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Hello
Jeltsen Peeters is founder of ‘At the heart of learning’ and co-founder of ‘The self-regulated learning collective’. Her professional career is organized around the following question: ‘How can self-regulated learning empower teachers and students to achieve their professional and more personal objectives?’. It’s what gets her up every morning. Well, that and her three enthusiast kids.
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Jeltsen obtained her Bachelor’s Degree in ‘Orthopedagogie’ in 2008 and her Master’s Degree in ‘Adult Education Sciences’ in 2010. In 2010 she joined the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) as a researcher where she finished her PhD about self-regulated learning in 2015.
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Jeltsen Peeters wanted to put what she had learned to use. She chose to design the Erasmus+ tMAIL project which she was happy to carry out together with her colleagues from VUB and 8 other European organizations. Together they created a mobile application that trains teachers how to support their students’ self-regulated learning. After this project, the SLIDEshow project was born where she again collaborated with different European partners.
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Since 2018, she works at GO! Onderwijs van de Vlaamse Gemeenschap. GO! is a Flemish network of schools serving around 220.000 students. Jeltsen now supports her colleagues to train teachers in supporting their students’ self-regulated learning. On the side, she is regularly asked as a consultant guiding teachers, school leaders and decision makers at regional and European level to implement self-regulated learning for the benefit of all students. She is also an active advisory board member of various research projects.
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On a more personal note, Jeltsen lives in Mechelen (Belgium) together with her husband and three kids. She tries to balance her passion for her family with her passion for her work. A never ending challenge, one she happily reads about in her spare time. She loves meeting new people. Short conversations with complete strangers can make her day. She loves traveling and has to go to Italy at least ones a year.
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Want to know a bit more about her personal story behind ‘At the heart of learning’? Have a look below.
My Story
Becoming a researcher was not exactly written in the stars. When I was asked to do a PhD, I had to be convinced. After all, every choice I made so far was based on my objective to make a difference in the lives of people. To find ways to empower people, especially those who never had the chance to find their strength. Conducting research had never crossed my mind before. When, a few months later, I received a personal grant from the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO), I decided to jump in the unknown and start my career as a researcher. A decision I never came to regret.
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The PhD research was focused on the specialist topic of my supervisor Prof. dr. Koen Lombaerts: self-regulated learning. A concept I had barely heard of before. I eagerly started to read, and read, and… well yeah… read. There was so much out there! But most knowledge appeared to be hidden away in academic articles with little accessible information that allowed any novice to grasp the complex concept. It taught me two important things.
First, self-regulated learning appeared to be exactly what I had been looking for: a scientifically underpinned way to empower people.
Second, if I were to finish my PhD, I would help make the knowledge about self-regulated learning more easily accessible. ‘At the heart of learning’ and ‘the self-regulated learning collective’ are two major steps towards that goal.
Contact
Do you have a question for our Self-Regulated Learning Collective? Don't hesitate and reach out to us via our contact page. Have a question for me? I'm happy to hear from you!