Teachers' beliefs about skills play a significant role in how they teach those skills. Similarly, students' mastery of a skill is influenced by their ideas about its value and what the performance of the skill exactly entails. In this study, 10 history teachers and 17 students in secondary school (age 16-17) were interviewed about their beliefs…

Imagining what it was like to live in the past may help secondary school students to understand historical developments and situations. In this case study, the opportunities of a drama task are explored by using a mixed-method approach. In small groups, Dutch 14-15-year-old students examined historical sources and produced a short film clip on…

Secondary school students often only use the rules for doing scientific inquiry when prompted, as if they fail to see the point of doing so. This qualitative design study explores conditions to address this problem in school science inquiry. Dutch students (N = 22, aged 14-15) repeatedly consider the quality of their work: in a conventional,…

The aim of this study was to explore how the design of this chemistry lesson for citizenship influences students' use of different perspectives in decision-making about 'the use and sale of laughing gas'. In this study, 'the use and sale of laughing gas among youth' was chosen as a socio-scientific issue. This chemistry lesson for citizenship was…

This article reports on the academic performance and experiences of non-native university students, specifically German students in a Dutch academic environment. These students have a substantial dropout rate. In an earlier study, we found correlations between results on language tests and study results. In this study, we used semi-structured…

This article examines the role of metaphors of nature, sustainable development, and neoliberalism in business education. The research underpinning this article focused on a shift in the language business students used in response to a critical course on the neoliberal economic model. Results of the examination of metaphors before and after this…

Professional teacher communities appear to be positively related to student learning, teacher learning, teacher practice and school culture. Teacher collaboration is a significant element of these communities. In initial teacher training as well as in-service training and other initiatives for teacher learning, collaborative skills should be…

The current project linked students in three universities in a guided discussion of the movie, "Three Kings." The goals were to assess the viability of having students from three different courses, in three different universities, in three different countries find common ground to have intellectual discussions via the Internet and to…