The prevalence of child maltreatment in the Netherlands across a 5-year period

The prevalence of child maltreatment in the Netherlands was in 2005 first systematically examined in the Netherlands’ Prevalence study on Maltreatment of children and youth (NPM-2005), using sentinel reports and substantiated CPS cases, and in the Pupils on Abuse study (PoA-2005), using high school students’ self-report. In this second National Prevalence study on Maltreatment (NPM-2010), we used the same three methods to examine the prevalence of child maltreatment in 2010, enabling a cross-time comparison of the prevalence of child maltreatment in the Netherlands. First, 1,127 professionals from various occupational branches (sentinels) reported each child for whom they suspected child maltreatment during a period of three months. Second, we included 22,661 substantiated cases reported in 2010 to the Dutch Child Protective Services. Third, 1,920 high school students aged 12–17 years filled out a questionnaire on their experiences of maltreatment in 2010. The overall prevalence of child maltreatment in the Netherlands in 2010 was 33.8 per 1,000 children based on the combined sentinel and CPS reports and 99.4 per 1,000 adolescents based on self-report. Major risk factors for child maltreatment were parental low education, immigrant status, unemployment, and single parenthood. We found a large increase in CPS-reports, whereas prevalence rates based on sentinel and self-report did not change between 2005 and 2010. Based on these findings a likely conclusion is that the actual number of maltreated children has not increased from 2005 to 2010, but that professionals have become more aware of child maltreatment, and more likely to report cases to CPS.     

New approach to visual servo control using terminal constraints

A large class of visual servo controllers relies on an a priori obtained reference image, captured at the desired position and orientation (i.e., pose) of a camera, to yield control signals to regulate the camera from its current pose to a desired pose. In many applications, accessibility and economics of the operation may prohibit acquisition of such a reference image. This paper introduces a new visual servo control paradigm that enables control of the camera in the absence of reference image using a set of terminal constraints. Specifically, the desired pose is encoded using the angle of obliquity of the optical axis with respect to the object plane and its direction of arrival at the plane. A constrained convex optimization problem is formulated over a conic section defined by the terminal constraints to yield an error system for the control problem. Subsequently, this work introduces continuous terminal sliding mode visual servo controllers to regulate the camera to the desired pose. Lyapunov-based stability analysis guarantees that the origin is a finite-time-stable equilibrium of the system. Numerical simulation results are provided to verify the performance of the proposed visual servo controller.     

Education and ICT-based self-regulation in learning: Theory, design and implementation

Pupils attaining relatively low or high standards compared with most other pupils may come to experience motivation and achievement problems leading to final dropout from education. To overcome these problems, a systemic educational approach is presented. Cognitive, social, motivational and self-regulative aspects of learning tasks and learning processes are related to instructional and wider educational contexts. The result is a ‘contextual learning theory’ which specifies three sets of educational conditions to improve learning: (1) differentiation of learning materials and procedures; (2) integration and support by Information and Communication Technology; and (3) strategies to improve development and learning. Information is provided about characteristics and development of pedagogical-didactic and software prototypes. The prototypes are tried out in practice in Dutch pre-school and primary and secondary education. First implementation results are discussed.     

Supporting learners’ experiment design

Inquiry learning is an educational approach in which learners actively construct knowledge and in which performing investigations and conducting experiments is central. To support learners in designing informative experiments we created a scaffold, the Experiment Design Tool (EDT), that provided learners with a step-by-step structure to select variables and to assign values to these variables, together with offering built-in heuristics for experiment design. To further structure the students’ approach, the EDT was offered within a set of detailed research questions which again were grouped under a set of broader research questions. Learning results for learners who worked with the EDT were compared to results for learners in two control conditions. In the first control condition, learners received only the detailed research questions and not the EDT; in the second control condition, learners received only the limited set of general research questions. In all conditions, learners conducted their experiments in an online learning environment about the physics topic of Archimedes’ principle. Conceptual knowledge was measured before and after the intervention using parallel forms of a knowledge test. Overall results showed significant learning gains in all three conditions, but no significant differences between conditions. However, learners who started with low prior knowledge showed a significantly higher learning gain in the EDT condition than in the two control conditions. This result indicates that the effect of providing learners with scaffolds does not follow a “one-size-fits-all” principle, but may depend on specific learner characteristics, such as prior knowledge.     

Preparing to transition to secondary education: perceptions of Dutch pupils with migrant backgrounds

Background: The transition from primary school to secondary school is a crucial period of time for children and this may be especially the case for pupils with migrant backgrounds. While there has been considerable research on the transition from primary to secondary school, more needs to be known specifically about the experiences of this group of pupils during their final year of primary school, as they prepare for their transition to secondary school.

Purpose: The study investigated how Dutch children with migrant backgrounds in their final year of primary school perceive the preparatory process for the transition to secondary school. In particular, we were interested in who the children felt were the important ‘actors’ (e.g. pupils, parents, teachers and others) in the preparatory process.

Sample: We collected data from 76 primary school pupils from three schools in an urban city in the Netherlands. The sample included pupils who, according to the Dutch system, were preparing to follow an academic pathway (i.e. the tracks known in this system as ‘HAVO’ or ‘VWO’) and those who were preparing to follow a vocational pathway (i.e. the track known as ‘VMBO’) in secondary education.

Design and methods: We used photo elicitation (N = 76) and also conducted semi-structured interviews with a subsample of the pupils (N = 25) to examine the roles of the important actors in the preparatory process. Data were analysed qualitatively; responses were coded and underwent pattern analysis in order to identify and describe repeating structures in the data. Data were grouped according to whether the pupils received school recommendations for an academic track or a vocational track.

Results: Findings suggested that the pupils perceived the most important actors to be the pupil, the classroom teacher and the parents. Both teachers and parents were considered valuable resources for pupils in the preparatory process. Patterns representing the participants’ perceptions of the roles of three actors – namely, (1) the child, (2) the classroom teacher and (3) the parents, were identified. Six patterns were identified with respect to the child, four with respect to the classroom teacher and two with respect to the parents. For some patterns, it was apparent that the responses of children in the vocational group and the academic group had different emphases.

Conclusions: The study highlights the importance for teachers and parents of children in their final year of primary school to be aware of the pupils’ perceptions of and feelings about their preparation for secondary school, so as to be in the best position to support them collaboratively.     

Software scaffolds to promote regulation during scientific inquiry learning

This research addresses issues in the design of online scaffolds for regulation within inquiry learning environments. The learning environment in this study included a physics simulation, data analysis tools, and a model editor for students to create runnable models. A regulative support tool called the Process Coordinator (PC) was designed to assist students in planning, monitoring, and evaluating their investigative efforts within this environment. In an empirical evaluation, 20 dyads received a “full” version of the PC with regulative assistance; dyads in the control group (n = 15) worked with an “empty” PC which contained minimal structures for regulative support. Results showed that both the frequency and duration of regulative tool use differed in favor of the PC+ dyads, who also wrote better lab reports. PC− dyads viewed the content helpfiles more often and produced better domain models. Implications of these differential effects are discussed and suggestions for future research are advanced.     

Supporting hypothesis generation by learners exploring an interactive computer simulation

Computer simulations provide environments enabling exploratory learning. Research has shown that these types of learning environments are promising applications of computer assisted learning but also that they introduce complex learning settings, involving a large number of learning processes. This article reports on an instrument for supporting one of these learning processes: stating hypotheses.The resulting instrument, an hypothesis scratchpad, was designed on the basis of a conceptual representation of the simulation model and tested in an experimental study. In this study three versions of the scratchpad, varying in structure, were compared. It was found that support offered for identifying variables, in the form of a selection list, is relatively successful: students who used this list were better in differentiating different types of variables. For identifying relations, a selection list of relations offered to the students proved unhelpful in finding accurate relations: students using this list stated their hypotheses mainly at a very global level.The research reported was conducted in the project SIMULATE. SIMULATE was part of SAFE, a R&D project partially funded by the CEC under contract D1014 within the Exploratory Action of the DELTA programme. The work of SIMULATE is continued in the DELTA main phase project SMISLE.