Zoekresultaten

More physical activity and less sitting at school

Principal–teacher relationships: Dimensionality and measurement invariance of a measure for primary and secondary school teachers

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.

Facilitators and barriers for the implementation of the dynamic school day

From September 2024 onwards we will start the development of an educational innovation for Dutch primary schools to design a dynamic school day (a school day in which sedentary learning is regularly interrupted by moments of physical activity) for their local context. A number of Dutch primary schools already successfully implemented a more dynamic school day. In this qualitative study, we set out to assess the facilitators and barriers that several stakeholders faced during the implementation of the dynamic school day. We also set out to assess preferences of pupils with respect to a more dynamic school day. In preparation of the development phase, we will conduct semi-structured interviews with stakeholders of 3 Dutch primary schools (spring 2024). The interview guide will be based on the MRC guideline for conducting process evaluations of complex interventions. For each school, we seek to include: 1) the physical education teacher, 2) a classroom teacher who finds it easy to organize physical activities during the school day, 3) a classroom teacher who finds it difficult to organize physical activities during the school day, 4) a member of the management team. If relevant, we will also interview other stakeholders involved in the implementation of the dynamic school day. We will present the factors that may facilitate or hinder the implementation of a dynamic school day in the Dutch context. We will use these results to develop a set of potential implementation strategies that can serve as a source of inspiration for other Dutch primary schools in their process to develop a dynamic school day for their local context.

Exploring the relation between teacher autonomy support and children’s musical creativity

In primary music education a key question is what teachers can do to stimulate students’ musical creativity. For the answer, delving into teacher-student interaction during the creative processes in the naturalistic setting of primary music lessons is required. Twenty-six music lessons from thirteen teachers and their classes of seven Dutch schools were recorded to explore the relation between teachers’ autonomy support and students’ divergent and convergent thought & action. Quantitative sequential analysis and thematic analysis were combined to examine this relation, using a framework offered by Complex Dynamic Systems theory and Enaction theory. In contrast to classical correla-tional analysis, sequential analysis focuses on the dynamics, and thus on the temporal relation in classroom interaction. The results show that mostly lower-level autonomy support was offered. Es-pecially in creative lessons, higher-level autonomy support is more likely to lead to higher-level student divergent thought and action. For convergent thought and action, the results were less con-clusive. An implication of the findings is that (research into) music education could benefit from interventions aimed at enhancing autonomy support in primary school music.

How CREM strategies apply to primary school buildings

The purpose of this paper is to investigate which theoretical elements of adding value with? real estate are applied in practice in accommodating primary education and in what way these are elements relevant to the stakeholders. A literature study of usual CREM strategies has been used to build a theoretical framework with regard to the value a building can create for different stakeholders. Interviews were then held with various professionally involved people in order to understand to what extent the general theory is taken into account with regard to “added value” for the stakeholders of primary school buildings. The data show that CREM theory also can be applied to the “not for profit” school buildings, but that not all potential possibilities to add value with real estate for primary education seem to be applied in practice.

Preparing teachers to teach robotics in primary schools

We are in the process of preparing a teaching experiment on robotics in primary schools. In relation to this, we investigate in this paper whether it is possible to prepare teachers adequately to implement the intended pedagogy with the help of an in-service teacher education course that we developed. In view of the forthcoming teaching experiment, we were especially interested in the content and character of the knowledge, insights and attitudes of the teachers. We therefore capitalized on qualitative measures. We report how teachers developed the required knowledge and skills in three domains, i.e. subject matter knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and pedagogical content knowledge. We examined whether teachers were able to accommodate the content knowledge, concepts and approaches we proposed, whether they developed a personalized version of pedagogical content knowledge, and whether they increased their pedagogic ability with respect to scaffolding pupils' learning of robotics. We draw some conclusions with regard to the professional development of primary school teachers in areas of science and technology with which they in general are unfamiliar.