Tijs Kleemans' research focuses on reaching a better understanding of why pupils differ in learning basic skills, such as arithmetic and reading at school. He looks at how pupils' home and school environments can help solve or improve (severe) learning problems. Furthermore, he zooms in on what is going well and where there are still opportunities for improvement.
Together with education professionals, Tijs Kleemans wants to contribute to a knowledge base for future remedial educationalists/pedagogues, pedagogue-generalists and school psychologists who work both preventively and curatively in educational care. He is also pushing for a stronger link between the master's and postgraduate education for these behavioural scientists.
"Orthopedagogy focuses on optimising the developmental opportunities of clients who are dependent on others. Customised counselling of children, parents and education professionals is essential here. Therefore, in addition to knowledge about what is not going well, in my research I also want to look at characteristics of the child and environment reduce arithmetic and reading deficits.”
About Tijs Kleemans
Tijs Kleemans (Breda, 1985) studied Pedagogical Sciences at Radboud University, where he received his master's degree cum laude in 2007. He remained at Radboud University for his doctoral research. He successfully defended his PhD thesis ‘Individual Variation in Early Numerical Development: Impact of Linguistic Diversity and Home Environment’ in 2013.
Kleemans continued his academic career working in the triangle of education, research, and practice. His focus was often on teaching (future) remedial educationalists, pedagogue-generalists and school psychologists. In 2012, he received the University Teaching Award for Best Young Teacher for his exceptional achievements and commitment to the Pedagogical Sciences and Educational Sciences programme. He was appointed associate professor in 2013 and has been an associate professor at this programme since 2022, as well as the Behavioural Science Institute's Learning, Education, and Development research programme.
From 2016 onwards, Kleemans is also senior lecturer at the postgraduate course in school psychology. Furthermore, from 2019 to 2022, he was senior lecturer at the postgraduate training programme for orthopedagogue-generalists South and East Netherlands (OG ZON). This is a partnership between the Radboud Centre for Social Sciences and Rino Zuid (Eindhoven). In 2023, Kleemans became chief educator of OG ZON, together with Angelique Peters. In addition to his focus on teaching and research, Tijs Kleemans has built up clinical experience from 2007 onwards. He has worked as a remedial educationalist and school psychologist in (special) primary education.