This article explores the tensions between medical and pedagogical professionals involved with the classification and selection of pupils for the special day-schools for "feebleminded" children that were established from 1900 in the Netherlands to promote compulsory mass schooling's efficiency. These are set against the increasing…

The papers in the special series describe the role of data-based decision-making (DBDM) in improving the outcomes of students with learning disabilities based on research across Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States. The articles address multiple aspects of a model of DBDM that includes the role of teacher knowledge, skills, beliefs, and…

Recently, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) reported that although countries around the world must ensure that students with disabilities receive free, inclusive, and appropriate education, students with disabilities are less likely to complete primary or secondary school in many countries. Though this…

Although many studies have found that children with learning disabilities (LD) are less liked by peers than children without LD, the results are not unequivocal. In the present study, we investigated the social status (in terms of likeability and popularity) of children with LD by considering peer academic reputation and peer reputation of teacher…

The authors examined three instructional approaches for improving teachers' curriculum-based measurement (CBM) graph comprehension, each differing in the extent to which reading the data, interpreting the data, and linking the data to instruction were emphasized. Participants were 164 elementary school teachers who were randomly assigned to one of…

This article focuses on the role the Dutch school for children with "learning and behavioural problems" (LOM) has played in knowledge production about learning disabilities and in the development of academic study of special education between 1949 and 1985. LOM-schooling grew rapidly during these years and attracted relatively many…

Between c.1945 and 1965 across the West special education has grown and differentiated substantially. In the Netherlands this expansion ran parallel to the academic recognition and rapid development of the study of learning disabilities. How are these two processes related? This article argues that in this country child science and special…

Following Foucault's analysis of expanding psychiatric power, this article addresses the shift from psychiatry into pedagogy in interventions concerning children with mental problems in the nineteenth century. The aims of this article are twofold. First, to answer the question of how the notion of "idiocy" developed in the context of an…

Within a population-based study of 3356 children, we investigated whether infant neuromotor development was associated with cognition in early childhood. Neuromotor development was examined with an adapted version of Touwen's Neurodevelopmental Examination between 9 and 20 weeks. Parents rated their children's executive functioning at 4 years. At…

Employing a large sample of children from Dutch regular elementary schools, this study assessed the contributing and discriminating values of reading disability (RD) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) to two types of phonological processing skills, phonemic awareness (PA) and rapid automatized naming (RAN). A second objective was…

This paper discusses the role brain disease has played in the discourse and practices of child scientists involved in the study of learning disabilities and behavioural disorders from the 1950s up to the mid-1980s, particularly in the Netherlands as part of a developing international scientific community. In the pre-ADHD era, when child sciences…

A relationship between motor and mathematical skills has been shown by previous research. However, the question of whether subtypes can be differentiated within developmental coordination disorder (DCD) and/or mathematical learning disability (MLD) remains unresolved. In a sample of children with and without DCD and/or MLD, a data-driven…

Diversity in the classroom includes differences in the way students' brains learn, or neurodiversity. Neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD) affect increasingly large numbers of students. Education systems must work to meet the needs of these students and ensure that…

The relationship between basic oral language and early numeracy has been studied extensively, but results hardly include kindergartners' math language, which might mediate this relationship. The aim of this study was to investigate the development of basic language skills--specifically, math language and low early numeracy. Dutch children (4-5…

Time perception has not been comprehensively examined in mathematics difficulties (MD). Therefore, verbal time estimation, production, and reproduction were tested in 13 individuals with MD and 16 healthy controls, matched for age, sex, and intellectual skills. Individuals with MD performed comparably to controls in time reproduction, but showed a…