The formation of identity in a secularized world is different from formation in a religious oriented society. In this situation, educating young people and guiding their personhood formation is even more a task of connecting to the pupils from out of your own heart. A Catholic religious teacher can be a mirror for these young people when answering…

Self-assessment and task selection are important self-regulated learning skills for secondary school students. More specifically, selecting new tasks based on self-assessments is very important for them, because teachers are not always present or able to select tasks for them individually. However, little is known about the processes underlying…

This study focuses on life histories collected from Moroccan Dutch youth in Amsterdam and Rotterdam and describes their experiences in diverse programs of the Dutch secondary education system. The study questions whether the present Dutch educational system facilitates the 'gaining of place' for the youth within Dutch society or whether it…

In this paper, we develop an information distortion model (IDM) of social class differences in self-beliefs and values. The IDM combines psychological biases on frame-of-reference effects with sociological foci on ability stratification. This combination is hypothesized to lead to working-class children having more positive math self-beliefs and…

Background: Mathematics achievement is related to positive and negative emotions. Pekrun's control-value theory of achievement emotions suggests that students' self-concept (i.e., self-appraisal of ability) may be an important mediator of the relation between mathematics achievement and emotions. Aims: The aims were (1) to investigate the…

The aims of the present study were (1) to identify to what extent school motivation and school commitment contributed to the explanation of students' academic achievement in addition to the effect of students' cognitive capacities, (2) to find out whether school commitment mediated the relation between school motivation and academic achievement,…

The aim of this study was to explain adolescents' volunteering in terms of their morality and identity and to examine the moderation effect of gender and age in this process. Data were collected among 698 Dutch adolescents aged 12 to 20 (M = 15.19; SD = 1.43). Adolescents' moral reasoning was positively associated with understanding moral issues…

This study investigates the structure and cross-cultural (in)variance of mathematical self-beliefs in relation to mathematics achievement in two world regions: Confucian Asia (Singapore, South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan) and Europe (Denmark, The Netherlands, Finland, Serbia and Latvia). This is done both pan-culturally and at a multigroup-level,…

The article reports the outcomes of a survey of 678 Dutch, English, and French students in multicultural high schools located in three urban areas, with the aim of developing insight into the sort of history they consider worthwhile. The research was undertaken in the context of widespread concern about the effects of recent migration patterns on…

The present studies were conducted to investigate students' conceptions of distinct constructivist assumptions. To that end, a questionnaire was developed containing statements about four constructivist assumptions: The importance of knowledge construction, cooperative learning, self-regulation, and the use of authentic problems together with…

The purpose of this study was to propose and test a motivational model of performance by integrating constructs from self-concept and self-determination theories and to explore cultural group differences in the model. To this end, self-report measures of global self-esteem, academic self-concept, academic motivation and academic performance were…

The objective of this study was to test our alternative interpretation of the separation-individuation hypothesis. This interpretation states that separation from the parents is not a precondition for individuation, but rather separation and individuation are two parallel processes of development during adolescence. We investigated our…

This document contains three papers from a symposium on adult learning in the workplace. "Coaching: Facilitating the Training of Subject-Matter Specialists. Development and Evaluation of an Andragogical Model of Continuing Vocational Education" (Jost Reischmann) describes the new insights into the problems of continuing vocational…

This document contains three papers on key skills and competencies and human resource development (HRD). "Career Related Competencies" (Marinka A.C.T. Kuijpers) reports findings from surveys completed by Dutch employees who identified these issues: self-reflection is more important than career control; age and gender influence attitude…