Sabine van Vondel

‘Looking at’ educational interventions: surplus value of a complex dynamic systems approach to study the effectiveness of a science and technology educational intervention

To fully understand the effect of science education interventions on students’ performance, insight is needed in the properties of teaching-learning processes in individual teacher–student pairs. The assessment of students’ performance during group-based interventions in inquiry learning has been given much attention in the recent years, while the influences on individual student’s learning gains over time have been relatively neglected.

Having Eyes, Giving Eyes, Receiving Eyes

In order to maintain its economic growth and the current level of wealth, the Netherlands need people with a scientific education who can ensure continuous technical capability of the highest standards in all fields of expertise. Unfortunately, a shortage of people with such qualifications is predicted (Van Benthem, Dijkgraaf & De Lange, 2005). Several explanations are given for this prediction. One of them is given by Creighton (2008), who states that teachers have a negative attitude towards science education and this has a negative influence on their thinking and teaching of this subject (Van Aalderen-Smeets, Walma van der Molen, & Asma, 2011). Further, teachers also seem to have low self-efficacy with regard to teaching science and have other curricular priorities (Schwartz, Lederman, Norman & Abd – El - Khalick, 2000).