The Dutch policy of integration put to the test: differences in academic and psychosocial development of pupils in special and mainstream education

After several failed attempts to rein in the growth of special education, the Dutch government made a start in 1991 with a policy to accommodate pupils with problems in regular education and to put a stop to the growth of special education. This paper examines a large-scale study conducted by our research group at the University of Amsterdam which attempted to answer the question whether pupils with problems are better off in special education where there are more resources and they can get more attention than in mainstream schools. It was expected that the pupils in special education would do better due to the specialist care and individual attention. However, with a few exceptions, few differences were found when comparable at-risk pupils in regular schools were compared with their counterparts in both types of special schools. There was a conspicuously large measure of variability in both regular and special education. All school types had both at-risk pupils who were doing well from an academic and/or psychosocial perspective and pupils whose progress left much to be desired. There is little evidence to support the idea that at-risk pupils make less progress, in either their academic or psychosocial development, in regular schools compared with pupils in special schools. The general assumption that at-risk pupils will do better in special education does not seem to account for its attractiveness. Contrary to the policy theory, the dual system, as it exists in The Netherlands, does not appear to be an obstacle to the provision of adequate care for pupils with special educational needs. However, the policy to equip regular schools to accommodate this category of pupils appears not to be realized as simply as that. It has not proved possible to demonstrate the effects of the varying levels of specialist help provided by regular schools on the development of at-risk pupils.     

The Importance of Length Normalization for XML Retrieval

XML retrieval is a departure from standard document retrieval in which each individual XML element, ranging from italicized words or phrases to full blown articles, is a retrievable unit. The distribution of XML element lengths is unlike what we usually observe in standard document collections, prompting us to revisit the issue of document length normalization. We perform a comparative analysis of arbitrary elements versus relevant elements, and show the importance of element length as a parameter for XML retrieval. Within the language modeling framework, we investigate a range of techniques that deal with length either directly or indirectly. We observe a length-bias introduced by the amount of smoothing, and show the importance of extreme length bias for XML retrieval. We also show that simply removing shorter elements from the index (by introducing a cut-off value) does not create an appropriate element length normalization. Even after restricting the minimal size of XML elements occurring in the index, the importance of an extreme explicit length bias remains.     

Exploration of direct and indirect associations of system-level policy-amenable variables with reading literacy performance

As expectations of the economic impact of educational attainment are soaring (Hanushek & Woessmann, 2009 Hanushek E. A., & Woessmann, L. (2009). Do better schools lead to more growth? Cognitive skills, economic outcomes, and causation (NBER Working Paper, No. 14633). Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) and conjectures about successful national educational reforms (Mourshed, Chijioke, & Barber, 2010 Mourshed, M., Chijioke, C., & Barber, M. (2010). How the world's most improved school systems keep getting better. Retrieved from http://www.mckinsey.com/client_service/social_sector/latest_thinking/worlds_most_improved_schools[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) are welcomed by educational policy-makers in many countries, a careful assessment of the empirical evidence for these kinds of claims is needed. In this article, we present a methodology that was applied to an international data set. A multi-level model of education was used to present a hypothetical scenario, indicated as the “implementation scenario”. The scenario was tested on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2009 data set by means of multi-level structural equation modelling. Although we find some evidence for direct effects and some support for straightforward implementation, the overall impact of malleable conditions at the system and school level appears disappointingly small. A theoretical strand of literature that would account for “limited malleability” is referred to in discussing these results.     

Do School Segregation and School Resources Explain Region-of-Origin Differences in the Mathematics Achievement of Immigrant Students? 1

Levels and Dronkers (2006 Dronkers, J. and Wanner, R. A. 2006. Waarom verdienen immigranten minder? Effecten van immigratiebeleid en arbeidsmarktkenmerken [Why do immigrants earn less? Effects of immigration policies and labour market characteristics]. Tijdschrift voor Arbeidsvraagstukken, 22: 379–394.  [Google Scholar]) showed that educational achievement differs between immigrant students from different regions of origin (Latin America, Northern Africa, and Western Asia). This follow-up paper establishes whether these differences in educational achievement between immigrant students from different regions of origin can be explained by school segregation, whether along ethnic or socioeconomic lines. Ethnic and socioeconomic school segregation have a negative influence on the scholastic achievement of all students, although the impact of socioeconomic school segregation is greater than that of ethnic school segregation. Ethnic school segregation affects the scholastic outcomes of native and immigrant students from some regions of origin more than those of immigrant students from other regions. The analysis shows that neither ethnic, nor socioeconomic, school segregation explains the lower mathematics achievement of immigrant students from Latin America, Northern Africa, and Western Asia.     

An analysis of human factors and label accuracy in crowdsourcing relevance judgments

Crowdsourcing relevance judgments for the evaluation of search engines is used increasingly to overcome the issue of scalability that hinders traditional approaches relying on a fixed group of trusted expert judges. However, the benefits of crowdsourcing come with risks due to the engagement of a self-forming group of individuals—the crowd, motivated by different incentives, who complete the tasks with varying levels of attention and success. This increases the need for a careful design of crowdsourcing tasks that attracts the right crowd for the given task and promotes quality work. In this paper, we describe a series of experiments using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, conducted to explore the ‘human’ characteristics of the crowds involved in a relevance assessment task. In the experiments, we vary the level of pay offered, the effort required to complete a task and the qualifications required of the workers. We observe the effects of these variables on the quality of the resulting relevance labels, measured based on agreement with a gold set, and correlate them with self-reported measures of various human factors. We elicit information from the workers about their motivations, interest and familiarity with the topic, perceived task difficulty, and satisfaction with the offered pay. We investigate how these factors combine with aspects of the task design and how they affect the accuracy of the resulting relevance labels. Based on the analysis of 960 HITs and 2,880 HIT assignments resulting in 19,200 relevance labels, we arrive at insights into the complex interaction of the observed factors and provide practical guidelines to crowdsourcing practitioners. In addition, we highlight challenges in the data analysis that stem from the peculiarity of the crowdsourcing environment where the sample of individuals engaged in specific work conditions are inherently influenced by the conditions themselves.     

Self-regulated learning and students’ perceptions of innovative and traditional learning environments: a longitudinal study in secondary education

This study investigated the relationship between the development of students’ self-regulated learning and students’ perceptions of the learning environment in terms of autonomy support, the emphasis on relevance and collaborative learning. In addition, we compared innovative learning environments that aim to enhance self-regulated learning with traditional learning environments. Questionnaires for measuring self-regulated learning and perceptions of the learning environment were administered by 648 students. Self-regulated learning was measured at the start of secondary education and again half way through the first year. The results point to the importance of how students perceive the learning environment for self-regulated learning. There was a positive relationship between autonomy support and relevance and self-regulated learning. Furthermore, students in innovative environments perceived more autonomy support, more emphasis on relevance and more collaborative learning than those in traditional environments. Students in innovative environments, however, reported no more self-regulated learning than students in traditional environments.     

Building for an Experimental Teacher Training Institute

Ubbo Emmius is one of the new teacher training institutes in the Netherlands. It was faced with the problem that a new building had to be designed while the institute was still in an experimental stage. Based on a particular educational philosophy, a number of architectural considerations were formulated for the building to be designed. The result is a building for widely divergent activities. This was achieved by creating spaces of various sizes and facilities. It may be called an multifunctional, flexible building, which, also in the future, can meet the requirements of new developments.     

Emotion regulation and the dynamics of feelings: a conceptual and methodological framework

The emotional system is defined as a dynamical system that has neurological and biochemical structures that force the system to change in a regular and consistent way. This dynamic view allows for an alternative definition of emotion regulation, which describes when emotion regulation is needed, identifies its goal, and illustrates how regulation is achieved. The thesis developed here is that feelings-the private mental experience of emotion-play a crucial role in emotion regulation. Specifics of regulation are discussed and a parallel with parent-child interaction is drawn. It is shown that emotion regulation can be studied by looking at the variability of feelings. An illustrative application (N=30, age 10-13 years) shows that variability of anger is associated with the core executive function response inhibition.     

Relations between the development of school investment, self-confidence and language achievement in elementary education: a multivariate latent growth curve approach

Latent growth curve (LGC) analysis of longitudinal data for pupils' school investment, self-confidence and language ability is presented. A multivariate model is tested that relates the three developmental processes to each other and to intelligence. All processes show significant differences between children in their developmental curves. The increase in language ability and the decrease in school investment correspond with the hypotheses. No hypothesis is formulated about self-confidence, but an increase for some and a decrease for others are found. The hypothesis that development in language ability, school investment, and self-confidence are mutually positively associated is supported, as is the hypothesis that intelligence accounts for some of the differences in language ability. School investment, self-confidence, and intelligence each explain a different part of development in language ability.