Arthur Bakker is professor of STEM Education and Curriculum. He is director of the Research Centre for Curriculum Studies (rccs.nl), a collaboration with SLO, the national curriculum institute. He was editor of Educational Studies in Mathematics. The roots of Bakker’s expertise are in mathematics education, but his research areas have broadened since he was a mathematics teacher and did a PhD on design research in statistics education. As fellow of the University of Bremen, he wrote a book on design research in education (2018, Routledge). His interest in curriculum stems from his involvement in the revision of a US textbook for middle school mathematics. His interest in boundary crossing originates from the research in England on techno-mathematical literacies in the workplace (Hoyles, Noss, Kent) and his collaboration with Sanne Akkerman in vocational education (MBO). The studies on boundary crossing led to continued collaboration on interest development across sites of learning (school, home, hobbies, work). Over time Bakker has further worked on scaffolding (with Smit and Shvarts) and embodied design (with Abrahamson, Shvarts, Drijvers, Alberto).
With Blom, Smit and others, Bakker supervises PhD candidates and a postdoctoral researcher in the project titled Multilingual Voices in STEM Education.
Bakker is working on a second edition of this book: Design Research in Education: A Practical Guide for Early Career Research.