This paper presents evidence that students with special needs (SN) have no impact on the academic achievement of their peers in primary and secondary schools in the Netherlands. Administrative data are used on all Dutch students who are in their final grade of primary and secondary education in the years 2015-18 and student and school fixed effect…

Dutch secondary education is a multi-tiered system, and many students are placed in a single track in the first year (seventh grade) of secondary education. As part of the placement procedure, all sixth-grade students take an end of primary school test. Although these standardised attainment tests (SATs) are considered high-stakes tests, the…

Subject choices in secondary education are important decisions, since they critically determine the tertiary fields of study that pupils can pursue. Multiple variables may play a role in pupils' decisions, such as their social environment and attitudes. The current study investigated subject choice intentions using the Theory of Planned Behavior…

Typically, parents or other legal guardians are asked for an active declaration that the participation of their child in scientific research is informed and voluntary. However, asking for active parental consent leads to lower quality studies and passive parental consent might be preferable. In this study, we used an online survey in which parents…

Purpose: Worldwide, schools implement social-emotional learning programs to enhance students' social-emotional skills. Although parents play an essential role in teaching these skills, knowledge about their perspectives on social-emotional learning is limited. In providing insight into the perspectives of parents from adolescent students this…

Assessment for Learning (AfL) is complex requiring teacher competences for collecting, analysing and interpreting evidence of student progress, and for adapting instruction and learning accordingly. In this study, the four-component instructional design (4C/ID) model for complex learning was used to design a teacher professional development (TPD)…

In many countries, high-stakes tests play an important role in allocating students to prestigious tracks and schools in secondary education or to prestigious programs and colleges in tertiary education. It is not clear what happens if the cutoff points in these tests are systematically lowered. Will this affect subsequent educational careers? This…

A context-based approach to education aims to improve students' meaningful learning and uses authentic situations in which scientific concepts are applied. The use of contexts may contribute to the learning of abstract concepts such as algorithms. The selection of appropriate contexts, however, is challenging for teachers. It is therefore…

The rising use of technology in classrooms has also brought with it a concomitant wave of computer-based assessments. The argument for computer-based testing is often framed in terms of efficiency and data management: computer-based tests facilitate more efficient processing of test data and the rate at which feedback can be leveraged for student…

Purpose: The COVID-19 pandemic was a far-reaching disruptor in K-12 education beginning in the spring of 2020 when nearly all schools pivoted to remote instruction. Although the pandemic was officially declared over by the World Health Organization in May 2023, many questions remain about the long-term impact of the pandemic on K-12 education. The…

Public speaking often imposes a nerve-wracking atmosphere in the L2 classrooms. Consequently, an alternative to the anxiety-arousing activity by using advanced technology for pedagogy is urgent. Prior publications reported the use of virtual reality (VR) for training public speaking and alleviating students' public speaking anxiety (PSA). However,…

The goal of the study was to deliver and validate a new solution-focused instrument, the Focus Skills Questionnaire (FSQ), to assess the degree of executive functioning skills in the school context, for three different education levels (elementary, secondary, and tertiary education) and informant groups (students, teachers and parents) on a sample…

The generation, use, and analysis of educational data comes with many promises and opportunities, especially where digital materials allow usage of learning analytics (LA) as a tool in data-based decision-making (DBDM). However, there are questions about the interplay between teachers, students, context, and technology. Therefore, this paper…

This preregistered study examined how a collaborative school culture and schools' collective efficacy are related to educational professionals' attitudes, personal self-efficacy, and classroom practices concerning education for high-ability students based on survey data from 875 educational professionals (teachers, counselors, and school leaders).…

The Netherlands has a unique dual education system. The government funds both public and private schools. Parents have much freedom to set up schools to realize their religious ideals. The freedom of education enshrined in the Dutch Constitution is controversial. The question has arisen as to whether the government should fund private schools.…