"Preparing Teachers for Diversity: The Role of Initial Teacher Education. Annex 2 To the Final Report to DG Education, Youth, Sport and Culture of the European Commission. Case Study Summaries" is designed as a companion document to the final report "Preparing Teachers for Diversity: The Role of Initial Teacher Education. Final…

It is often argued that enhancement of self-beliefs should be one of the key goals of education. However, very little is known about the relation between self-beliefs and performance when students move from primary to secondary school in highly differentiated educational systems with early tracking. This large-scale longitudinal cohort study…

Young gifted children perform in the top 10% in assessments of cognitive, social, expressive or other abilities. The study first considers why, and how, cognitively gifted pupils in particular may face enforced underachievement as early as in preschool. A longitudinal multilevel model is developed to represent various types of interaction between…

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…

The unit experiences for the K-12 curriculum guide, including these for grade 4, are outlined in SO 001 139. These units initiate the study of geographic regions of the world. Emphasis in these area studies is placed on the regional topography, geographic factors, and people's economic, social, and cultural adjustment to their environment or…

Describes, in a case study, the growth in reasoning ability with fractions of one student in a newly developed program of 30 lessons during one whole school year. Indicates that the program and its teaching stimulated the progress of an average performer in mathematics. (Author/MM)

A longitudinal study investigated the effects of leisure time reading (reading at home for pleasure or fun) on pupils' reading achievement in school. Subjects, 736 students in grades 3, 4, 5, and 6 in 30 schools located throughout the Netherlands, had their reading achievement determined five times: at the beginning and end of grade 3 and at the…

One hundred-and-twenty-eight six and eight year old Dutch boys and girls responded to questions concerning their vocational aspirations. The results suggest that sex role expectations for adult occupations are acquired very early, and strongly circumscribe the range of vocations perceived as appropriate for females. Availability information is…

Administered two intelligence batteries and a computer-assisted elementary cognitive test battery to 474 second-generation migrant and 747 majority-group students, aged 6 to 12 years, in the Netherlands. Findings suggest that performance differences between these groups are better predicted by a cultural complexity ("c") factor than by…

Explores longitudinal effects of television viewing on 1,050 Dutch children's reading comprehension, causal mechanisms that underlie these effects on reading comprehension, and longitudinal effects of television on decoding skills. Surveys children three times at one-year intervals. Suggests that television viewing inhibited development of reading…

Annual evaluation for 5 years of the handwriting of 121 Dutch primary school children revealed that children with dysgraphic handwriting had lower fine motor ability, exhibited poorer structural performance, and, in higher grades, showed less preference for a personal style, than did other writers. Children with and without dysgraphic handwriting…

This paper discusses two methodological issues regarding the analysis of longitudinal data using structural equation modeling that emerged during the reconsideration of the analysis of a recent study on the relationship between academic motivation and language achievement in elementary education [Stoel R.D., Peetsma, T.T.D. and Roeleveld, J.…

This comparative study of primary school finance is based on ten studies of the arrangements for financing primary education in Australia, Canada, the Federal Republic of Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Yugoslavia. Chapter 1 describes the variety of approaches that individual countries…

Using arithmetic-achievement data on 50,000 pupils in 560 Dutch elementary schools, explores differences among high-, average-, and low-achieving schools. Only one characteristic, educational leadership, was related (negatively) to effectiveness. Teachers in highly effective schools give more whole-class instruction, have the same goals for all…

Contributes to scholarship on the effects of television on children. Finds that the most important characteristics valued by both Dutch and U.S. children 6 to 11 years old were comprehensibility and action, closely followed by humor, "interestingness,""innocuousness," realism, violence, and romance. Finds boys in both samples…