Between the 1940s and 1960s across Western Europe a spirit of reform along comprehensive lines manifested itself in secondary education, aiming at a reduction of the existing social inequality of educational chances. These reforms are said to be rooted in new policies and in new approaches in educational studies. This article explores the…

As part of a government-initiated programme based on the concept of professional development schools, three secondary schools in Amsterdam decided to facilitate teachers in their schools to engage in practice research. This was based on the assumption that research conducted by teachers contributes both to the learning of the teacher researcher…

In this article, an attempt to identify further directions in research designs that researchers can use to contribute to the relevance of educational research findings, by including teachers' practicality issues, is presented. Sixty experienced teachers in secondary education read the reporting of modified experimental research findings about an…

While much research utilisation literature shows an increasing emphasis on the added value of structural partnerships, which should facilitate prolonged interactions between researchers, policy makers and professionals, the question of how such collaborative structures "develop over time" and what consequences that has in terms of…

This paper investigates the consequences of institutional changes on academic research practices in eight fields of natural science in the Netherlands. The authors analyse the similarities and differences among the dynamics of these different fields and reflect on possible explanations for the changes observed. The study shows that the increasing…

Research and teaching are supposed to be closely related in universities. Among academics the belief in a symbiotic relationship is strong. However, it is unclear what form this relationship can take. Several authors have presented categories and dimensions to clarify this relationship and the aim of this project was to contribute to this…

This article describes the complex nature of collaborative relationships, the difficulties of conducting research with others, and the complications of partnerships in educational research. To create and sustain a communicative space in which participants can collaborate to innovate education and curriculum, time and opportunity to develop trust…

In a Dutch self-study project, five teacher educators studied their own practices with three experienced researchers as the facilitators of the group. These facilitators also conducted a self-study of the whole project, particularly focusing on helping and hindering aspects of the facilitation process. In this article, we report two of the teacher…

This article describes and reflects our experiences as researchers in a design-based research project on a curriculum innovation focused on meaningful, co-operative learning in vocational education in the Netherlands. The project was successful in gaining insights in possible practices for workplace learning but did only partly realize the…

In recent years, considerable attention has been paid to the effectiveness of knowledge transfer processes between academia and industry. Although there is growing evidence that the characteristics of individual researchers are important when explaining cases of successful transfer, few studies have taken the individual researcher as their unit of…

The present article reports on a case study into the influence and impact of action research carried out by teachers in a special school. The action research was an important component of the two-year, post-initial, in-service course in special educational needs, provided by Fontys University of Applied Sciences, Department of Inclusive and…

The authors discuss a new method that combines the randomized response technique with item response theory. This method allows the researcher to obtain information at the individual person level without knowing the true responses. With this new method, it is possible to compare groups of individuals by means of analysis of variance or regression…

Increasing demands for accountability and applicability raise the question of how organizational factors affect researchers' performance and career choices. In a study of Dutch medical Ph.D. student's experiences, organizational culture and climate and attitudes towards research quality are related to performance and career choices. Ph.D.s who…

This paper tries to depict important elements of the professional career of Bert P.M. Creemers. Starting from his early work on teaching styles and its effects on students' initial reading, it is shown that there are consistent patterns in his work. These come to the fore in his widely cited "The Effective Classroom" (1994) but also in…

This article presents the findings of a qualitative study conducted by the author on the implications of e-learning programmes for the higher education systems of the member states of the European Union. The study takes a look behind the scenes of the eLearning Programme and other e-learning actions within other European programmes by tapping into…