The prevalence of private supplementary tutoring (i.e. shadow education) is growing, particularly in nations with selective school exams. The hypothesis that tutoring attendance rises as pressure to perform increases has not yet been tested. Therefore, our research question is: does the likelihood of attending shadow education increase with an…

Purpose: Schools struggle with sustaining their educational innovations (Cohen and Mehta, 2017; Askell-Williams and Koh, 2020) and may benefit from concrete and practical guidance (Askell-Williams and Koh, 2020). A dialogue between staff within schools can be a way to promote self-evaluation regarding the innovation. Therefore, a self-evaluation…

In preparing generations for the future, schools fulfill a qualification and a civic task: providing youngsters knowledge and skills for the labor market, and equipping them to navigate democracy and society. Little research has considered how schools combine these tasks, particularly in relation to schools' student composition in terms of…

Although self-directed learning is considered important in both educational practice and theory as a 21st century skill and as a means to motivate students, most teachers find it difficult to integrate self-directed learning into their practice. An instrumental case study was conducted to investigate how teachers at four innovative Dutch secondary…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to develop an analytic framework for studying interdisciplinary learning in collaboration between schools and child support services. The analytic framework connects the concept of boundary crossing with the social--psychological processes of trust and identity formation. Design/methodology/approach: The paper…

In order to support professional development of their teachers 14 Dutch secondary schools developed and implemented a series of interventions. The concept of School as Professional Learning Community was used to frame these school interventions. Data were collected through project documents, interviews with school principals and project leaders,…

Equal opportunities in the context of education can be interpreted as ensuring equitable access to certain kinds of education (e.g. an academic track) or as equal opportunities to lead a fulfilling life regardless of the educational route followed (e.g. vocational or academic). These interpretations are in tension: the former implies a hierarchy…

The way in which school leaders implement professional learning communities (PLCs) is important for realizing sustainable school improvement. The assumption is that school leaders act based on their interpretation of the PLC, which is based on their underlying educational beliefs. In this study, we explored these latter aspects by interviewing six…

Student counselors and tutors guide students' choices of study profiles (subjects) within Dutch secondary education. This study addressed three research questions: (1) According to counselors and tutors, what factors should inform students' study profile choices? (2) Into what types can the views of counselors and tutors be classified? (3)…

Are teachers and principals aligned in their perceptions of the core components of the theory of Leadership for Learning across countries, or are there subgroups of schools in which there is misalignment? The purpose of this study is to examine the extent to which a congruency-typology model of leadership for learning is distributed across…

This paper develops a new, broader, and more realistic lens to study (lacking) linkages between government policy and school practices. Drawing on recent work in organization theory, we advance notions on cluster of organization routines and the logic of complementarities underlying organizational change. This lens allows looking at how schools do…

Many schools aim to implement Assessment for Learning (AfL) to stimulate students to take more ownership of their learning and develop self-regulatory skills. This survey-based study is among the few in the field showing how students experience the extent of implementation of AfL, here in English language and mathematics classes in 12 Dutch…

Targeted school-based programs seem to be a promising approach to help adolescents in need. Nevertheless, successful implementation and evaluation of such programs is challenging. However, there is limited knowledge about (overcoming) the challenges of implementation and experimental evaluation of school-based programs. The goal of the present…

This article describes the role of the culture coordinator in general formal education, in primary and secondary schools in the Netherlands. This article describes how they function in their professional environment and in contact with artists, providers of educational programs, and cultural institutions. In order to describe the everyday practice…

Many countries have recently called for educating global citizens, suggesting that global citizenship education (GCE) can contribute usefully to individuals and the greater world. However, so far there is no clear definition of how best to teach GCE. Educators in the Netherlands have recently given attention to citizenship education but not to…