Do school context,student composition and school leadership affect school practice and outcomes in secondary education?

This study examined effects of school context, student composition and school leadership on school practice and outcomes in secondary education in Flanders. The study reveals that relations between school characteristics do exist and that it is possible to explain an important part of the differences in mean effort and mathematics achievement of schools by means of these school characteristics. Furthermore, it was found that school size positively affects school outcomes and that its effect is mediated by school practice characteristics like the amount of cooperation between teachers, which affects school climate and outcomes. School leadership did not affect the school practice much, perhaps because of a lack of a strong educational leadership in most of the Flemish secondary schools. However, the student composition of schools seemed to be very important for school practice, as well as for school outcomes. Nevertheless, the study revealed that schools can affect the outcomes of their students independently of their student composition and context by means of school practice.     

The Effect of Schools and Classes on Noncognitive Outcomes

This article reports on the effects of individual background characteristics, classes, and schools on 4 noncognitive outcomes at the end of the 1st cycle secondary education in Flanders. The outcomes are: the degree to which the student feels at home in the school environment, the extent to which the student does his/her best for the school work, the academic self-concept, and the social integration in the class. Firstly, the raw class and school effects are estimated. Secondly, a broad set of background variables is introduced to isolate the net class and school effects. Thirdly, class and school composition variables are introduced. Finally, the additional predictive power of a number of other student, class, and school characteristics is documented.     

The Importance of Identifying Levels in Multilevel Analysis: An Illustration of the Effects of Ignoring the Top or Intermediate Levels in School Effectiveness Research

In this article, the effect of ignoring one or more levels of variation in hierarchical linear regression analysis is explored. A model with four hierarchical levels is used as a reference model. A distinction is made between ignoring top and intermediate levels. The effects of ignoring levels on the fixed and on the random parameters of different random intercept models are explored by means of a real data set. The results show that ignoring an important level causes an effect on specific fixed coefficients, variance components and their corresponding standard error. Therefore, ignoring an important level can lead to different research conclusions.     

Factors influencing childcare workers’ promotion of physical activity in children aged 0–4 years: a qualitative study

The present study examined the factors influencing childcare workers’ promotion of physical activity (PA) among children aged 0–4?years, a particularly interesting context because of the increasing number of children attending childcare. Twenty Dutch childcare workers were interviewed. The interviews revealed some important barriers to the promotion of children’s PA: lack of facilities and time; rules and policies regarding safety and daily duties; non-cooperative colleagues; a large range of ages of children; poor weather; unsuitable clothing and lack of communication with parents. The respondents identified the parents rather than themselves as persons responsible for promoting children’s PA. Parents and childcare workers could improve their communication regarding children’s PA. Childcare centres could review their internal policies and provide workshops teaching childcare workers how to promote children’s PA.     

Escape boxes: Bringing escape room experience into the classroom

In this paper, we present an escape box as a means to introduce the escape room concept into classrooms. Recreational escape rooms have inspired teachers all over the world to adapt the popular entertainment activity for education. Escape rooms are problem-based and time-constrained, requiring active and collaborative participants, a setting that teachers want to achieve in their classroom to promote learning. This paper explores the adaptation of the escape room concept into educational escape game boxes. These technology-enhanced escape boxes have become hybrid learning spaces, merging individual and collaborative learning, as well as physical and digital spaces. The design of the box with assignments on each side puts users face to face with each other and requires them to collaborate in the physical world, instead of being individually absorbed in a digital world. The developed box is a unique concept in the field of escape rooms; the content is adaptable. This paper describes the process leading to the design criteria, the design process, test results and evaluation, and provides recommendations for designing educational escape rooms.