In this experimental study, it was examined to what extent peers and sex were important predictors of risk taking behavior of adolescents. Participants were 140 Dutch adolescents (52.9% boys, 12-15 years) who completed the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) as a measure of risk taking behavior, either individually or in the presence of homogenous…

This study concerns peer selection and influence dynamics in early adolescents' friendships regarding academic achievement. Using longitudinal social network analysis (RSiena), both selection and influence processes were investigated for students' average grades and their cluster-specific grades (i.e., language, exact, and social cluster). Data…

How can science teachers support students in developing an appropriate declarative knowledge base for solving problems? This article focuses on the question whether the development of students' memory of scientific propositions is better served by writing propositions down on paper or by making drawings of propositions either by silent or…

This study investigates the relationship between students' use of information and communication technology (ICT) for social communication and their computer and information literacy (CIL) scores. It also examines whether gender and socioeconomic background moderates this relationship. We utilized student data from IEA's International Computer and…

In the Netherlands, students with intellectual disabilities (ID) attend practical education (PE). Teachers generally use demonstration as a form of direct instruction (DI) and students have difficulty working independently. Strategy instruction (SI) is a question-answer-based method that stimulates students' autonomy by getting them to verbalize…

Notwithstanding dramatically low levels of professed religiosity in Western Europe, the religious school sector continues to thrive. One explanation for this paradox is that nowadays parents choose religious schools primarily for their higher academic reputation. Empirical evidence for this presumed denominational advantage is mixed. We examine…

The purpose of this study was to identify and validate subtypes of peer status by integrating preference and popularity into a single framework. Person-oriented analyses were performed among 3,630 children and adolescents of different cohorts in primary and secondary education. In the young age groups (Grade 3/4 to Grade 7), three clusters were…

Using self-report questionnaires, a survey among 606 Dutch primary school children aged 10 to 12 years examined relationships among social support, gender, victimization, and depressive feelings. Hierarchical regression analyses confirmed that victims and bully/victims would report more depressive feelings than uninvolved children. There was no…

This report presents the results of a study of eighth-grade science teaching, conducted as part of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 1999 Video Study. The Video Study is a supplement to the TIMSS 1999 student assessment, a successor to the TIMSS 1995 student assessment. The TIMSS 1999 Video Study had the broad purpose…

In the scientific literature, the debate around the school and class effect is polarized, because the variance between schools and classes is explained either by school and class process or by group composition. The first aim of this article is to shed light on this debate and move beyond it by reviewing qualitative and quantitative studies…

This paper examines ways in which coherent reasoning about key concepts such as variability, sampling, data, and distribution can be developed as part of statistics education. Instructional activities that could support such reasoning were developed through design research conducted with students in grades 7 and 8. Results are reported from a…