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.     

Young people’s everyday romance and sexual experiences in relation to sex-related conversations with parents: a diary study in the Netherlands

This study builds on existing research into how young people’s emergent sexual development is connected to parent–child sex-related communication through avoidance vs. disclosure. Over the course of one year, a total of 21 young people (age range 12–17.5) reported in longitudinal qualitative diaries their (1) everyday sexual experiences and (2) sex-related conversations with their parents. Using a mixed-methods approach, findings show that less sexually experienced participants reported greater avoidance of parent–child sex-related conversations than more experienced participants. The sex-related conversations of more experienced participants mainly concerned overt experiences in the form of everyday issues with their romantic partner, while the conversations of less experienced participants were characterised by more covert experiences such as opinions about romantic relationships in general. These results suggest that the degree to which young people feel comfortable talking about sexuality with their parents partly depends on when the conversation takes place during a young person’s romantic and sexual development.     

Pedagogical professionalism and gender in daycare

In the Netherlands, moral panic about boys’ education and behavioural problems has led to public concern about the almost exclusively female environment in which young boys in daycare find themselves. Female daycare workers are attacked for creating a feminized culture in daycare centres. In this article we explore the extent to which these media stereotypes about female workers in daycare coincide with their own ideas and experiences of their work. In 2004 we conducted a (preliminary) study involving more than 80 childcare students in an intermediate vocational training programme in Social Pedagogic Work to qualify them to work in daycare centres in the Netherlands. The results of the study do not support the binary stereotypical representation of women’s professional and personal characteristics as an adequate picture of these trainees’ opinions of their work in early childhood care.     

Mixture Simultaneous Factor Analysis for Capturing Differences in Latent Variables Between Higher Level Units of Multilevel Data

Given multivariate data, many research questions pertain to the covariance structure: whether and how the variables (e.g., personality measures) covary. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) is often used to look for latent variables that might explain the covariances among variables; for example, the Big Five personality structure. In the case of multilevel data, one might wonder whether or not the same covariance (factor) structure holds for each so-called data block (containing data of 1 higher level unit). For instance, is the Big Five personality structure found in each country or do cross-cultural differences exist? The well-known multigroup EFA framework falls short in answering such questions, especially for numerous groups or blocks. We introduce mixture simultaneous factor analysis (MSFA), performing a mixture model clustering of data blocks, based on their factor structure. A simulation study shows excellent results with respect to parameter recovery and an empirical example is included to illustrate the value of MSFA.     

Persons Living with HIV: Disclosure to Sexual Partners

A central concern of persons in HIV education and prevention is whether a person testing positive tells sexual partners of this result. An accumulation of 51 studies across twenty years reveals that 40% of persons testing positive for HIV antibodies did not reveal this result to sexual partners (5287/8854). The impact of various factors (age, gender, date of the study, time since diagnosis, nature of the diagnosis, and sexual orientation) received consideration.     

TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT ASSESSMENT,TEACHING, AND LEARNING: TOWARD A CAMPUSWIDE LANGUAGE AND SYSTEM

On most community college campuses where quality and improvement are taken seriously, there are at least three coexisting languages. The language of total quality management is spoken by administrators and by faculty members who teach management or business courses; the language of assessment is spoken by both faculty members and administrators; and the language of teaching and learning is spoken primarily by faculty members and academic administrators. Each language reflects a philosophical commitment to improvement. Each overlaps in terminology with the other two. Each suffices well in its own domain. Yet each is, by itself, insufficient as a campuswide lingua franca of continuous improvement. These languages may continue to coexist. If a college is really to accomplish a paradigm shift throughout the institution, however, it must generate its own language—a language spoken by all, a language that describes and discusses a campuswide system of quality, improvement, and change.     

Teacher educators modelling their teachers?

The teacher educator is always also a teacher, and as a role model may have an important impact on student teachers’ views on teaching. However, what is the impact of these teacher educator’s own role models on their teaching views and practices? Do teacher educators simply imitate the positive role models and reject the bad? It is already clear that teachers and teacher educators learn more than how to play a role from their role models. Becoming a teacher or a teacher educator is a long‐term process of developing a professional identity, with role models being just one of the contributing factors. This study of 13 teacher educators addresses the impact of schoolteacher role models as part of the socialisation process of becoming a teacher.     

The effect of equipment scaling on children’s sport performance: the case for tennis

The influence of scaling court-size and net height on children’s tennis performance was examined. Sixteen boys (9.7 ± 0.5 years) had to perform a 30-min match in four different conditions, where court-size and/or net height were scaled by using a scaling ratio based on the differences in temporal demands between the children and the adult game. These 30-min matches were analysed using Tennis Analyst (FairPlay Ltd., Jindalee, QLD, Australia) software to determine typical tennis match performance characteristics. Children hit more winners, more forced errors, played more volleys, struck more shots from a comfortable height and played in a more forward court position when the net was scaled. Scaling both the court and net lead to a faster children’s game, more closely approximating what is typical of the adult game. The differences between the typical tennis performance variables recorded suggested that scaling the net led to a more aggressive way of playing. Further, children enjoyed playing on the standard court–scaled net condition more than standard adult conditions. It is suggested that optimising the scaling of net height may be as critical as other task constraints, such as racquet length or court-size, as it leads to a more engaging learning environment for experienced children.     

Creating Appropriate Training Environments to Improve Technical,Decision-Making,and Physical Skills in Field Hockey

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of eight different small-sided games (SSG) on physical, technical, and decision-making demands of training environments in U14 field hockey. Methods: A total of 13 participants played eight different training games consisting of two 7.5-minute halves, where number of players (three per side or six per side) and/or field characteristics (normal game, cage hockey game, possession game, and two-goals game) was manipulated. Match performance was determined by using notational analysis, and physical demands were determined by using GPS analyses. Results: Findings revealed that lowering the number of players increased the number of technical actions performed per player and the physical demands of the SSG. Findings of the field characteristics manipulation revealed that the possession game forced players to control the ball more as a team, which resulted in more passes (+4.82 passes) and fewer dribbles (?1.48 dribbles) and tackles (?0.69 tackles) compared to the normal game. The two-goals game led to players scoring more goals (+0.61 goals) compared to the normal game, while the cage hockey game increased passing (+1.46 passes) and physical demands (+7.32 meters per minute) compared to the normal game. Conclusion: It can be concluded from these findings that coaches and trainers are able to promote a change in playing behavior, and in turn the development of skills, by manipulating specific constraints of the training environment.     

Researching race/ethnicity and educational inequality in the Netherlands: A critical review of the research literature between 1980 and 2008

This article describes and critically analyzes how educational sociologists in the Netherlands have studied the relationship between race/ethnicity and educational inequality between 1980 and 2008. Five major research traditions are identified: (1) political arithmetic; (2) racism and ethnic discrimination; (3) school characteristics; (4) school choice; and (5) family background. The development of particular research traditions is explained by pointing to more general developments in terms of social policy and intellectual climate in the Netherlands. This study builds on a similar, recently published literature review that focuses on the UK context by critically comparing the development and findings from these different bodies of research literature. The conclusions suggest that the Netherlands, like England, developed strong research traditions in this area of research since the 1980s and that both countries can learn from each other and advance future research in this area by developing more comprehensive research agendas. More generally, this review illustrates the usefulness of conducting nationally comparative literature reviews in assessing the development of particular bodies of research and in bringing together knowledge produced in different national settings.