Learning environment designs at the boundary of school and work can be characterised as integrative because they integrate features from the contexts of school and work. Many different manifestations of such integrative learning environments are found in current vocational education, both in senior secondary education and higher professional…

Tasks are essential in fostering students' learning processes, and thinking skills are considered to be of central importance to learning. In order to analyse how tasks promote the development of thinking skills in school geography, we need an instrument that looks beyond a simple distinction between lower and higher order thinking. It should be…

This study focuses on the school-work connection from the perspective of curriculum design. The aim was to uncover considerations underpinning the design of learning environments in vocational education. The research took place in the Netherlands. A focus group methodology was chosen to elicit designers' considerations, which generally remain…

This study investigates the effects of Digital Learning Material (DLM) including instructional clips, online guidance, structuring of content, and a collaboration tool on students' mathematics learning in Dutch vocational education. A pretest-posttest design was used. Apprenticeship students were asked to complete assignments and to discuss them…

In the Netherlands, between 1993 and 2002 the government introduced several reforms in secondary education. In one of these innovations, it was said that the student was at the centre of the teaching and learning process. Several Dutch educational researchers also advocated such approaches under the term "new learning". In this…

To boost the existence of career-learning environments in Dutch vocational education, the innovation project 'Career Orientation and Guidance (COG) in Secondary Vocational Education' started in 2012. In this article, we describe the effects of this project on the level of policy formulation and implementation by means of three case studies. Data…

In vocational education, students learn in different school-based and workplace-based learning environments and engage with different types of knowledge in these environments. Students are expected to integrate these experiences and make meaning of them in relation to their own professional knowledge base. This study focuses both on…

We investigated and compared the learning environment perceptions of students, teachers and guides who participated in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM)-based outreach activities in secondary education. In outreach activities, schools and teachers work together with companies and other external institutions in learning…

In teacher education programs, student teachers gain their first autonomous teaching experiences. While students regard the teaching practicum as the most valued part of their teacher education program, they also consider it to be the most stressful. Student teachers are most concerned about daily hassles in class, mostly related to poor student…

Based on detailed empirical analyses, we paint a layered picture of emerging steering dynamics. Inspired by Foucault, we put the focus on roles stakeholders define both for themselves and others, how they give sense to policy, how they work together in policy elaboration and implementation, and the subtle and sometimes deceitful function of soft…

The coronavirus pandemic has led to drastic measures around the world, which have also affected the education system. Schools were closed in the spring of 2020 in almost every country in the world, and many children and young people are still involved in distance learning to this day. What effect these measures have on children's and young…

Essential Economics, the influential economics education textbook written by Arnold Heertje for use in Dutch secondary schools in the 1970s, was characterized by a previously unknown and internationally exceptional degree of abstraction. Its users justified this degree of abstraction by arguing that it fulfilled the needs of mental schooling (in…

In many science education practices, students are expected to develop an understanding of scientific knowledge without being allowed a view of the practices and cultures that have developed and use this knowledge. Therefore, students should be allowed to develop scientific concepts in relation to the contexts in which those concepts are used.…

User participation is a key element in decision processes concerning the accommodation of dynamic organisations such as schools. This article addresses the discrepancy between the perspectives of the architects and engineers, as the makers of school buildings, and school management, teachers and students, as the users of the buildings, and…

Improvements in workforce skills are essential for European countries to attain higher economic growth and to compete effectively on product markets. Literature indicates a positive relationship between levels of education and productivity growth. This report builds on and expands this body of research in two ways: (1) It investigates the…