Children in foster care are often characterized by low academic outcomes which negatively impact their later lives. School engagement may be a key element to promote their academic and educational... Show moreChildren in foster care are often characterized by low academic outcomes which negatively impact their later lives. School engagement may be a key element to promote their academic and educational outcomes. However, little is known about the development of school engagement in foster children and longitudinal studies are lacking. The current study reports the findings of a three-wave longitudinal study wherein we examined the development of school engagement and analyzed which factors were predictive of school engagement in a sample of 363 Dutch foster children (age range 5–18 years, 46.6% girls). Multilevel analyses showed that characteristics related to demographics, school functioning, foster children, and foster families predicted levels of school engagement of children in foster care. Foster children's behavioral functioning and foster parents’ positive parenting appeared to be characteristics important to consider in screening and interventions. Based on the findings we suggest that teachers and foster care professionals should collaborate to ensure that school engagement and consequently school functioning becomes part of foster children's personal development plans. Show less
Resing, W.C.M.; Bakker, M.; Pronk, C.M.E.; Elliott, J.G. 2017
The current study investigated developmental trajectories of analogical reasoning performance of 104 7- and 8-year-old children. We employed a microgenetic research method and multilevel analysis... Show moreThe current study investigated developmental trajectories of analogical reasoning performance of 104 7- and 8-year-old children. We employed a microgenetic research method and multilevel analysis to examine the influence of several background variables and experimental treatment on the children’s developmental trajectories. Our participants were divided into two treatment groups: repeated practice alone and repeated practice with training. Each child received an initial working memory assessment and was subsequently asked to solve figural analogies on each of several sessions. We examined children’s analogical problem-solving behavior and their subsequent verbal accounts of their employed solving processes. We also investigated the influence of verbal and visual–spatial working memory capacity and initial variability in strategy use on analogical reasoning development. Results indicated that children in both treatment groups improved but that gains were greater for those who had received training. Training also reduced the influence of children’s initial variability in the use of analogical strategies with the degree of improvement in reasoning largely unrelated to working memory capacity. Findings from this study demonstrate the value of a microgenetic research method and the use of multilevel analysis to examine inter- and intra-individual change in problem-solving processes. Show less
How and why do people become involved in European homegrown jihadism? Why do only some of those who participate in such groups actually go on to use violence? The main objective of this PhD thesis... Show moreHow and why do people become involved in European homegrown jihadism? Why do only some of those who participate in such groups actually go on to use violence? The main objective of this PhD thesis is to address these overarching questions through an in-depth case study of an influential homegrown jihadist group; namely, the Dutch ‘Hofstadgroup’ which was active between 2002 and 2005. The group’s planned and perpetrated acts of violence, most notoriously the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh in November 2004, have had an impact on Dutch society that is felt to this day. More importantly, the group is a leading example of a typology of terrorism that continues to pose a challenge to Western states’ security. An understanding of the various processes through which the Hofstadgroup’s participants became involved, and which led some to plan and perpetrate acts of terrorism, therefore remains of considerable relevance to academics, policy makers and counterterrorism practitioners today. By using police files on the Hofstadgroup and interviews with former participants, the thesis adds a large quantity of new information to a field often charged with recycling existing insights and uses that information to assess existing assumptions about the processes leading to terrorism. Show less
Inductive reasoning and more specifically, analogical reasoning, is a basic process involved in a wide range of higher cognitive processes. Therefore, this type of reasoning is often regarded as... Show moreInductive reasoning and more specifically, analogical reasoning, is a basic process involved in a wide range of higher cognitive processes. Therefore, this type of reasoning is often regarded as representing a core component of intelligence. The first few years of primary school represent a particular time period for the rapid development of this ability. Unsurprisingly, children display much variable inter- and intra-individual strategic analogical behavior at this age. To date, conclusions regarding the nature of changes in the ability to reason by analogy have frequently been drawn on the basis of results obtained from cross-sectional training studies. In contrast, the studies presented in this dissertation were designed to microgenetically investigate young children__s inter- and intra-individual variable analogical learning trajectories over time. By providing children with repeated non-guided practice, dynamic-test-type training and transfer tasks, as well as applying specific methods and analyses, detailed accounts of changing strategic analogical performance were revealed. These accounts were interpreted along five dimensions of cognitive change: the source, rate, path, breadth and variability of change, in accordance with the overlapping waves theory of Siegler (1996) Show less
