About Mr V

Dave Van Valkenburg is an English-speaking Canadian/Australian citizen currently living in Den Haag. He has over 20 years experience teaching in Mathematics, Psychology, and Physics at both the University and Secondary levels, and has taught international students in four different countries: Australia, Singapore, the US, and the Netherlands. Dave completed his Secondary schooling in Nova Scotia, Canada, obtained a Bachelor of Science from the University of Toronto in Canada, obtained a Masters and PhD degree in Cognitive Neuroscience from the University of Virginia in the USA, and then received a Graduate Diploma in Education from the University of Western Australia. For the past fifteen years, he has specialised in teaching Secondary-level Mathematics - and for the past ten years he has been teaching the Middle Year Program (MYP) and the Diploma Program (DP) within the International Baccalaureate (IB) system.
Previous to becoming a secondary school teacher, Dave was a tenured professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of Western Australia (in Perth, Australia). During this time he designed, coordinated, and delivered curriculum and courses ranging from introductory psychology to perception, cognition, neuroscience, philosophy of science, statistics, and research methods (introductory levels all the way up to advanced to graduate levels in all of these categories). In addition, he maintained a research lab (focussed on neurophysiologically-based quantitative models of auditory perception) with PhD students, research staff, and multiple competitive research grants.
Dave has a strong passion for teaching (he has amassed over 100 hours of mathematics-teaching-specific professional development alone), and has been nominated for multiple local and national teaching awards during his long career.
Dave lives in central Den Haag (postcode 2562) with his wife and 3 underachieving cats. When he is not teaching, he spends a lot of time underwater and/or in remote locations taking photographs or - when he cannot travel - fumbling around on various instruments pretending that he could have been a rock star.
A complete copy of Dave's curriculum vitae can be requested here.

Student/Parent Comments:

“Mr. V Tutoring Services has done a fantastic job by supporting and helping my son to improve his mathematical skills and knowledge. You achieved more than I ever expected”

“I am so immensely grateful to you for this! I can see that you are a truly devoted teacher, invested in the success of your students”

“…thank you for being such a supportive and patient teacher, every lesson with you was all smiles and Maths was honestly something i disliked for so long but now i finally felt confident with !!!”

“It seemed like you almost managed to make it fun which is a talent if not a miracle in xxxxx’s case.”

“I just wanted to thank you for the great tutoring over the past 3 years! It's been a long time and every lesson has truly been a great help to me, thanks to your teaching which has always been clear and concise and helped me to understand mathematics better”

“I just wanted to let you know that I picked up my results today and passed with 32 points :) a 4 for math (5 for the IA) ! Thank you for all your help! I couldn’t have done it without you“

“Almost none of the questions were unfamiliar thanks to your teaching”

“We would like to thank you for the great support you brought to both our children... You have been a major contributor to their success and allowed them to reach their goals!”

“Your passion for teaching has pushed me to see maths in a new, fun, and exciting way which has been the reason for my love for maths.”

“Thank you for all your help with xxxxx. I see her growing more confident with math and quite able to generally manage school work“

“Many thanks for the support you have given xxxxx. She has improved a lot and she is really enjoying Maths. You do a great job!”

“Thank you so much for all the help you gave xxxxx! She learned so much in those lessons. We'll definitely come back to you at the beginning of the next school year.”

“We are very happy that he had your support during this year! Thank you for helping him!”

“Thank you for tutoring xxxxx. I can tell it makes a difference. Her confidence seems to have increased quite significantly.”

“Thank you for all your support and help this year with the girls. Special thanks for prepping xxxxx for her big exam - she was so confident and did so well, in no small part thanks to your help!”

“We want to thank you very much for your support! It gave her more self confidence and we hope she did well in her final exams! And actually I would like to ask if you have space for a new student?”

“Thank you so much for your help this year, I have definitely seen improvement in my work.”

“Thank you tutoring xxxxx again. She very much appreciates the sessions and it seems to give her more confidence.”

“…your help was a really big factor in me getting better and smarter during the exams and was a big factor in my improvement. I went into the exam feeling confident”

"I would like to thank you for the support that you have provided to xxxxx over the school year. He is more confident to face the math word problems and challenges. His marks have improved too. But the overall is his change of attitude towards maths in general."

"Hi Mr. V, I hope all is well. I just wanted to thank you again for all your help, it was highly appreciated. I got my final results on Wednesday and ended up with a 6 in math! I was very shocked and not expect that result at all, so thank you for everything and for helping me achieve this! I definitely learned a lot from you and you made math so much easier!"