In this quasi-experimental study involving 23 fourth grade teachers, we investigated the effect of implementing teacher-child dynamic mathematics interviews to improve mathematics teaching behavior in the classroom. After a baseline period of 13 months, the teachers participated in a professional development program to support the use of dynamic…

The Ark of Inquiry seeks to support inquiry-based science education (IBSE) in different countries and school systems across Europe by teachers that may differ in light of their prior experiences with IBSE. Given the differences, the assumption is that teachers need to make adaptations to the approach and materials of the Ark of Inquiry. This study…

Serious games foster the acquisition of complex problem-solving skills. Assessment of such skills should be in line with instruction, and within a serious game environment its content validity should equal face-to-face assessment. Research on assessment in serious gaming has remained rather scarce. This article shows how assessment can be…

Parental psychological control has been linked to symptoms of psychopathology in adolescence, yet less is known about its correlates in childhood. The current study is among the first to address whether psychological control is related to internalizing and externalizing problems in early childhood. A community sample of 298 children aged 7.04…

The development of assessments that are fit to assess professional competence in higher vocational education requires a reconsideration of assessment methods, quality criteria and (self)evaluation. This article examines the self-evaluations of nine courses of a large higher vocational education institute. Per course, 4-11 teachers and 3-10…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate perceptions of second grade lower vocational students concerning benefits, barriers and strategies of healthy eating and physical activity. Design/methodology/approach: Focus group discussions are conducted with 37 adolescents, from three schools in The Netherlands. A semi-structured…

School quality care has become important in many Western countries. Expectations are high, but little is known about the nature and extent of the use of self-evaluation instruments within schools. From this longitudinal study into the use of a Dutch school self-evaluation instrument, it became clear that schools vary in the extent to which they…

In this article, we set out to assess QuADEM (Quality Assessment of Digital Educational Material), one of the latest methods for evaluating online language learning courseware. What is special about QuADEM is that the evaluation is based on observing the actual usage of the online courseware and that, from a checklist of 12 different components,…

This article focuses on the impact of research and education evaluation on two universities: Trento State University (Italy) and the University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands). The article adopts a system approach to evaluation and proposes a model to describe and analyse evaluation systems. The analysis has been carried out by means of in-depth…

A literature review examined major trends in organizations and training and the ways in which evaluation may help drive training impact. In addition, 3 case studies and 18 interviews were conducted in the United States to study evaluation methods. Recommendations about the use of evaluation for training impact were then formulated, and four Dutch…

The extent to which the classroom evaluation practice of secondary school teachers is of a formative nature and the effects of any formative evaluation on student learning were studied through semi-structured interviews with 54 teachers in 5 Dutch secondary schools. All taught secondary Dutch or mathematics. In addition, 557 students completed…