Introduction

Dear committee member,

It is an honour and a pleasure to share my vision statement on my career at Delft University of Technology. Reflecting on my 20$^+$ years in education as a teacher and innovator, my performance over the past seven years at TU Delft, and my aspirations for growth as an educator, scientist, and person has been an insightful journey.

The summary of my vision can be expressed as:

To strive for continuous growth and excellence in education, bringing out the best in both myself and others.
But even with this clear, concise and strong statement - covering one of my core values, it has been a challenge to draft a clear document in which education, research, and valorization are distinguishable components. I started as a secondary school teacher, did alongside teaching a Ph.D. study in physics education and continued my career in academia with a focus on education. As a result, my research and teaching are inherently intertwined: I study what I teach, and how I teach is grounded in research (scholarly-teaching). With a drive to openly share all educational material (hence, contributing to open education), the creation of evidence-based education (education & research) and valorization (enable life long learning) are for me inseparable, though I have attempted to distinguish them in this document.

This document, written in MyST - also known as JupyterBook, exemplifies my innovative approach to teaching: it is one of the latest technological advancements in education and research dissemination Cockett et al., 2024. The MyST and Jupyter projects aim to create interactive scientific publications for the web, with the ability to export content to PDF, LaTeX, and Microsoft Word. While this document is presented as a PDF, it is also available as an interactive online document. Moreover, this technology is used for the latest online interactive textbook publications, see for instance TUD’s first year physics mechanics book.

Where in the past few years we have foremost used this technology (as ‘consumers’), we now have come to a stage where we actively contribute to the development of the MyST ecosystem (as ‘producers’). For instance, this PDF version is made with a self-made bare-bone typst template which is now open access available and part of the Jupyter Book ecosystem.

How to read this document¶

Chapter 2 presents evidence of my work as an educational innovator who designs, coordinates, and continuously improves education. The focus is not on isolated teaching activities, but on systematic transformation of courses, curricula, and teaching practices.

Chapter 3 presents my work as a physics education researcher with a focus on integrating argumentation in both scientific inquiry and engineering design. Although my research is closely connected to my teaching, this chapter should be read as a contribution to the international research community.

Chapter 4 highlights my efforts in (especially) open education at local, national, and international levels.

Chapter 5 presents my vision on leadership related to teaching and innovating education and educational research at TU Delft.

The appendices include detailed descriptions of courses taught, research publications, and valorization activities. While these chapters contain important information, they should be read as supplementary material that substantiates the main narrative.

Sincerely yours,

Freek Pols