Kristine De Martelaer

Prof. Dr Kristine De Martelaer (° 22/07/1966) graduated in 1988 as a Master in Physical Education and Movement Sciences at UGent, and completed her teacher training at Ugent in 1989. At the VUB she obtained her Masters in Leisure Agogics in 1990 and in 1997 the doctoral degree with her PhD on "Child-friendliness of organized swimming". After years of being an assistant for swimming and first aid and a research assistant for youth sports within the Faculty of Physical Education and Physiotherapy (LK) of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), she became a full-time professor in the faculty in 2001. She has also been intensively involved in education and educational policy in the faculty, the teacher training and the VUB. Her research expertise focuses on didactics (aquatic activities, first aid, integrity, ethics), physical/aquatic literacy, motor/water competence and test batteries, competences and role of teachers and parents. She is co-founder of the Center for Ethics in Sport (ICES), where among other things the flag system was developed. From January 2018, she is leading the SwiMove swimming school at the VUB as a living lab. From 2015-2020 she had the special chair “Pedagogy of Physical Education”, embedded in the division of Education of the faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences of Utrecht University. She is still cooperating, together with the University Gent and UU, on the research focus of learning children to manage PE/after-school sports. Moreover until Dec 2021 she is working in a multidisciplinary team of Sport & Society of UU on the topic of Risky Play.

Projects

Burn-out & energy balance-related behaviour in secondary school teachers in Flanders

Development of fundamental motor skills in healthy children with different degrees of sports participation

Comp@s

ALFAC – Aquatic literacy for all children