06.07.2026

LEAD Lecture Series

Lecture series promoting exchange and providing international academic insights.

The LEAD Lectures provide a forum for inviting international scholars to share their research, exchange ideas, and foster collaboration with the LEAD community. 

The series features talks on topics broadly relevant to education and learning, offering space for interdisciplinary dialogue and academic engagement.

The lecture series thrives on the engagement of the LEAD community. Ideas for prospective talks or interest in organizing or delivering a LEAD Lecture can be shared with Prof. Dr. Michiko Sakaki at coordinationspam prevention@lead.uni-tuebingen.de. 

Next lecture

What to Expect:

Social ties, expectations, and mobility in Dutch secondary education
This presentation brings together three interrelated studies examining trends in social relationships within Dutch secondary schools, and their implications for educational outcomes. I will first present evidence on a significant and sustained deterioration in students' relationships with both classmates and teachers. Relationships were stable in the pre-pandemic years (2014–2018), declined sharply at the onset of COVID-19, and continued to worsen through 2024. We show variation by gender and educational track and will investigate to what extent a rise in digital activity possibly buffered the decline. Second, I will document a consistent downward trend in students' short- and long-term educational expectations and its correlation with peer and teacher relationships. Third, I show evidence on whether social relationships predict students' educational position in year three of secondary school relative to their primary school track recommendation. Together, these three studies paint a coherent and concerning picture: adolescent social relationships in Dutch secondary schools have deteriorated markedly since the pandemic and have not recovered. These relationships are not merely a matter of wellbeing, they are meaningfully linked to educational ambition and social mobility. The findings underscore the urgency of policy and school-level interventions aimed at strengthening peer and teacher relationships, particularly for vulnerable student groups.

A look beyond metacognition: Knowing about cognition, emotion, and behavior

Cognitive processing, memory, and deep understanding form the core of learning, all of which are shaped by the learner’s application of metacognitive knowledge. However, academic behaviors and academic emotions are also a critical component of learning. While metacognition has been studied for almost half a century, relatively little is known about how learners utilize their knowledge about emotions and behaviors to influence learning and achievement outcomes.

Moving beyond metacognition, knowledge about emotions– metaemotion – plays a role in both the application of emotion regulation strategies and the cognitions that occur during learning. Similarly, metabehavior encompasses one’s knowledge regarding their achievement behaviors. A holistic approach to learning requires identifying how these forms of knowledge are interconnected. Motivation shapes the use of these metaprocesses as learners choose strategies to regulate toward learning success. In the talk, we will move beyond metacognition as we consider metaemotion and metabehavior as they are linked to motivation, metamotivation and a range of internal and external learner conditions.

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