This report is the result of the participation of hundreds of students, families, school educators, and researchers who dedicated their time and energy to investigating the critical role that families and communities play in ensuring students and schools can flourish. It is a culmination of over two years of collaborative research and hundreds of…

The role that teachers have in assessing student coursework is crucial. Their "determination" that a particular piece of student's work is "acceptable" has many serious consequences. With a lack of debate surrounding assessment, practices may become mired in conventions and disconnected from issues such as knowledge, power and…

The world is undergoing a major transformation that requires new skills and qualifications, new ways for people to know about skills and qualifications, and new ways to acquire skills and qualifications. This toolkit is about skills and qualifications, and the benefits they provide for people in a changing environment. It focuses specifically on…

Innovation is essential for the education sector. The ways in which curriculum decision making is organised reflects different implicit approaches on how educational systems pertain to promote innovation in education. Curriculum holds an outstanding place when seeking to promote innovation in education, as it reflects the vision for education by…

Contemporary genomics research will impact the daily practice of biology teachers who want to teach up-to-date genetics in secondary education. This article reports on a research project aimed at enhancing biology teachers' expertise for teaching genetics situated in the context of genetic testing. The increasing body of scientific knowledge…

If the purpose of an educational system is to guide pupils towards achieving independence, then certain conditions about the design and conduct of that system must be met. In this paper, those conditions are formulated from a socio-cultural perspective on learning and development. This paper examines the extent to which those conditions were…

Recent developments in competence-based education have motivated institutions of vocational education and training (VET) to improve the links or connectivity between learning in school and learning in the workplace, which has been a problem for decades. In previous research, a theoretical framework describing the underlying aspects of…

Every now and then the feminisation of the teaching force is put forth as a barrier to reduce educational equality between the sexes. The feminisation of education is supposed to have a negative impact on boys' achievement, causing educational as well as behavioural problems. It is not just boys who allegedly suffer; over the years, the…

Dutch prevocational secondary schools are reforming their educational programmes to make them more competence-based. This reform has substantial implications for the roles played by teachers. Yet, little empirical research has been conducted on teachers' processes of competence development in vocational settings. This study explores teachers'…

Surveyed Dutch secondary teachers to investigate their professional orientations, assuming that professionalism was socially defined and thus constructed by all involved. Overall, teachers differed in their orientations and in combinations of their orientations toward instruction, educational goals, and role in the school organization. Teachers…

This article presents a new classification scheme for learning environments in secondary education, based on a review of recent literature on new learning and a review of existing classification schemes. This new classification scheme emphasizes new forms of learning and is organized around three main aspects of learning environments that may be…

Examined teaching behavior in Dutch secondary schools in the early phase of an innovation promoting self-directed learning. Observation data indicated that teachers did not spend much time teaching students how to learn. Activating features of teaching were more predominant than the mere transmission of knowledge, but process-oriented teaching…

Notes that students with a history of failure may be hampered by feelings of incompetence and diminished expectations. States that teachers using responsive instruction become attuned to these perceptions and encourage students to regain control of the problem-solving process. Notes that to succeed, teachers must propose certain goals and…

Discussion of the Dutch Technology-Enriched School (TES) project highlights teacher involvement, including teacher attitudes; development versus controlled research; characteristics of the TES project, including collaboration with university researchers; and the progressive broadening implementation strategy, i.e., implementing computers in…

This study investigated the empirical structure underlying students' perceptions of their teachers' behaviors in terms of the amount of control displayed in the regulation of students' learning activities. A group of 2,061 Dutch secondary school students taught by 67 teachers completed a 14-item survey that examined their perceptions. Data…