The current study replicated an earlier investigation by Bouwer and van der Veen (2023) where 10 Grade 5 and 6 classrooms in the Netherlands (210 students) were randomly assigned to a treatment or control condition, with treatment students evidencing improvements in the quality of their essays after practice writing argumentative essays, reading…

This study investigated the developing ability of children to identify emotional facial expressions in terms of the contexts in which they generally occur. We presented Dutch 6- to 9-year-old primary school children (N = 164, 98 girls) prototypical contexts for different emotion categories and asked them whether different kinds of facial…

Due to pandemic-induced lockdown(s) in 2020, dyslexia treatment was forced to move to online platforms. This study examined whether Dutch children who received online treatment progressed as much in their reading and spelling performance as children who received the usual face-to-face treatment. To this end, 254 children who received…

Background: Creativity requires both divergent and convergent thinking. Previous research established that "divergent" thinking relates to mathematics performance, but generally ignored the role of "convergent" thinking and, hence, leaves it unclear how both might interact when children work on mathematical tasks. This study…

Purpose: This study explores limitations in communication in daily life of children with developmental language disorder (DLD) from their parents' perspective as well as communicative abilities and social functioning in the classroom from their teacher's perspective. Furthermore, differences between children with mixed receptive-expressive…

The goals of the present study were to compare the reliability and convergent validity of two reading attitude measures for beginning readers and to get more insight into children's reading attitude around the transition to formal reading instruction. 468 children in kindergarten and Grade 1 completed a more traditional questionnaire based on…

This study investigated potential differences in the processes of solving analogies between gifted and average-ability children (aged 9-10 years old) in a dynamic testing setting. Utilizing a pre-test-training-post-test control group design, participants were split in four subgroups: gifted dynamic testing (n = 24), gifted control (n = 26),…

The current study investigates the effects of the school lockdowns during school years 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 on the achievement scores of primary school students during the COVID-19 pandemic. We analyzed scores for spelling, reading fluency (i.e., decoding speed), reading comprehension, and mathematics from standardized student tracking systems…

Most actions targeting children's health behaviors have limited involvement of children in the development, potentially contributing to disappointing effectiveness. Therefore, in the 3-year "Kids in Action" study, 9- to 12-year-old children from a lower-socioeconomic neighborhood were involved as coresearchers in the development,…

The study reported in this article investigated the appropriateness of Mathematical Knowledge in Teaching of three pre-service primary school teachers (PSTs), teaching an informal statistical inference (ISI) lesson to primary school students. Using an ISI framework and the Knowledge Quartet framework, the presence and appropriateness of the PSTs'…

In this study, we analyze in-depth interviews conducted with 26 Dutch third-graders as well as interviews with one of each child's parents. The children attended one of six schools, each with a relatively large population of families with a low socioeconomic status, where home-based literacy assignments aimed at increasing children's enjoyment of…

To draw valid and reliable conclusions from child studies involving facial expressions, well-controlled and validated (child) facial stimuli are necessary. The current study is the first to validate the facial emotional expressions of child models in school-aged children. In this study, we validated the Radboud Faces Database child models in a…

This 3-wave longitudinal study explored the complex ways in which students' motivation (motivational attitudes and beliefs), relationships with teachers (closeness, conflict, and dependency), and academic achievement (reading comprehension and math performance) inform one another from kindergarten through 6th grade. The sample included students (N…

In 2009, School-Wide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (SWPBIS) was introduced in the Netherlands to support schools in creating safe learning environments. In this longitudinal study, we explored effects of SWPBIS on student outcomes in the Netherlands. Fidelity of implementation of SWPBIS has been associated with improved student…

Background: The present study examined patterns and predictors of reading comprehension growth in first language (L1) and second language (L2) readers in the upper grades of primary school. Previous research suggests that L1 and L2 readers differ in their growth trajectories and that differences in language proficiency play a role in this.…