was appointed as associate professor at Eindhoven School of Education.