Newly appointed: Prof. Dr. Tijs Bolz

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What are your main areas of teaching and research?

• Student-teacher relationships among students with externalizing and internalizing behavioral problems
• Development, implementation, and evaluation of interventions to reduce impairments in emotional and social development and to build social-emotional competencies within multi-level school-based and out-of-school frameworks
• Internalizing behavioral problems in school
• Attachment and social-emotional skills in school
• Intensive educational issues in the area of emotional and social development

What motivated you to pursue a career in your field?

First and foremost, it was my own practical work in the field of special education, and thus my work with children and adolescents with (impending) impairments in emotional and social development—that initially led me to the research and teaching questions I now have the opportunity to address in various research projects and in collaboration with (prospective) teachers using different approaches.

With the ratification in 2009 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the accompanying amendments to school laws in the individual federal states, Germany has committed itself to ensuring equal access to key social institutions and to compensating for disadvantages resulting from disabilities. However, the current education system still includes students for whom equal access to general educational opportunities is hindered by various personal or environmental factors.

Over the past eleven years of my academic career, I have been able to contribute to the participation of children and adolescents with (impending) impairments in emotional and social development through empirical research, the professional development of educational staff, and consulting on education-related priorities at the administrative level. I aim to further expand this work at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich with the department team and colleagues from other university locations. I also find the collaboration with colleagues from related academic disciplines particularly enriching. LMU offers an excellent environment for this, and I look forward to collaborating with colleagues on various interdisciplinary topics. In this context, I find working with early-career researchers particularly rewarding and am pleased to be able to build on my previous activities in this area.

Welche Forschungsprojekte oder -themen begeistern Sie derzeit am meisten und warum?

Ich interessiere mich insbesondere für die evidenzorientierte Weiterentwicklung von Diagnostik sowie gruppenbezogenen und individuellen Förderung von Kindern und Jugendlichen mit Problemen im Erleben und Verhalten. Ein besonderer Fokus liegt dabei auf den Themen

• beziehungsorientierte Förderung sowie Professionalisierung bei Beeinträchtigungen in der emotionalen und sozialen Entwicklung,
• der Entwicklung, Implementation und Evaluation von Maßnahmen zur Reduktion von Beeinträchtigungen in der emotionalen und sozialen Entwicklung und zum Aufbau sozial-emotionaler Kompetenzen in mehrstufigen schulischen und außerschulischen Rahmenkonzepten
• Diagnostik und Förderung bei internalisierenden Problemen sowie
• Diagnostik und Förderung bei intensivpädagogischen Fragestellungen.

What is particularly important to you in teaching?

My overarching goal in training special education professionals is to help them develop a professional identity grounded in a high level of empirically and theoretically informed practical knowledge. In my view, the core aspect of this is, above all, well-founded, values-driven, and self-reflective practice. In addition to the practice-oriented professional development of (special) education professionals, I aim to inspire students early on and in a participatory manner during their studies by incorporating a clear research focus within my courses to foster interest in innovative research topics. I design my courses methodologically to closely integrate theory and practice, utilizing cooperative learning formats and integrated video modeling, with a particular focus on self-organized and self-directed learning.
In doing so, I place particular importance on providing ongoing, individualized support to students through appreciative, authentic, supportive, and challenging mentoring. In my view, a culture of active feedback plays a central role in this process.