Indira Wakelkamp
Indira Wakelkamp has been working as a researcher within the Multilingualism and Education research group since May 2024. Currently, her focus lies on topics such as multilingualism in primary education and teacher professional development in this field. Her interests revolve around communicative and motivating language teaching, with a focus on language sensitization and functional multilingual education.
Richtext
After completing a Bachelor's degree in English Language & Culture and a research Master's degree in Linguistics at Utrecht University, Indira opted for a teaching traineeship (Het Onderwijstraineeship) to quickly enter secondary education. She obtained her teaching qualification at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and worked as an English teacher for almost ten years with great pleasure and passion.
Expertise
- Communicative language teaching (CLT) and engaged language teaching
- Language sensitisation and functional multilingual education
- Professional development of foreign language teachers
In addition to her work within the research group, she also fulfills the role of teacher educator in the academic teacher training programme at the University of Amsterdam. She finds great inspiration in bridging theory and practice, constantly pondering the questions of "what do pupils need?" and "what do (beginning) teachers need to be able to provide that?".
As a programme coordinator for Modern Foreign Languages within the didactic network AlfaGammapartners and as an editor at LitLab, she builds on this. Together with her colleagues, she is committed to sharing research knowledge and facilitating encounters between teachers and researchers, allowing them to inspire each other and develop new insights together.
With her research within the research group, she specifically focuses on multilingualism and further develops these lines of inquiry. This enables her to deepen and broaden her expertise across various school contexts.
