University of California, San Diego

Post-Doc, Education Studies

Other Affiliations: University of Twente, Educational Organisation and Management

PhD

Thesis Title: Ties with Potential - Nature, Antecedents, and Consequences of Social Networks in School Teams

About

Nienke Moolenaar currently has a joint affiliation as a post-doc researcher at the University of California, San Diego and the University of Twente, The Netherlands.

Nienke earned her PhD (cum laude - with honor) in June 2010 at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, on research on social networks in elementary school teams. Her dissertation has been awarded the 2010 Emerald/EFMD Outstanding Doctoral Research Award in the category Educational Leadership and Strategy.

In her dissertation, titled 'Ties with potential: Nature, antecedents, and consequences of social networks in school teams', Nienke focused on how social relationships among teachers matter for schools, in terms of innovation, trust, shared decision-making, and ultimately, student achievement. She conducted her research in 61 elementary schools in The Netherlands. She also replicated her study in the US in five elementary schools in the greater San Diego, CA area. During this period, Nienke was in residence at the University of California, San Diego, where she collaborated with Prof. Dr. Alan Daly.

Currently, at the University of California, San Diego, Nienke is working on research funded by a Rubicon Award from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). Her work focuses on the co-evolution of social networks and educational change. Drawing on complexity theory and literature on dynamic systems, and using longitudinal network modeling and multilevel modeling, her work aims to understand how educators' social networks change during educational reform and how this network change supports and constrains school improvement in terms of teachers' instructional practice and student achievement.

At the University of Twente, Nienke is involved in a research project that monitors a comprehensive school reform effort that is being implemented by a large Dutch consulting firm targeting 19 low-performing schools under stringent governmental sanction to improve.

Previously, Nienke studied Organizational Psychology at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands, where she earned her MSc. in 2004. During her study, she worked as an assistant lecturer at the University of Groningen and Erasmus University Rotterdam, where she designed, developed, and taught courses on career counseling, personnel selection, assessment, training, and coaching for the BSc. and MSc. programs. Nienke wrote her MSc. thesis on the differences between novice and experienced job interviewers’ use of heuristic strategies for personality assessment at GITP International, a Netherlands-based management consultancy agency. After finishing her study, she worked in personnel selection at ECHM and Accenture before starting her graduate studies at the University of Amsterdam in 2005.

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