Pupils' subject choices at the level of secondary education critically determine the tertiary fields of study that they can pursue. This study used multinomial logistic regression models to investigate the extent to which the final report card grades of ninth-grade students predicted their choices of subject combinations at the senior general…

Among other things, learning to write entails learning how to use complex sentences effectively in discourse. Some research has therefore focused on relating measures of syntactic complexity to text quality. Apart from the fact that the existing research on this topic appears inconclusive, most of it has been conducted in English L1 contexts. This…

This study focused on the question of how to enhance a mastery-goal orientation in the classroom. We started from the perspective of the achievement goal theory, which assumes that the goals that students have (personal goals) relate to the goals that are set in the classroom (classroom goal structures). In classrooms where teachers focus on…

Previous research on the relationship between students' home and school Information and Communication Technology (ICT) resources and academic performance has shown ambiguous results. The availability of ICT resources at school has been found to be unrelated or negatively related to academic performance, whereas the availability of ICT resources at…

This study examined the association between teacher-student and student-student relationships on societal involvement in Dutch primary and secondary schools. In addition, it studied differences in the effects of teacher-student relationships and student-student relationships among students from various parental backgrounds on societal involvement,…

In this article, a science interest network model (SINM) is introduced and a first empirical test of the model is presented. The SINM models interest as a dynamic relational construct, in which different interest components, that is, affective, behavioral, and cognitive components and related motivational components mutually reinforce one another…

We examined Differential Item Functioning (DIF) and the size of cross-cultural performance differences in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012 mathematics data before and after application of propensity score matching. The mathematics performance of Indonesian, Turkish, Australian, and Dutch students on released items was…

The role of the source of discrimination in relation to minority Muslim youths' psychosocial well-being has received remarkably little attention in the post-9/11 climate. We have examined one of the aspects of psychosocial well-being that is given prominent attention in the media and public discourse, namely externalising behaviour. The article…

Although literature provides strong evidence for the beneficial role of outgroup contact, longitudinal knowledge regarding the formation and change of outgroup contact remains improvable. Using a longitudinal, large-scale data set including 6,726 majority and minority participants (M[subscript age] = 14.98 years at Wave 1; 55% female) from 4…

This study examined the peer relationships and social behaviors of deaf adolescents in the first 2 years of secondary school. Peer nominations and ratings of peer status and behavior were collected longitudinally with 74 deaf and 271 hearing adolescents from Grade 7 to Grade 8. The predictions of deaf adolescents' peer status in Grade 8 from Grade…

In a longitudinal design, we measured 50 low-achieving adolescents' reading comprehension development from Grades 7 to 9. There were 24 native Dutch and 26 language minority students. In addition, we assessed the roles of (a) linguistic knowledge, (b) metacognitive knowledge, and (c) reading fluency in predicting both the level and growth of…

Background: The purpose of this study was to examine the association between adolescents' body mass index (BMI) z-scores and their subsequent level of schooling, extending previous longitudinal research by using objectively measured weight and height data. Methods: A longitudinal study with 3 study waves (1-year intervals) involving 1248 Dutch…

In this study, the information and strategic Internet skills of Dutch secondary students were measured in a performance test. Participating students were asked to complete assignments on the Internet. The findings reveal that the levels of both information and strategic Internet skills have much room for improvement. Of the variables that…

The purpose of this study is to examine relationships among the such variables as socioeconomic status, math self-efficacy, anxiety, and mathematics achievement using structural equation modeling. A sample group of 8,806 students from England, Greece, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Turkey, and the USA participated in the PISA 2012. To show how much…

This article investigates downgrading from the highest level of secondary education in The Netherlands. "Downgrading" is defined as continuation of secondary education at a lower level. We conduct a longitudinal case study of downgrading in the first 3 years of a secondary school. Univariate and multivariate statistical analyses are…