Teachers’ first year in the profession: the power of high-quality support

ABSTRACT

In research on teacher induction, scholars have pointed at the pivotal role of collegial support to overcome the challenges inherent to the first years of teaching. In this quantitative study, we extend current work by using a social network perspective to examine characteristics (i.e. network size, frequency and perceived usefulness) of professional, emotional, and social collegial support networks. Moreover, we explore the extent to which these characteristics explain key factors affecting teacher retention, namely job satisfaction, intrinsic motivation to teach, and self-efficacy. An online survey was completed by 292 beginning primary school teachers in Flanders (Belgium). Social network data showed that, on average, they receive professional, emotional and social support from six colleagues each week and found this mostly useful. Regression analyses demonstrated that network size and perceived usefulness of professional, emotional, and social collegial support networks were positively related to job satisfaction and intrinsic motivation to teach, thus confirming the importance of collegial support in teacher induction. Frequency of support was not significant. Finally, no substantial relationship was found between collegial support and teachers’ self-efficacy. Implications of these findings for practice and policy are discussed.     

Experimental and numerical prediction of railway induced vibration

In this paper, both measurements and numerical simulations of railway induced vibration are discussed. A measurement campaign has been carried out along the high-speed railway track in Lincent, Belgium. The experimental determination of transfer functions and vibration velocity during train passages are discussed. A numerical model is introduced to predict the transfer functions and the vibration velocity during train passages. The comparison of experimental and numerical results demonstrates the importance of accurate numerical models and input data. The results are obtained in the framework of the development of a hybrid prediction method, where numerical and experimental data can be combined to improve the prediction accuracy for railway induced vibration.     

Islamic Schools in the Netherlands: Expansion or Marginalization?

In the Netherlands, the constitutional freedom of education offers the opportunity for the growing number of Muslims to establish state-funded Islamic schools. At the moment there are 46 Islamic primary schools; a number of schools are in the process of being established and there is still a need for an additional 120 such schools. Right from the start Islamic education has been a highly controversial issue. Events such as 9/11 and the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh have fueled the discussion, which turned from open-minded and accommodating to critical and even demonstrably negative. This article focuses on Islamic schools in the Netherlands: how they have evolved, their objectives, their achievements, and the problems they have encountered – and continue to encounter. Specific attention is paid to a number of empirical studies that focus on the functioning of Islamic schools.     

Educational Opportunities in the Netherlands: Policy, Students' Performance and Issues

Since 1985 the Educational Priority Policy (EPP) has been in effect in the Netherlands. This policy is aimed at reducing the educational disadvantage of children due to their social, economic and cultural circumstances. The first section of this article describes the outlines of the EPP. The second section presents the results of an EPP evaluation study conducted in secondary education among 20,000 students from nearly 400 schools. The emphasis is on test performance in relation to three student characteristics: gender, social class and ethnic background. The analyses show that the test results are largely determined by social class. Gender hardly plays a role, while the influence of ethnic origin is also limited. It should however be added that the performance of two migrant groups, the Turks and Moroccans, is the worst of all. As most Turks and Moroccans belong to the lowest socioeconomic category, the factor of ethnic origin is so closely interwoven with the factor of social class, that it is not really possible to distinguish the two. In the final section of the article these findings are related to three theoretical perspectives regarding the explanation of differences in educational performance. This is followed by a discussion on possible consequences for the EPP.     

Stability of processing and regulation strategies: Two longitudinal studies on student learning

The way students approach their study tasks isoften assumed to be dependent on the learningcontext. This assumption has received littleresearch attention in terms of longitudinal, orwithin-subjects, designs. In the presentarticle, two longitudinal studies are described which investigate the extent to which learningstrategies change. The strategy part of theInventory of Learning Styles of Vermunt and VanRijswijk (1988) was used to measure the waystudents learn. Repeated measures analyses showa number of statistically significanttrends. The article concludes by comparing thetwo studies, and by suggesting future researchdirections.     

General and task-related experiences affect early object interaction

The effects of 2 weeks of no, general, and task-related enhanced movement experiences on 8- to 12-week-old infants' (N = 30) hand and foot interactions with objects were assessed using standard video and motion analysis. For hand-object interaction ability, general and task experience led to greater success than did no experience, and task experience led to greater success than did general experience. Only general experience led to greater success for foot-object interaction ability. Experiences therefore resulted in differential effects depending on which limbs infants used. The results suggest that different movement experiences can advance infants' earliest object interactions. They also indicate that even early purposeful behaviors result from a complex interplay of experience, current ability, and task demands.