A New Study on Educational Effectiveness in Secondary Schools in Flanders: An Introduction

An Analysis of WellBeing in Secondary School with Multilevel Growth Curve models and Multilevel Multivariate Models

“…One of these declining attitudes is the student wellbeing, the degree to which a student feels good in the school environment. Several researchers have studied well-being in the school context (Knuver and Brandsma, 1993;Samdal et al, 1999;Opdenakker and Van Damme, 2000;Konu et al, 2002;Van Landeghem et al, 2002). A reciprocal relationship is often assumed between student well-being and achievement (Knuver and Brandsma, 1993;Samdal et al, 1999).…”

“…The items refer to four themes: interest in learning tasks (8 items), relationship with teachers (10 items), liking the school (4 items) and attentiveness in the classroom (10 items). The wording of the items can be found in Van Damme et al (2002). The well-being questionnaire was administered four times: at the end of first grade (May 1991), second grade (May 1992), fourth grade (May 1994) and sixth grade (May 1996).…”

Interpersonal Teacher Behaviour and Student Outcomes

“…In this study, we focus on the interpersonal perspective on teaching, which means that teacher behaviour is described and measured in terms of the teacher-student relationship. As such, our study adds to the existing knowledge base, because it investigates associations between leaming outcomes and classroom management behaviours from a relational viewpoint (e.g.. Van Damme et al, 2002), in addition to methodical issues or behaviours, such as grouping procedures and classroom organisation (e.g., Brophy & Good, 1986;Creemers, 1994;Lee, 1995).…”

Measuring equity in educational effectiveness research: the properties and possibilities of quantitative indicators

“…What we can call a 'transfer principle' also applies to the Index -that is to say, if equity is transferred from one pupil or group of pupils with a lot of it, to another pupil or group of pupils with a shortage of it, the resulting distribution becomes more equal -which is not the case with other school effectiveness metrics like CVA. It is easily interpreted, can track changes over time, can act as a prompt for improvement and can give fairly immediate feedback to policy-makers (Sammons et al 1997;Van Damme et al 2002;Thomas, Peng, and Gray 2007). This is not to suggest that the Index does not have its disadvantages: it measures equity, but on its own does not measure opportunity, capability or wider aspects of social injustice; like other school effectiveness measures, indices for different subpopulations cannot be averaged to obtain an index for the whole population; and as with all school effectiveness measures, if desirable commodities (like how schools encourage a range of intellectual, sporting and cultural interests among young people, enable friendships and develop the ability to interact socially) are not counted in the input, they cannot be reflected in the output.…”