Search

This study examines specific exploration activities in students’ visual arts portfolios from secondary education. Creating original visual arts products requires exploration according to Getzels and Csiksentmihalyi (The creative vision. A longitudinal study of problem finding in Art. New York: John Wiley & Sons Inc., 1976). Obtaining insight about the contribution of specific exploration activities to the originality of arts products is important for designing and supporting learning in arts education. The aim of this study is to examine the contribution of activities within three types of exploration: association, combination, and abstraction to originality of visual arts designs. Data consist of 196 portfolio events showing exploration activities and art designs, from 11 Grade 11 visual arts students. Portfolio events were coded for three different types of exploration: association, combination, and abstraction, on a dimension of ascending abstractness. We coded activities within each of these types, on a scale of remoteness, to determine the metaphorical distance. Visual originality of each portfolio event was assessed using the comparative judgment method. Multilevel regression analyses showed all three types of exploration significantly contributed to originality of visual designs. In total, 31% of the variance in originality at portfolio events level was explained by these types of exploration. In general, the more remote exploration activities were, the more original the visual design. These findings are discussed related to the literature on creative processes.

Addressing the learning crisis in low-income contexts remains a major concern. This paper analyses how active teaching and learning pedagogy (ATL) was implemented in secondary schools in Malawi to improve learning outcomes. Based on interviews with teachers and headteachers from five schools, the paper seeks to explore how ATL was understood and implemented, and what challenges were experienced from the perspectives of trained and untrained teachers. The findings reveal that ATL was positively viewed by all participants, as it was considered beneficial in improving students’ academic performance and skills development. All participants identified some key implementation challenges, including large classes, lack of materials, the use of English, long distance to school and poverty. The paper underscores the need to move away from a polarised view of pedagogy (direct instruction against ATL) and conceptualise active learning on a continuum.

Democracy implies that students have to learn to deal with controversial issues. For teachers, it is difficult to teach issues that are considered controversial in society, or by some participants in schools, like students, parents, other teachers and principals. It is particularly difficult when there are opposing groups and perspectives in the classroom itself. Controversial issues are at stake in many subjects, but especially in subjects, like history, social studies and religious studies. However, more technical subjects, like biology, are alsofull of controversial issues. Addressing controversial issues, in a pedagogical setting, requires paying attention to different perspectives and their social, cultural and political foundations. Learning from different perspectives can be best developed if teachers use multiple perspectives with all kind of topics, as a regular way of learning and teaching. Such a pedagogical mode can train students to have open dialogues, before issues really become controversial, and are also useful in the midst of heated controversial debates.

In the Netherlands, mathematical modelling has become a major subject in the higher secondary education curriculum. However, it is absent from the greater part of lower secondary education. To improve the vertical coherence in the curriculum, this study explores the mathematical modelling proficiency in both primary school and lower secondary school. Additionally, this study also gains insight into the difficulties that students encounter while solving modelling tasks. The study includes two modelling tasks on three difficulty levels for 248 learners ranging from 11 to 15 years old. At each level, learners encounter difficulties when constructing a meaningful representation of the described modelling problem or may even fail to understand the problem. These representation problems are qualitatively analysed and are shown to be partially related to learners’ language problems.

Textbook narratives of a nation’s past often present a limited frame of reference, which impedes the aim of teaching history from multiple perspectives. This study aims to explore the use of multiperspectivity in teachers’ lesson designs for 10th grade students based upon a text that includes multiple perspectives (HP) (N=8) compared to a text that hardly includes multiperspectivity (LP) (N=10). The lesson designs were analyzed on multiperspectivity regarding aims, instruction, materials and learning activities, and also on actors, elements of scale, dimensions, historians interpretations and students’ perspectives. We found that different dimensions (for example, political, economic) were more often incorporated in the lesson designs based upon text HP, but that students’ perspectives were more often included in the designs based upon text LP. Only one fifth of the lesson designs reflected a high overall level of multiperspectivity. Nevertheless, text HP generated more multiperspectivity with respect to aims and instruction, dimensions, scale and historiography than text LP. Interviews with the teachers showed that the interpretation of the exam program – either a focus on learning historical reasoning or acquiring a chronological overview of knowledge – seemed decisive in the design of the lessons. This study calls for careful incorporating multiperspectivity in textbook by authors, and in their lessons by teachers who seek to do justice to multiple perspectives.

In 2018 startte – in het kader van het actieplan Lerarentekort Amsterdam – een project met als doel de aantrekkelijkheid van het beroep van leraar in Amsterdam te versterken om daarmee te stimuleren dat Amsterdamse leraren met plezier en passie in het (Amsterdamse) onderwijs blijven werken. Het belangrijkste aangrijpingspunt hiervoor is het vergroten van de mogelijkheden voor loopbaanontwikkeling van leraren, daarbij geïnspireerd door het Beroepsbeeld voor de leraar1 . In CIMO2 -termen zien de beoogde uitkomsten van de leergangen er als volgt uit: [outcome] Projectdoel: docenten behouden voor het beroep… [mechanisme] door het (creëren en) doen ervaren van (meer) mogelijkheden voor loopbaanontwikkeling… [interventie] door een aantal leergangen te organiseren… [context] in de complexe context van onderwijs in Amsterdam Het hier gepresenteerde monitoronderzoek dient ter evaluatie van de inspanningen: doen de leergangen wat ze moeten doen; wat leveren ze daadwerkelijk op in termen van het ervaren van meer mogelijkheden voor loopbaanontwikkeling? Ze worden – waar relevant – verslagen in CIMO-termen, zodat er ook zicht ontstaat op de mechanismes onder de opbrengsten. De uitkomsten van dit onderzoek worden daarmee bruikbaar voor het vervolg van het project.

The present experimental study examined whether a different focus during a pre-task planning observation task affects learners’ subsequent oral task performance. Forty-eight ninth-grade students learning German as a foreign language were randomly assigned to two different planning conditions: video observations with a focus on language (FonL) and video observations with a focus on content (FonC). With a communicative oral task we measured the effects on oral task performance, in terms of attempted (accurate) use of the target structure and complexity, in terms of number of words, subordination and coordination. In addition we investigated whether there was a trade-off between attempted (accurate) use of the target structure and complexity. Results showed that the focus of the observations at the pre-task stage did indeed lead to different outcomes: students in the language condition used the grammatical target structure more often and more accurately, whereas students of the content condition generated more coordinate and subordinate clauses. Trade-offs were found between attempted (accurate) use of the target structure and the use of subordinate clauses. These findings imply that, depending on the purposes of the lesson, the observation of peer-model videos with different planning foci can be effectively used to promote (accurate) use of targeted grammatical structures and improve complexity during subsequent task performance.

Er iets paradoxaals aan de hand met het leren van leraren. De complexiteit van het beroep neemt toe en docenten opereren onder grote onder druk. Die complexiteit vraagt om levenslang lerende leraren en staat tegelijkertijd dat leren in de weg. Terwijl er steeds meer oog is voor de sleutelrol die de leraar speelt bij het ondersteunen van het leren van kinderen (bijv. Hattie, 2003; Muijs et al., 2014; Van de Grift, 2010), wordt het leren van leraren zelf als problematisch gezien. Volgens de Inspectie van het Onderwijs (2013; 2017) laat met name de professionele ontwikkeling van ervaren leraren te wensen over, terwijl er – ook voor hen – veel te leren valt. Immers, de wereld verandert in hoog tempo en dat vraagt leraren om adaptief, innovatief en reflectief te zijn, om snel in te kunnen spelen op nieuwe ontwikkelingen (OECD, 2014). Lang niet alle leraren hebben die wendbaarheid, blijkt uit onderzoek (bijv. Darling-Hammond & Bransford, 2005) en een leven lang leren is geen gemeengoed in het onderwijs (Muijs et al, 2014). In dit discussie-artikel problematiseer ik dit thema en verken ik een oplossingsrichting voor het ondersteunen van het leren van leraren: ik bepleit het inzetten van safe havens als kritische succesfactor bij het organiseren van professioneel leren. Druk kan een aanleiding voor leren vormen, maar alleen als leraren voldoende veiligheid ervaren en zich uitgenodigd voelen hun ideeën en praktijken ter discussie te stellen.

In the Netherlands, historical thinking skills have been a substantial component of the history curriculum for quite some time. Textbooks include a variety of historical sources and tasks to develop historical thinking skills. The central examination assesses students’ ability to identify processes of continuity and change, causes and consequences, and to evaluate the trustworthiness and usability of historical sources. Teacher education programs include lessons or even courses about historical thinking. Nevertheless, teaching historical thinking and reasoning appears challenging for teachers. This is even more the case since the Dutch curriculum renewal moved toward more emphasis on broad overview knowledge.In this contribution, we first describe how historical thinking appears in the Dutch history curriculum, teacher education programs, and the classroom. Second, we discuss three approaches to bridge the gap between theory and practice and support prospective and experienced history teachers in realizing historical thinking in the classroom. The first approach is making historical thinking a core component of the teacher education program. The second approach is engaging prospective teachers in educational design research, and the third approach is a professional development program that starts with the collaborative analysis of how students reason historically.

This study investigates a questionnaire that measures epistemological beliefs in history. Participants were 922 exam students. A basic division between naïve and nuanced ideas underpins the questionnaire. However, results show this division oversimplifies the underlying structure. Exploratory factor analysis extracted 5 factors, separating items connected to nature of knowledge from nature of knowing. Furthermore, EFA problematized the distinction between naïve and nuanced ideas on subjectivity. Experts also reported large variance on subjectivity; therefore, these items were excluded from the questionnaire. The final questionnaire contained 3 factors focusing on the objective nature of (1) historical knowledge and (2) historical knowing, and on (3) methodological criteria. Finally, differences between school tracks and relationships between epistemological beliefs, interest and history grade were explored.

Any attempt to improve history education depends on a sound knowledge of its current state as well as of possible alternatives. Aiming to broaden nationally limited educational discourse, this book brings together twelve perspectives on history education research from across Europe and America. With a focus on empirical research, each chapter outlines national as well as disciplinary traditions, discusses findings and methodology and generates perspectives for future research, thus allowing insight into remarkably rich and diverse academic traditions. Since the publication of the first edition of this book, empirical research on historical thinking and learning has intensified and diversified. Therefore, each chapter was revised and extensively updated for the second edition. In order to adequately reflect the ever-growing field of research, several authors chose to bring on a co-author for the updated version of their paper. Additionally, a new introduction provides a comparative perspective on the chapters contained in this volume

Traditionally, teacher professional learning is often seen as something that mainly takes place in organized, formalized settings. This article takes a broader starting point: the idea that it can be understood as the result of the teachers’ confrontations and interactions with and within their professional contexts, and that context can thus serve as a source for learning. To gain a closer understanding of the nature of these contexts, we start with exploring these contexts from a theoretical point of view. We then look for evidence for the role of different contexts in teacher learning autobiographies and learner reports, produced by a diverse group of experienced teachers (n = 18), as part of their course work in a master’s programme. The findings suggest that three contexts can be identified – a perso3nal practice domain, a social domain, and a theoretical domain – and that confrontations in each of these domains can take place planned as well as unplanned. The relevance of the study is that understanding the ways in which context can serve as a source for learning can contribute to the debate on how to stimulate teacher professional learning.

This article discusses translation processes of proficient students who translate Latin fables into Dutch in secondary school. The participants performed two tasks on a computer. They translated a Latin fable and edited a Dutch translation of another Latin fable while their activities were monitored by eye-tracker, screencast and keystroke logging. Immediately after the tasks the participants were invited to view their eye-tracking film and retrace their thoughts at the time of translating (stimulated recall). The article focuses on the stimulated recall interviews, and more specifically on the role of revision in the translation process. It presents a case study of one participant, as well as the strategies participants described to have used in tackling two specific translation problems. Data suggest that proficient participants rely on text comprehension rather than morphological knowledge to solve translation problems. The research shows three key elements as indicators for successful translation process resulting in a coherent target text: (1) a wide variety of problem-solving strategies and the ability to switch strategies, (2) the availability and use of metalanguage to verbalise the chosen strategy, and (3) revision of the target text.

Het blijkt in de praktijk niet eenvoudig te zijn om contextrijke opdrachten te maken. Wanneer is een opdracht authentiek? Kunnen de gestelde doelen ermee behaald worden? Kunnne meerdere antwoorden mogelijk zijn? Op welke manier kunnen leerlingen samenwerken Over welke strategieën beschikken de leerlingen? Welke sturing moet worden gegeven?

Hierbij nogmaals een analyse van een vraag uit het M&O-examen vwo 2017, 1e tijdvak. Bij deze analyse wordt het accent gelegd op het ordelijk beantwoorden van vragen.

We laten leerlingen vaak samenwerken aan opgaven. Maar is dit wel effectief? Uit meer dan 40 jaar onderzoek is gebleken dat, als leerlingen samenwerken aan een taal, de leerprestaties verbeteren (Slavin, 2015). Maar wat wordt dan precise verstaan onder samenwerken?

Classroom discussion is frequently proposes as an essential part of democratic citizenship education. Literature, however, pays little attention to what kind of discussion is most effective and how teachers can facilitate a discussion. This study aims to contribute to the development of a framework for analysing the characteristics of classroom discussions and the different roles teachers can adopt in guiding a discussion on controversial issues. In addition, we investigated how the way teachers guide the discussion is related to the structure and content features of the discussion. The framework was used to analyse five classroom discussions in secondary education. Our framework appeared to be useful for revealing differences in the structure and content features of the classroom discussions and in the way teachers guide the discussion. The results also indicated that a high degree of teacher regulation was related to high content quality and more participation from students. A high degree of student regulation was linked to more genuine discussion among students. The study underlines the importance of taking account of the teacher’s role in research into the effectiveness of classroom discussions for democratic citizenship education and the study makes useful suggestions for teachers when preparing for a classroom discussion.

The implementation of educational reforms requires behavioral changes from the teachers involved. Theories on successful behavioral change prescribe the following conditions: teachers need to possess the necessary knowledge and skills, form strong positive intentions to perform the new behavior, and have a supporting environment for change. However, existing approaches to teacher professional development in the context of educational reforms are predominantly aimed at the development of knowledge and skills and at creating a supporting environment, but lack attention to teachers’ intentions to change. In the study described in this article, we performed “motivating-for-educational-change” interviews (MECI) and explored the influence on teachers’ intentions to change in the direction of the proposed national biology education reform, that is, the introduction of a context-based curriculum. The MECI comprised two tools: building on earlier successful experiences and using lesson segments to rearrange instructional approaches. We explored the influence of the MECI technique on the strength and specificity of participating teachers’ intentions. When conducting the MECI, many participants expressed that they now realized how they had already implemented aspects of the reform in their regular instructional approaches. Furthermore, all the participants formulated stronger and more specific intentions to change their regular instructional approach towards that of the proposed reform while taking their regular instructional approach as a starting point.

Taakgericht taalonderwijs stelt het uitvoeren van motiverende, levensechte taaltaken centraal. Vaak beginnen leerlingen gewoon aan de taak. Maar juist in de voorbereidingsfase, de pre-task, oriënteert de leerder zich en juist daar kan leerwinst geboekt worden. In het experiment waarover Marrit van de Guchte, Gert Rijlaarsdam, Martine Braaksma & Peter Bimmel rapporteren, stelden ze het effect vast van twee verschillende soorten van voorbereiding op de kwaliteit van de uiteindelijke spreektaak. Tijdens de voorbereiding observeerden alle leerlingen een video waarbij twee leeftijdgenoten een modeltaak uitvoeren. De ene groep leerlingen richtte de aandacht hierbij op het gebruik van grammaticale structuren, de andere groep op de inhoud van de taak. De studie laat zien dat zowel een focus op inhoud als op vorm tijdens het observeren van videomodellen een positief effect heeft op de uitvoering van de daarop volgende spreektaak.

Students in Dutch Grammar Schools hardly ever achieve the ultimate goal of translating Latin texts: to produce a coherent text that can be read and understood without the aid of the source text. Translating a Latin source text into a coherent Dutch target text is considered a valuable exercise in text comprehension and proficiency in Latin. The rating of the Dutch target text is done by means of an analytic model ("colon-rating") focusing on the linguistic equivalence on clause level of source text and target text. Text cohesion of the target text is not evaluated. In this article I describe my experiment with a rating method that was originally developed and tested in Dutch written composition classes: text scale rating with one or more anchor texts as frame of reference. I conducted a small experiment and tested my results in a workshop at the VCN Nazomerconferentie 2015. The scale rating with an anchor text proves to be a useful tool to assess text cohesion in a target text.

It is well known that most teachers appear to take little or no interest in the activities and findings of educational researchers. In two successive studies, experienced senior high-school teachers’ interest and the questions they pose about their educational practice were studied to establish insights for teacher education and teacher-educator researchers. In the first study, 81 teachers’ research reports for obtaining a master’s degree were analysed and the results were validated by questioning another 39 teachers and having them pose questions about their practice. The results showed that students’ cognitive learning was the teachers’ main priority. In the second study, 22 teachers completed a questionnaire about themes from educational research related to cognitive learning. The results showed that the teachers were interested in the topics of cognitive growth and insightful and engaged learning. How to practise these topics regularly was important to the teachers regardless of their teaching discipline. Implications for teacher-educator researchers are discussed.

Contains fulltext : 102461.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access) The aim of this study is to test the effects of dynamically scaffolding social regulation of middle school students working in a computer-based learning environment. Dyads in the scaffolding condition (N = 56) are supported with computer-generated scaffolds and students in the control condition (N = 54) do not receive scaffolds. The scaffolds are dynamically adjusted to dyads’ progress with an attention management system. The scaffolds support two aspects of socially regulated learning namely the metacognitive and cognitive activities. We analyzed the effects of dynamic scaffolding on dyads’ performance, their perception of the learning environment and students' knowledge acquisition. We found that scaffolding had a positive effect on the dyads’ learning performance, but did not affect students’ domain knowledge. The repeated measurements of perception of the learning environment showed that dyads in the experimental condition were more positive about their teachers and their collaborators than students in the control condition. With respect to their perception of the software and the 3D embodied agent delivering the scaffolds, we found a stronger decrease of appreciation over time in the scaffolding condition compared to the control condition.

In this study we investigated the effects of two forms of instruction: strengthening concepts and strengthening the ability to connect context with concepts. Although students may have acquired a reasonable amount of conceptual knowledge as a result of economics courses, two obstacles may prevent them from achieving transfer. One obstacle is a lack of a rich conceptual network; another is the inability to make connections between the conceptual network and realistic problems. The aim of this study was to find out what contributes most to the ability to transfer: strengthening conceptual knowledge or strengthening the making of connections. Some 139 students of the pre-final year of pre-university education participated in an experiment with two conditions and with a pre-test and a post-test. All students performed significantly better on the post-test in which conceptual knowledge was measured compared to the pre-test. No significant differences were measured between the two instructions on the post-test on transfer. We concluded that making connections is a difficult skill for students to learn. Context directed instruction definitively supports student’s knowledge of concepts.

Heritage education has recently become a distinct type of teaching and learning. Heritage organizations argue that monuments, relics, and other remains offer young people a sensory experience and stimulate emotional engagement with the past. This approach, however, seems contrary to the goals of history teaching in the Netherlands, which requires the application of historical thinking. In this article we first assess the Dutch institutional contexts of history teaching and heritage education. Next we reflect on the significance of historical distance and proximity in both types of education. For this purpose we have developed an analytical framework comprising five elements: time, person, imagination, place, and engagement.

This paper explores the effect of computerized scaffolding and different forms of scaffolds on small groups’ collaborative discourse. We developed a computerized scaffolding system that uses an attention management system to support metacognitive activities in small groups. We previously found that the scaffolding stimulates the group’ metacognitive activities and enhances individual metacognitive knowledge. Moreover different forms of scaffolds have differential effects on learning that cannot be explained by quantitative differences in the groups’ metacognitive activities. Therefore, we investigate to qualitative differences in the groups’ collaborative discourse in this study. We found that groups receiving scaffolding had significantly less ignored metacognitive episodes. Groups receiving problematizing scaffolds had significantly less ignored metacognitive episodes and more co-constructed metacognitive episodes compared to groups receiving structuring scaffolds. These findings indicate that scaffolding indeed positively influenced collaborative discourse and intensive collaborative discourse seems to explain the differential learning effects of different forms of scaffolds.

Schools are expected to pay attention to citizenship education, including for the global world. The concept global citizenship can get different meanings. In our theoretical orientation, we distinguish between three forms of modern global citizenship: Open global citizenship; Moral global citizenship; Social-political global citizenship. In an explorative study, we interviewed teachers on their visions and practices concerning global citizenship education. Teachers opt for moral global citizenship. In their views, an open global citizenship would neglect the moral dimensions of global citizenship. They prefer not to pay too much attention to political affairs, because of the age of students and because politics in education is a rather sensitive issue.

Generally, high-school students have been characterized as bored and disengaged from the learning process. However, certain educational designs promote excitement and engagement. Game-based learning is assumed to be such a design. In this study, the concept of flow is used as a framework to investigate student engagement in the process of gaming and to explain effects on game performance and student learning outcome. Frequency 1550, a game about medieval Amsterdam merging digital and urban play spaces, has been examined as an exemplar of game-based learning. This 1-day game was played in teams by 216 students of three schools for secondary education in Amsterdam. Generally, these students show flow with their game activities, although they were distracted by solving problems in technology and navigation. Flow was shown to have an effect on their game performance, but not on their learning outcome. Distractive activities and being occupied with competition between teams did show an effect on the learning outcome of students: the fewer students were distracted from the game and the more they were engaged in group competition, the more students learned about the medieval history of Amsterdam. Consequences for the design of game-based learning in secondary education are discussed.

United or dispersed? Civic competences in a differentiated schooling system . This paper examines whether there are differences in civic competences between secondary school children on the basis of school type, gender, ethnicity and parents’ education, and whether such differences are smaller in schools that devote greater attention to civic education. Using survey data form students and school principals in fifteen secondary schools in the Netherlands, we examine civic competences relating to ‘democratic behaviour’, ‘socially responsible behaviour’, and ‘dealing with social differences’. Our analyses show that students differ significantly in how they judge their own competences in these domains. Furthermore, differences in socially responsible behaviour between students of different levels of parental education are smaller in schools that pay much attention to civic education. No evidence for mitigating effects of a school’s attention to civic education emerged for either democratic behaviour or responsible behaviour.

The richness and complexity of video portfolios endanger both the reliability and validity of the assessment of teacher competencies. In a post-graduate teacher education program, the assessment of video portfolios was evaluated for its reliability, construct validity, and consequential validity. Although video portfolio facilitated a reliable and valid assessment of teacher competencies, procedures to improve assessment quality were also revealed and are therefore discussed: more explicit grounding of assessment results in the data, peer debriefing, prolonged engagement with the assessment data, cross-checking to find confirmatory or counter examples.

Keywords Learningstrategies.AssessmentmethodsFor many years educational research and practice have paid attention to learners’ learningstrategies and their improvement. Both researchers and practitioners use different kinds ofmeasuring methods to assess learning strategies (Van Hout-Wolters 2000, 2009; Veenman2011; Veenman et al. 2006; Winne and Perry 2000). Learning strategies can be defined ascertain combinations of goal-oriented activities applied to learning in school settings. Adistinction is regularly made between cognitive, metacognitive and affective learningstrategies. Numerous specific learning strategies are distinguished, and diverse overviews oflearning strategies have appeared in several publications (see e.g., Alexander 2006; Pintrich2004; Van Hout-Wolters et al. 2000; Winne and Hadwin 1998).The ongoing focus onconceptualizing learning strategies, especially metacognitive strategies, is paralleled byensuing debates about how to measure these strategies, and the usability of self-reportinstruments is particularly prone to heated scientific discussions. This special issue iscontributing to the discussion of strategy assessment by presenting five empirical studies inwhich pros and cons of self-report instruments are demonstrated. All articles attend tovalidity issues surrounding the measurement of cognitive and metacognitive strategies withself-report instruments.The reasons for measuring learning strategies are diverse. For example, teachers mayadminister questionnaires to obtain information about the strong and weak points oflearners’ strategies and provide the learners with individual support accordingly. Learningstrategies can also be measured to determine whether the formulated (sub)goals of strategy

Self-regulated learning has been described as an adaptive process: students adapt their learning strategies for attaining different learning goals. In order to be adaptive, students must have a clear notion of what the task requirements consist of. Both trace data and questionnaire data indicate that students adapt study strategies in limited ways and that their awareness of task demands seems to be low. In the present think-aloud study we examined task awareness of tenth-graders who selected text fragments in three different selection tasks. Students’ task awareness was analysed at a global and a local task level. Awareness at the global task level refers to processing the instruction and reflecting about general selection goals; awareness at the local task level includes spontaneous reasoning about selecting specific text fragments. On either level, students showed difficulties in verbalizing task demands. In line with previous work, tenth-graders apparently experience a limited awareness of task demands.

Purpose: Although it is expected that building schoolwide capacity for teacher learning will improve teaching practices, there is little systematic evidence to support this claim. This study aimed to examine the relative impact of transformational leadership practices, school organizational conditions, teacher motivational factors, and teacher learning on teaching practices.Research Design: Data were collected from a survey of 502 teachers from32 elementary schools in the Netherlands. A structural model was tested on the within-school covariance matrix and a chi-square test taking into account nonindependence of observations.Findings: Results suggest that teachers’ engagement in professional learning activities, in particular experimenting and reflection, is a powerful predictor for teaching practices. Teachers’ sense of self-efficacy appeared to be the most important motivational factor for explaining teacher learning and teaching practices. Motivational factors also mediate the effects of school organizational conditions and leadership pra- ctices on teacher learning and teaching practices. Finally, transformational leadership practices stimulate teachers’ professional learning and motivation and improve school organizational conditions.Conclusions: For school leaders, to foster teacher learning and improve teaching practices a combination of transformational leadership behaviors is required. Further research is needed to examine the relative effects of transformational leadership dimensions on school organizational conditions, teacher motivation, and professional learning in schools. Finally, conditions for school improvement were examined at one point in time. Longitudinal studies to school improvement are required to model changes in schools’ capacities and growth and their subsequent effects on teaching practices.

This article discusses measuring learning strategies by means of questionnaires. In ‘multi-method’ research, in which think-aloud measures are compared with questionnaires, low or moderate correlations are found. A conclusion often drawn is that learners are not able to verbally report on their learning activities. Alternative explanations concern two other possibilities: first, that different learning strategies may be measured by the two methods; second, that the measuring methods may be aimed at different learning tasks. Keeping these prerequisites in mind, we constructed a task-specific questionnaire directly based on a taxonomy for coding think-aloud protocols in text studying. We found a higher correlation (r=.51) between the questionnaire and think-aloud protocols than is regularly reported. A case-study, in which four students answered the questionnaire while thinking aloud, led to new insights into why a questionnaire may lead to somewhat different ratings of activities than the think-aloud method. Based on these results, task-specific questionnaires may be improved. Our studies involved a fair comparison between a questionnaire and think-aloud protocols. We cautiously conclude that if task-specific questionnaires are meticulously constructed and examined in new ways, they might become reasonably adequate alternatives for the labor-intensive think-aloud method in measuring learners’ learning strategies.

The aim of this study is to contribute to the innovation of pre-vocational education, in particular, students' orientation at possible future occupations. From our theoretical understanding, vocational orientation that makes sense to students requires them to be part of a 'community of learners for vocational orientation'. In such a community, students are stimulated to learn deliberately while participating in vocational practices. In this article we distinguish four parameters to define a community of learners for vocational orientation. We then present the results of a collective instrumental case study into teaching-learning processes in four classes in two pre-vocational secondary schools. Data were collected through classroom observations, a series of interviews with teachers and students. The interviews focused on eight 'critical incidents' recorded during classroom observations. The results show that the parameters 'shared learning' and 'meaningful learning' are more manifest in the teaching-learning process than 'reflective learning' and 'a focus on transferable learning outcomes'. The article concludes with a discussion of the limits of working in simulated work situations in school for realizing effective pre-vocational education. © 2010 British Educational Research Association.

In order to ascertain which school characteristics can explain the differences in effectiveness between schools, important methodological choices have to be made in school effectiveness research. One of these choices relates to the criterion or criteria the researcher wishes to use to compare schools. Should, for example, a school be deemed effective if it achieves high performances in mathematics, or in mother tongue or in both? In order to safeguard the construct validity of the concept school effectiveness this type of research should include multiple effectiveness criteria and thus reduce the risk of mono-operation bias. In that case two analysis strategies can be used: a series of univariate analyses (one for each output measure); or a multivariate model in which different dependent variables are modelled at the same time. In this methodological review we will examine what the implications of these different analysis methods are for research results. The dataset is derived from a large-scale effectiveness study conducted into technical and vocational secondary education in Flanders. Based on the results of this study we will make methodological suggestions for researchers in the field of educational effectiveness and school leadership.

The aim of this study is to better understand the role of researchers and school leaders insupporting school improvement through data feedback in the context of more responsiveforms of accountability in the Netherlands. A process evaluation was conducted concerningthe first three years of a collaborative project of a multi-management group of 18 primaryschools and a group of researchers. The results show that implementing a system of datafeedback starting from a shared vision on the need to learn from data, fostered processes in the school of learning from data for school improvement. The results also show a growinginquiry habit of mind amongst school principals, whereas the researchers learned how totake their role in the collaboration by providing conditions that enhance schoolimprovement from data feedback. The results indicate that the collaborative process can becharacterised by several learning functions and thus contribute to a better understandingof how the conditions for data feedback and school improvement can be enhanced.

This study examined the effects of scaffolds on triads’ metacognitive activities in complex open learning environments. In an experimental design, two experimental groups receiving scaffolds were compared with a control group. The experimental groups differed in the form of scaffolding messages used: structuring scaffolds vs. problematizing scaffolds. We analyzed the effects of scaffolding and the different forms of scaffolds on the amount of metacognitive activities of triads on the interpersonal plane. The results show that scaffolding has a significant effect on stimulating metacognitive activities; triads receiving scaffolds performed significantly more metacognitive activities on the interpersonal plane. Additionally, scaffolding also has a significant development effect; triads continue to show more metacognitive activities after the scaffolding is ceased. Finally, no significant differences between the two forms of scaffolding were found: triads receiving problematizing scaffolds did not showed more metacognitive activities during or after the scaffolding compared to triads receiving structuring scaffolds.

This study investigates the use of an evaluation function to increase the local relevance of replies in online anchored discussion. Being implemented in a university course on French linguistics, a regular system for anchored discussion is compared with two versions that are enhanced with an integrated evaluation function. The function asks students to evaluate the relevance of each others’ replies. To compare between experimental and control conditions, the collaboration protocols are analysed with a newly developed coding scheme for the local relevance of replies. Statistical processing of the data is done with a multilevel approach and results indicate that an evaluation function can effectively increase the local relevance of students’ replies, but only if it is actually used to a certain extent. Using the evaluation function is hypothesized to increase students’ awareness of the importance of writing relevant replies.

What are the possibilities for active student participation in citizenship education and how are students involved in the school as a community? We researched active student participation in schools and in out-of-school learning activities: students’ own lessons, their own school, their own community, but also society beyond the school. The study shows that in particular participation in one’s own lessons and in society outside one’s own community is often disregarded by teachers when they consider citizenship education. But it are precisely these forms of participation that affect the life world of students and which enhance the world view of students outside their own local community. The analysis is complemented by looking at the goals of the activity: is the focus on carrying out the activity, on organizing it, or on analysis and social change?

The Riccati inequality and equality are studied for infinite dimensional linear discrete time stationary systems with respect to the scattering supply rate. The results obtained are an addition to and based on our earlier work on the Kalman-Yakubovich-Popov inequality in [6]. The main theorems are closely related to the results of Yu. M. Arlinski\u{\i} in [3]. The main difference is that we do not assume the original system to be a passive scattering system, and we allow the solutions of the Riccati inequality and equality to satisfy weaker conditions., Comment: Published in Methods of Functional Analysis and Topology (MFAT), available at http://mfat.imath.kiev.ua/article/?id=840

Dutch students in secondary schools hardly ever achieve the ultimate goal of translating Latin texts: to produce a cohesive text that can be read and understood without the aid of the Latin original. Translation Studies may offer thoughts and tools that teachers can use to improve the quality of translating as a classroom activity. This article argues that translating a Latin text into a cohesive Dutch text is a valuable exercise in itself. However, to meet the ultimate goal of translating, the position of ‘translating’ in the Dutch curriculum should be re-evaluated.

In the present study, we examine the effects of prompts and recasts on the acquisition of two new and different grammar structures in a task-based learning environment. Sixty-four 14-year-old 9th grade students (low intermediate) learning German as a foreign language were randomly assigned to three conditions: two experimental groups (one receiving prompts, the other recasts) and a control group. The study involves two subsequent interventions: The first targeted a complex structure, dative case after a preposition; the second a simple structure, comparatives. Pretests, immediate posttests, and delayed posttests included written and oral accuracy as well as oral fluency. Statistical comparisons on both written and oral posttests showed that prompts and recasts were effective, when compared to the control group, with prompts being superior to recasts. Furthermore, the effect of recasts depended on the structure: Recasts were more effective for the comparative than for the dative on written accuracy.

Waren de jaren zestig revolutionair of viel dat achteraf bezien best mee? Over het antwoord op deze vraag zijn historici het onderling niet eens. In de geschiedenisles blijft het ook vaak bij de behandeling van wat er gebeurde, zonder dat verandering zelf ter discussie staat.

The College Board's Advanced Placement (AP) courses and exams are unique in providing a uniform assessment experience to American and international high school students in the fields of United States, European, and World History. This chapter describes how recently announced changes to these courses and exams could affect the way millions of high school students and teachers experience the study of the past. The exam questions follow the scope and content of the AP Course Description, which outlines the topics that students expect to study. The effort to redesign AP history had to begin with a curriculum framework that explained at what depth students needed to learn about historical facts, while making clear how students should articulate skills and habits of mind that show evidence of authentic historical understanding. In order for teachers to have the instructional flexibility needed to improve student's understanding depth and historical thinking skills, the structure and nature of the AP exam had to change.