Martine van der Pluijm has been working at Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences as a lecturer and researcher since 2011. Martine is engaged in supervising design-oriented research in the Bachelor programme Social Work and Master programme Educational Theory. In addition, she has been working as a postdoc in the Custom Made research project since 2020. This research builds on the school approach (At Home in Language) that Martine developed during her PhD research.
Martine is an educationalist specialising in the philosophy of upbringing (Catholic University Nijmegen, 2002). In 2020, Martine completed her PhD on research for which she developed a programme that helps teachers to establish partnership relations with low-educated parents in order to support the language development of their young children. Previously, Martine worked in various positions in this field, including supervisor of unaccompanied minor asylum seekers, policy advisor and educational developer. In 2006, she started as an independent entrepreneur and worked as a project manager in the field of education and policy. During this period, she discovered how important a language-rich environment is for young children and how low education and low literacy among parents can be a barrier to language support for their child. Martine also saw how difficult it is for schools to respond to this group of children and low-educated parents and the unequal opportunities this creates. From that experience, she started her research in this field and works in co-creation with schools and pre-schools to find effective ways to connect to the language environment of children and parents who need this support the most.
Lecturer-researcher of the year 2020 - Martine van der Pluijm
The Research Centre Urban Talent expressed its appreciation to Martine van der Pluijm for her careful work on the scientifically substantiated and practically applicable approach At Home in Language, in order to involve low-literate/low-educated parents in their child's language development. Her ambition is to make science serve the improvement of practice and she has succeeded.
