This study explored the dimensionality and measurement invariance of a multidimensional measure for evaluating teachers’ perceptions of the quality of their relationships with principals at the dyadic level. Participants were 630 teachers (85.9% female) from 220 primary and 204 secondary schools across the Netherlands. Teachers completed the 10-item Principal–Teacher Relationship Scale (PTRS) for their principals. Confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) provided evidence for a two-factor model, including a relational Closeness and Conflict dimension. Additionally, multigroup CFA results indicated strong invariance of the PTRS across school type, teacher gender, and teaching experience. Last, secondary school teachers and highly experienced teachers reported lower levels of Closeness and higher levels of Conflict in the relationship with their principal compared to primary school teachers and colleagues with less experience. Accordingly, the PTRS can be considered a valid and reliable measure that adds to the methodological repertoire of educational leadership research by focusing on both positive and negative aspects of dyadic principal–teacher relationships.
Background To gain insight into the role of plantar intrinsic foot muscles in fall-related gait parameters in older adults, it is fundamental to assess foot muscles separately. Ultrasonography is considered a promising instrument to quantify the strength capacity of individual muscles by assessing their morphology. The main goal of this study was to investigate the intra-assessor reliability and measurement error for ultrasound measures for the morphology of selected foot muscles and the plantar fascia in older adults using a tablet-based device. The secondary aim was to compare the measurement error between older and younger adults and between two different ultrasound machines. Methods Ultrasound images of selected foot muscles and the plantar fascia were collected in younger and older adults by a single operator, intensively trained in scanning the foot muscles, on two occasions, 1–8 days apart, using a tablet-based and a mainframe system. The intra-assessor reliability and standard error of measurement for the cross-sectional area and/or thickness were assessed by analysis of variance. The error variance was statistically compared across age groups and machines. Results Eighteen physically active older adults (mean age 73.8 (SD: 4.9) years) and ten younger adults (mean age 21.9 (SD: 1.8) years) participated in the study. In older adults, the standard error of measurement ranged from 2.8 to 11.9%. The ICC ranged from 0.57 to 0.97, but was excellent in most cases. The error variance for six morphology measures was statistically smaller in younger adults, but was small in older adults as well. When different error variances were observed across machines, overall, the tablet-based device showed superior repeatability. Conclusions This intra-assessor reliability study showed that a tablet-based ultrasound machine can be reliably used to assess the morphology of selected foot muscles in older adults, with the exception of plantar fascia thickness. Although the measurement errors were sometimes smaller in younger adults, they seem adequate in older adults to detect group mean hypertrophy as a response to training. A tablet-based ultrasound device seems to be a reliable alternative to a mainframe system. This advocates its use when foot muscle morphology in older adults is of interest.
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Scientific research from within and beyond academia continues to provide the justification and the knowledge for policy developments directed toward migration and integration governance. A proliferation of scholarship aims to study, pilot, and investigate the ‘best practices’ for facilitating integration, which is then taken up in advice to policy makers. Many authors have written about this science-policy nexus (Boswell 2009; Penninx, Garcés-Mascareñas, and Scholten 2005; Scholten et al. 2015; Verbeek, Entzinger, and Scholten 2015) These works have also engaged in critical reflection, problematizing this nexus and demonstrating how funding structures draw researchers not only into addressing short-term policy goals, but also into reproducing some of the essentialist worldviews that come with methodological nationalism (Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002) and the ‘national order of things’ (Malkki 1995). Yet, the colonial legacies and dis/continuities of these logics in integrationism have not received much attention so far.The paper takes a critical lens on the implications of the science-policy complicity in reproducing colonial logics of ‘cultural distance’, based on perspectives and empirical research from different national (Netherlands and Switzerland) and supra-national (EU) contexts. We analyse texts which shape the civic integration programme in the Netherlands, the genealogy of the integration requirement to respect the values of the constitution in Switzerland, and the EU framework on migrant integration. This combined analysis brings forth the role scientists and knowledge producers play in (re)producing the colonial logics within integrationism, and their contributions to the regime of truth within which integration discourse operates. Throughout this article, we draw on examples from these different contexts to display that integration and its migranticized (Dahinden 2016) subjects are constructed through practices deemed as scientific or objective expertise, building on important work by Schinkel (2018) on integration research as “neocolonial knowledge production” and Favell’s (2022) critical reflections on integration indicator frameworks. As we demonstrate, the “idea of integration as an issue of cultural distance is rendered imaginable in and through colonial legacies and scientific practices from which policy draws legitimacy. We show how cultural distance is produced in the scientification of migrants’ assimilability in a ‘Western work ethic’, in measurement of migrants’ adherence to liberal values, and through constructions of integration drawing on social imaginaries of national and European identity. Importantly, we argue that by presenting this cultural distance as a product of objective, scientific processes of empirical observation, the notion of cultural distance is normalised and depoliticized, which ultimately legitimizes integrationism as a mode of governance.The present study builds on important contributions (by Schinkel 2017; Favell 2022; Korteweg 2017; Bonjour and Duyvendak 2017, and others) in attempting to destabilize the normalization of integrationism as the widely accepted mode of governance of ‘immigrant’ or ‘ethnic’ populations and their inherent and problematic ‘distance’. The content and structure of this summer school in post-colonial Amsterdam would allow us to continue our critical reflexive discussions to better understand the colonial logics at play and how they operate in multiple contexts and at multiple levels of governance, in and beyond integration
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The objective of Waterrecreatie Nederland is to improve water recreation in the Netherlands. One of the focus points that the foundation focuses on is strengthening sustainable water recreation. With this study, Waterrecreatie Nederland wants to map the current CO2 emissions of recreational shipping (here: sailing and motor boats), in order to be able to report and communicate about this, and also as a baseline measurement for future monitoring in this area.Societal IssueShipping has a substantial impact on several environmental systems, amongst others through air and water pollution, and its contribution to climate change. The role of recreational shipping in these issues is not well known, as measurements are scarce and often partly based on assumptions. Benifit to societyThis project tries to strengthen the knowledge base on the carbon (CO2) emissions of recreational shipping in the Netherlands, and to provide detail on fuel use, fuel types, distances, etc. That knowledge can help in making more informed choices on the future development of recreational shipping, with a lower impact on climate change.
The application of sensors in water technology is a crucial step to provide broader, more efficient and circular systems. Among the different technologies used in this field, ultrasound-based systems are widely used, basically to generate energy peaks for cell lysis and particle separation. In this work, we propose the adaptation of an ultrasound system to monitor the concentration of solid particles in wastewater treatment plants settlers as well as to indicate sludge level (real time). A similar sensor was developed and tested in another project which operated successfully at solids concentration up to 1% in UASB reactors. Such measurements are nowadays obtained via time-consuming physical (solids) analysis, which can compromise the efficiency of the settlers and the quality of the effluent. The present project proposes an improved version of the sensor, which will combine solids concentration monitoring and sludge level detection. The defined targets have the intention to make a sensor with a much broader range of applications, been suitable not only for UASB reactors but also to settler and aerobic tanks. The project is a cooperation between the Water Technology lectoraat of NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences, two SME’s - YNOVIO B.V. and Lamp-ion B.V. - and the INCT group (Brazil). If proven feasible, the concept can generate a big business market to the involved Dutch partners as well as favor the automation of WWTP in the Netherlands, Brazil and around the world.
