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news from the Learning sciences program:
- ONA, a network to support Amsterdam primary schools in working in evidence-informed ways, has been funded for another two years by the City of Amsterdam. VU is now the leading partner, with Anne Fleur Kortekaas-Rijlaarsdam and Martijn Meeter taking over from Ilja Cornelisz and Chris van Klaveren in supporting the network. Groups of expert teachers will probably invade our halls from time to time.
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- Anne de Bruijn and Martijn Meeter are part of the consortium winning a competition to evaluate a huge program to help schools improve, part of the Growth Fund Ontwikkelkracht. In the coming years Anne and Martijn will compare schools who run one of the Ontwikkelkracht programs with comparable schools to investigate the effects of the programs.
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- Debby ten Hove, Anne de Bruijn and Ilja Cornelisz have won a grant to investigate how precocious children who have skipped one or more primary school grades are prepared for secondary school. Their grant is part of a larger NRO program focused on the transition from primary school to secondary school, and how this transition affects equal opportunities.
- Judith ‘t Gilde and Martijn Meeter have been asked to evaluate “halfway rooms” within secondary schools. These are facilities (usually literally a room) where students who are at risk to either drop out of school, become school refusers or to be transferred to a special school, can relax and be helped to reintegrate in normal school life.
- Martijn Meeter has been invited to become part of the NRO program committee on learning areas and educational equality.
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The Society for the Scientific Study of Reading awarded Elsje van Bergen the Carol Connor Mid-Career Award 2024. The award was presented during the society’s annual conference held in Copenhagen this July. The Carol Connor Mid-Career Award recognizes Van Bergen's exceptional ability to transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries in her research. This honour acknowledges her outstanding contributions to the field of reading research, which includes her dedication to fostering the development of early-career researchers, alongside her groundbreaking scientific work.
Nil Horoz' PhD dissertation on inequality in primary schools
On October 29, Nil Horoz defended her doctoral thesis. It received a lot of media attention due to the importance of the topic.
"The dissertation shows that we are far from a world where all children have equal opportunities to develop their full potential", concludes Horoz. She researched the developmental differences between children growing up in families and schools with higher and lower socioeconomic status (SES). She specifically looked at the social, emotional, behavioral, and motivational development of primary school children from kindergarten to grade 6 of elementary school. The research provides a comprehensive picture of children growing up in lower and higher SES families and schools.
You can read more here.
news from the educational governance program:
On the 31st of October, investigative journalists from NOS/Nieuwsuur reported about the Dutch Inspectorate of Education not inspecting schools once every four years, despite multiple requests from Parliament. Between 2014 en 2019, a third of primary schools were not inspected as the Inspectorate prioritized the inspection of school boards and how they manage their schools.
Professor Ehren responded by referring to her past research which showed that inspections of schools can lead to improvement, saying that the decline in learning outcomes across the system necessitates a focus on school quality and teaching, rather than just an inspection of how schools are managed by their boards.
The newsitem is available here.
