This study investigated the impact of second language (L2) lexical quality on L2 reading comprehension in bilingual primary education. The participating children were taught in the L2 English for 30-50% of the time and the remaining time in their L1 Dutch. Seventy-three pupils from four different schools were assessed in the L2 on vocabulary,…

This study examined the unique contribution of Home Literacy Environment (HLE), Classroom Literacy Environment (CLE), and parent and teacher expectations to the development of Dutch (L1) and English (L2) vocabulary in children in Dutch-English bilingual primary education. The children (n = 106) were tested on vocabulary in both languages in…

The aim of this study was to examine the influence of phonotactic probability (PP) and neighbourhood density (ND) on pseudoword learning in 17 Dutch-speaking typically developing children (mean age 7;2). They were familiarized with 16 one-syllable pseudowords varying in PP (high vs low) and ND (high vs low) via a storytelling procedure. The…

Rural children are a largely understudied population in language and literacy research, despite the fact that these children often enter school with delays in their language development. Since most rural areas suffered from so-called selective rural outmigration, many parents in rural areas are lower or middle educated. The home literacy climate,…

A successful transition from kindergarten to 1st grade requires a positive combination of multiple dimensions of child competence. Using latent class analysis, we simultaneously examined the academic skills, work attitude, and social/behavioral competence of a large sample of Dutch kindergarten children to identify profiles of kindergarten…

Despite its importance in social development, social understanding has hardly been studied in high-ability children. This study explores differences in social understanding between children in high-ability and regular classrooms, specifically theory of mind (ToM) and perception accuracy, as well as associations between individual characteristics…

The associations between vocabulary growth and reading development were examined longitudinally for a representative sample of Dutch children throughout the elementary school period. Data on basic and advanced vocabulary, word decoding, and reading comprehension were collected across the different grades. The results showed significant progress on…

The aim of this study was to investigate whether bilingually raised children in the Netherlands, who receive literacy instruction in their second language only, show an advantage on Dutch phoneme-awareness tasks compared with monolingual Dutch-speaking children. Language performance of a group of 47 immigrant first-grade children with various…

This study examined the longitudinal relations between competence (academic achievement and social preference) and problem behavior (loneliness and aggression) in 741 elementary school boys and girls in the Netherlands (Grades 1-5). Also, we examined the moderation effects of having no friends, aggressive friends, or nonaggressive friends on the…

Although the transparency of a writing system is hypothesized to systematically influence the cognitive skills associated with reading development, results of cross-language investigations are inconsistent and usually do not address this issue in a developmental context. We therefore investigated the cognitive dynamics of reading fluency of…

Effects of phonemic awareness and naming speed on the speed and accuracy of Dutch children's word recognition were investigated in a longitudinal study. Both the speed and accuracy of word recognition at the end of Grade 2 were predicted by naming speed from both kindergarten and Grade 1, after control for autoregressive relations, kindergarten…

The authors examined aspects of reliability and validity of the Goode-nough-Harris Draw-A-Person Test (DAP; D. B. Harris, 1963). The participants were 115 seven- to nine-year-old students attending regular or special education schools. Three judges, with a modest degree of training similar to that found among practicing clinicians, rated the…

This meta-analysis examines to what extent interactive storybook reading stimulates two pillars of learning to read: vocabulary and print knowledge. The authors quantitatively reviewed 31 (quasi) experiments (n = 2,049 children) in which educators were trained to encourage children to be actively involved before, during, and after joint book…

This article describes Everyday Mathematics, a new math education curriculum targeted to kindergarten, first grade, and second grade students in Holland. It will be introduced to third and fourth grades in 2008. The curriculum helps prepare pupils for standardized tests; allows for students to work at their own rate; involves parents in helping…