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In order to support research on school effectiveness, there is a need for valid and reliable instruments to assess policymaking capacities of schools. Increasingly, policymaking is seen as a shared responsibility of the entire pedagogical team of a school. In this article, data were analysed from a sample of 1,696 (care) teachers coordinators and principals from 77 Flemish primary schools to assess critical aspects concerning validity and reliability of the Policy Making Capacities Questionnaire (PMC-Q). Confirmatory factor analysis indicates that the fit for the model with eight factors is limited. The subscales were found to be strongly correlated and difficult to distinguish, and one of the subscales turned out to be not well captured by the questionnaire. The results indicate sufficient interrater reliability and within-group agreement to aggregate responses to school level. Suggestions are made for further development of the PMC-Q and its use for research and practice.

Completing questionnaires is a complex task in which multiple cognitive processes play an important role. Despite critiques of the reliability of questionnaires, our research strived to gain more insight into the process of completing questionnaires by using eye-tracking. We investigated how both the question and the categories of answers were being processed and how processing the question influenced the processing of the categories of answers. We also considered the effects of participants' personal characteristics, such as effort and ability. Results showed there were individual differences involved when respondents complete a questionnaire. The respondents spent different amounts of time reading and answering the items, and there were important differences in the quality of processing.

Based on the concept of action competence, the current study introduces an integrated framework of Professional Action Competence in Education for Sustainable Development (PACesd) described by three defining features: willingness, knowledge of pedagogical approaches, and self-efficacy. To validate this framework, we developed a questionnaire measurement instrument: 'PACesd-Q'. This questionnaire was administered to a sample of 557 primary and secondary school in-service teachers in Flanders, Belgium. The instrument's psychometric quality was assessed in terms of its reliability, construct, and criterion-related validity. Results of reliability analysis and hierarchical (second-order) confirmatory factor analysis provided evidence of good measurement properties of the instrument in terms of reliability and construct and criterion-related validity. We suggest the instrument can be successfully used to provide educational practitioners with a tool to monitor and eventually identify professional development needs regarding education for sustainable development.

The aim of this study is to provide -- first theoretically and, subsequently, through an empirical analysis -- a rationale for including the concept of overexcitability in talent research, beyond the five-factor model personality traits. Moreover, the empirical part of this study makes use of an innovative statistical method to address the problem of a frequentist approach to statistics in complex trait models which are based on personality questionnaire data. This study offers insight into the differential significance of overexcitability in relation to the established personality traits, emphasizing Dabrowski's dynamic approach to personality and the key contribution of overexcitability in the developmental process. Furthermore, implications for the field of giftedness are discussed.

This study starts from the observation that current empirical research on students' processing strategies in higher education has mainly focused on the use of self-report instruments to measure students' general preferences towards processing strategies. In contrast, there is a rather limited use of more direct and online observation techniques to uncover differences in processing strategies at a task specific level. We based our study on one of the most influential studies in the domain of Students' Approaches to Learning (SAL) (Marton, Dahlgren, Säljö, & Svensson, 1975). In our exploratory experiment we used eye tracking followed by a cued recall to investigate how students use processing strategies in learning from expository text. Nineteen university students participated in the experiment. Results suggested that students in the deep condition did not look longer at the essentials in the text compared with students in the surface condition, but that they processed them in a more deep way. In our sample, students in the surface condition looked longer at facts and details and also reported repeating these facts and details more often. We suggest that the combination of eye tracking followed by a cued recall is a promising tool to investigate students' processing strategies since not all differences in processing strategies are reflected in overt eye movement behaviour. The current methodology allows researchers in the domain of SAL to complement and extend the present knowledge base that has accumulated through years of research with self-report questionnaires and interviews on students' general preferences towards processing strategies.

Background: Up until now, empirical studies in the Student Approaches to Learning field have mainly been focused on the use of self-report instruments, such as interviews and questionnaires, to uncover differences in students' general preferences towards learning strategies, but have focused less on the use of task-specific and online measures. Aims: This study aimed at extending current research on students' learning strategies by combining general and task-specific measurements of students' learning strategies using both offline and online measures. We want to clarify how students process learning contents and to what extent this is related to their self-report of learning strategies. Sample: Twenty students with different generic learning profiles (according to self-report questionnaires) read an expository text, while their eye movements were registered to answer questions on the content afterwards. Methods: Eye-tracking data were analysed with generalized linear mixed-effects models. Results: The results indicate that students with an all-high profile, combining both deep and surface learning strategies, spend more time on rereading the text than students with an all-low profile, scoring low on both learning strategies. Conclusions: This study showed that we can use eye-tracking to distinguish very strategic students, characterized using cognitive processing and regulation strategies, from low strategic students, characterized by a lack of cognitive and regulation strategies. These students processed the expository text according to how they self-reported.

In order to enhance the quality of education, school self-evaluation (SSE) has become a key strategy in many educational systems. During an SSE process, schools describe and evaluate their own functioning, often by administering questionnaires among teachers. However, it is unknown to what extent SSE questionnaire results are distorted by respondents' tendencies towards socially desirable responding and their motivation to fill in an SSE questionnaire. This study reports on a path analysis, performed on the results of an authentic SSE with 382 participants. Results indicate that socially desirable responding and motivation have indeed an impact on SSE results. However, the effects are differential and depend on the variable of interest. These findings can have serious implications, and should be taken into account when drawing conclusions and taking (school) policy decisions within the framework of an SSE process.

Research shows that learning conceptions are susceptible to change during possible critical transitions in students' school careers: such as the transition from primary to secondary education and the transition from secondary to higher education. This study aims to determine whether students' learning conceptions developed during the four years of transition between primary and secondary education. The study consists of four measure moments in a longitudinal multilevel design and is based on a sample of 102 students. The results show that changes are present in students' learning conceptions during the last years of primary education and the first years of secondary education. Where change occurs, it is primarily a negative trend: avoidance orientation increases significantly when development orientation decreases. Boys develop a more negative conception towards school and learning than do girls. Deep processing activities, which focus on metacognitive skills, decrease from as early as one year before students leave primary education, when they are 11 years old, and continue to decrease until the end of the second school year of secondary education, when they are 14 years old.

School self-evaluation (SSE) often makes use of questionnaires in order to sketch a picture of the school. How respondents cognitively process questionnaire items determines the validity of SSE results. Still, one readily assumes that respondents interpret and answer items as intended by the instrument developer (referred to as cognitive validity), but it remains unclear whether they do. This study tested an exemplary SSE instrument by focusing on the extent to which SSE results are cognitively valid, and on the extent to which differences in cognitive validity can be attributed to respondents and/or items. Cognitive interviews with 20 participants made respondents' answering processes manifest. Results show that, overall, fewer than 50% of respondents' processes of interpreting and elaborating on items are cognitively valid. Cross-classified multilevel analyses indicate that various hierarchical levels, respondents and items, are significant in explaining differences in cognitive validity, but not for all stages of the answering process.

Technology is more present than ever. Young people are interested in technological products, but their opinions on education and careers in technology are not particularly positive (Johansson in "Mathematics, Science & Technology Education Report." European Round Table of Industrials, Brussel, 2009). If we want to stimulate students' attitudes towards technology we need to have a better understanding of the factors which determine attitudes. Different studies (e.g. Volk and Yip in "Int J Technol Des Educ" 9:57-71, 1999; Jones et al. in "Sci Educ" 84(2):180-192, 2000; George in "Int J Sci Educ" 28(6):571-589, 2006; Salminen-Karlsson in "Int J Sci Educ" 29(8):1019-1033, 2007) have proven that students' characteristics correlate with their attitudes towards technology. As these studies often focus on effects on a specific aspect of attitude; the total effect cannot be interpreted correctly because attitude is a multi-dimensional concept (Osborne et al. in "Int J Sci Educ" 23(5):441-467, 2003). This study focuses upon six aspects of attitude namely: interest, career aspirations, boredom, consequences, difficulty and gender issues. Therefore a multivariate model has been set up. This allows us to answer the main research question: What is the predictive power of students' characteristics with regard to aspects of their attitudes towards technology? The revalidated version of the "Pupils Attitude Towards Technology" instrument (Ardies et al. in "Des Technol Educ" 18(1):8-19, 2013) was used in a large (n = 2,973) scale investigation of 12-14 year old students (Grade 1 and Grade 2 of secondary education). Given the multilevel nature of the data and that students are allocated to specific teachers, we analysed the data with a multivariate multilevel approach. The results of the study show a decline in interest in technology from the first to the second grade of secondary education. This finding appears to be stronger for girls. Interest in technology is significantly positively related to the amount of time that technology is taught for, as well as to the teacher. Parents have a positive influence on several aspects of attitude to technology when mothers and/or fathers have a profession related to technology. Equally, the presence of technological toys at home is a significantly positive characteristic. As the results confirmed previous, fragmented studies in related disciplines like science education, this study contributes to the wider body of knowledge concerning students' attitudes towards technology and how this can be investigated.

Background: More young people, boys and girls, are needed in technical studies and professions, as the relative number of students in technology-related studies has been decreasing in most industrialised countries. To overcome this decrease several countries implemented mandatory technology classes in the curriculum of secondary education. Purpose: This study has two goals: exploring the evolution of pupils' interest during the year(s) they attend the mandatory technology classes and exploring determining characteristics for differences in boys' and girls' attitude change over time. Sample: This study focuses on data gathered in the first and second grade of the first cycle in general secondary education in the North region of Belgium, Flanders. In a first stage we selected a good representation of geographically spread schools (n = 20), from which over 1300 students participated. Design and methods: A longitudinal study with eight measurement occasions spread over the course of two years is presented in order to capture the evolution of students' attitudes, making use of a multilevel growth model analysis. Results: The results show that students' interest in technology decreases over time, although at the end of each grade interest is increasing again. Boys' and girls' interest in technology also evolves a little different in the first cycle of secondary education. For career aspirations we didn't see any significant difference between boys and girls. Boys' and girls' aspirations decrease over time with a little increase by the end of the second grade. Students with a more technological curriculum also have more career aspirations in the field of technology than their peers with other curricula. Although students' perceptions about technology as a subject for boys and girls are largely stable. Conclusions: The evolution of students' attitude is far from linear, this strengthens us in the choice for a more complex analysis model and the choice for more measuring points than only at the beginning and the end when analysing students' attitudes towards technology. With this research we found that students interest and aspirations in the field of technology are not stable and do change in the first cycle of secondary education. Overall, we can conclude that if the goal of technology education at school maintains to promote "a larger number of students in technological oriented studies and professions", there is still much to do.

This study examines the influence of personality traits, goal orientation and self-efficacy on high school teachers' participation in learning activities in the workplace (i.e. experimentation, informal interaction with colleagues, self-regulation and avoidance behaviour). A convenience sample of 95 teachers from six high schools in Flanders (Belgium) participated in this exploratory study. They completed a questionnaire consisting of different instruments to map their personality (NEO-FFI), goal orientation (adaptation of Achievement Goal Questionnaire), self-efficacy (Teachers' Sense of Efficacy Scale) and participation in learning activities (adaptations from different scales). Results of multivariate regression analyses indicate that conscientiousness, extraversion and openness have a positive effect on teachers' participation in learning activities in the workplace. However, learning orientation and self-efficacy are found to be better predictors for participation in experimentation, informal interaction and selfregulation. Analysis using structural equation modeling reveals an indirect relationship between extraversion and self-regulation, mediated by self-efficacy. Learning orientation mediates the impact of conscientiousness on informal interaction. As teachers' goal orientation and self-efficacy can be influenced, school policy makers should reflect upon ways on how teachers' goal orientation and self-efficacy can further be enhanced.

Background. Although the evidence in support of the variability of students' learning strategies has expanded in recent years, less is known about the explanatory base of these individual differences in terms of the joint Influences of personal and contextual characteristics. Aims. Previous studies have often investigated how student learning is associated with either personal or contextual factors. This study takes an integrative research perspective into account and examines the joint effects of personality, academic motivation, and teaching strategies on students' learning strategies in a same educational context in first year higher education. Sample. In this study, 1,126 undergraduate students and 90 lecturers from eight professional bachelor programmes in a university college participated. Methods. Self-report measures were used to measure students' personality, academic motivation, and learning strategies. Students' processing and regulation strategies are mapped using the Inventory of Learning Styles. Key characteristics of more content focused versus learning-focused teaching strategies were measured. Multivariate multilevel analysis was used to take the nested data structure and interrelatedness of learning strategies into account. Results. Different personality traits (openness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism) and academic motivation (amotivation, autonomous, and controlled motivation) were found to be independently associated with student learning strategies. Besides these student characteristics, also teaching strategies were found to be directly associated with learning strategies. Conclusions. The study makes clear that the impact of teaching strategies on learning strategies in first-year higher education cannot be overlooked nor over interpreted, due to the importance of students' personality and academic motivation which also partly explain why students learn the way they do. (Contains 1 table and 2 figures.)

Evidence regarding the impact of teachers' instructional development on student learning in higher education is scarce. In this study the authors investigate the impact of an instructional development programme for beginning university teachers on students' approach to studying. They also explore whether this impact is dependent on class size and student level (first years versus non-first years). Quantitative data were gathered from more than 1000 students at pre-tests and post-tests, using a quasi-experimental design. A multilevel analysis was then conducted in which five models were estimated. The results show limited effects of teachers' instructional development. Several interpretations and perspectives for research into instructional development are discussed. (Contains 8 tables.)

While self-evaluation leads to valuable results in some schools, it appears that in other schools this is true only to a lesser extent or not at all. This raises the question of how differences in the results of self-evaluations can be explained. This study looks at to what extent the results of self-evaluation are determined by the way in which self-evaluation is conducted, by characteristics relating to the general functioning of the school and by the support which schools enjoy. One thousand seven hundred and eighty-six school principals and team members from 96 schools (primary and secondary) were surveyed by means of a written questionnaire. The data collected were then analysed using multi-level structural equation modelling. The results provide strong empirical evidence that "attitude with regard to self-evaluation", "self-evaluation as a policy action" and "self-evaluation as an act of research" are powerful predictors of the quality of self-evaluations. (Contains 2 tables and 1 figure.)