Previous work has shown that school achievement is lower in children living in poor neighborhoods. In this study, the authors hypothesized a role of neighborhood social capital. Data on 11-year-olds were obtained from the baseline measurements of a family cohort study (n = 328). The data had a cross-level structure: neighborhood level, school…

This study addresses the development of a teacher questionnaire to assess the social participation of pupils with special needs in regular primary schools and is divided into 2 parts. In the 1st part, the construction of the questionnaire is described. The questionnaire consists of 30 statements related to 4 key themes of social participation: …

Background: Various aspects of the home literacy environment are considered to stimulate the emergent literacy development in children without disabilities. It is important to gain insight into the home literacy environment of children with cerebral palsy given that they have been shown to have difficulty acquiring literacy skills. Aims: The aims…

Children with emotional and behavioural disorders (EBD) vary in many respects. In school, specific conditions have to be fulfilled in order to deal adequately with EBD. This study addresses the question how mainstream primary schools design different instructional situations to support pupils with EBD in practice, and how this design could be…

Higher rates of smoking initiation and continuation by female compared with male adolescents, as found in many developed countries, may call for gender-specific prevention programs. Risk factors of smoking initiation and continuation were examined prospectively (1997-2002) among 3205 Dutch elementary schoolchildren (mean age 11.64) in an…

This study assesses the prevalence of combined reading and arithmetic disabilities in 799 Dutch schoolchildren using standardized school achievement tests. Scores of arithmetic, word recognition, reading comprehension, and spelling of children in fourth and fifth grade were used. The main interest involved the co-occurrence of word recognition and…

Whereas educational research has provided evidence that students' characteristics affect their performance, at this stage little is known about which characteristics influence their learning processes and achievement in religious education. This article looks into characteristics that influence students' cognitive achievement in religious…

This study examined whether stimulation of immigrant and national pupils' use of high-quality helping behaviour (experimental condition) during cooperative learning (CL) in classrooms boosts their maths-related talk more than in an educational situation in which such stimulation is largely absent (control condition). A total of 59 elementary-age…

In general, studies on gender and mathematics show that the advantage held by boys over girls in mathematics achievement has diminished markedly over the last 40 years. Some researchers even argue that gender differences in mathematics achievement are no longer a relevant issue. However, the results of the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study…

Studied the learning conceptions of 27 students in their last year of elementary school (grade 6) in the Netherlands. Results show these students to have different beliefs about aspects of learning, resulting in three identifiable learning conceptions: restricted learning conception, functional learning conception, and developmental learning…

For the first time, the annual conference of the European Association for Computer-Assisted Language Learning (EUROCALL) took place in Sweden. The conference took place at the Faculty of Education on historic ground on the old fortification walls of Carolus Dux from the 17th century right in the centre of the city. This year's host comprised the…

Fuzzy trace theory posits that during development the use of verbatim information for solving transitive relationships shifts to the use of gist information. In cognitive developmental research that uses a cross-sectional design, the binomial mixture model is often used to identify such shifts. Because the binomial mixture model assumes equal task…

This article describes Everyday Mathematics, a new math education curriculum targeted to kindergarten, first grade, and second grade students in Holland. It will be introduced to third and fourth grades in 2008. The curriculum helps prepare pupils for standardized tests; allows for students to work at their own rate; involves parents in helping…

Evaluated an experimental program in which students were taught to design models as a tool in the learning of percentages and compared results with outcomes from a control group in which teachers directly provided models. Results for 121 fifth graders in The Netherlands show significantly better performance in experimental condition than in the…

The purpose of this study was to describe the variations in literacy achievement among native and non-native upper primary school children (grades three to six) in the Netherlands. Various measures of word decoding, reading literacy and writing skill were collected from 1091 native Dutch children, 753 children with a former Dutch colonial…