Groningen Institute for Educational Research (GION)

GION is a research institute in the field of education, pedagogics and child development within the Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences of the University of Groningen. GION includes fundamental, applied and evaluational research in education within family settings, schools and other institutions. GION develops and tests theories with respect to education and contributes to science, policymaking and educational practice. Although GION aims at providing practical knowledge useful for educational practice, its first priority is the development of knowledge and the testing of that knowledge. The scope of GION is quite broad, but within this broad scope several specific topics are under development. For each of these topics, a research program is developed for a five year period. It is a purpose of GION to design research projects within programs in order to establish further knowledge building within a specific field.

The research carried out in GION is partly paid for by University funding, partly by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) and partly by further external funding.

It is an explicit objective of GION to implement and disseminate developed and tested knowledge for educational practice and policymaking. Therefore, research findings are published in practice and policy oriented journals and other kind of publications in addition to international scientific publications about results and outcomes. Scholars within GION are frequently invited to act as advisors or as members of state committees on a broad range of topics.

GION incorporates the research institute for higher education of the University of Groningen (COWOG). This institute studies university and higher vocational education. Its main objective however is to contribute to further development of higher education by different activities like in-service training of university professors, development of curriculum material, course evaluation and the development of information technology. GION has a strong international orientation which is of vital importance for scientific research but also for the implementation and dissemination of scientific results. For that purpose, GION emphasizes a close relationship and cooperation with foreign universities, institutes and agencies related to educational practice and policy making like ministries, World Bank, OECD and the European Commission.

GION operates in the cutting edge of scientific development in the field of education, pedagogics and child development. This shows in publications in international scientific journals, editorships of international journals (School Effectiveness and School Improve ment, Educational Research and Evaluation) and the involvement of GION in international comparative research (International School Effectiveness Research Project (ISERP) in the program Educational Effectiveness, and research of reaction patterns within the program Severe Rearing Difficulties).

Internationally acknowledged scholars research within GION, hold chairs in other universities and act as visiting professors in other universities. To increase international exchange, a student stipendium program is currently being established.

The programme favors the systems approach of the comprehensive model of educational effectiveness (Creemers, 1994). This approach allows for the identification of different research issues at different levels of the educational system. Because of this differentiation of research problems, the research programme is organized into three coherent thematic groups of problems, each with its own group of researchers:

Each group is involved in solving problems and interested in dealing with issues at different levels of the educational system. The topics of particular interest for each group respectively are described in the following sections.

The research group on learning and instruction focusses on the effectiveness issues of instructional design. Their theory driven research of learning and instruction focusses on the classroom and student level of the comprehensive model and on alternatives in terms of adaptive and cognitive instruction. So doing they hope to improve instructional design for different groups of students (different in terms of prior knowledge, motivation, cultural backgrounds, and learning strategies) and for different kinds of goals (different kinds of skills; different subjects).

Due to the expertise of the participants the research group limits the range of school subjects mainly to the Dutch mother tongue, to foreign language education in the English and German languages, and to mathematics and science. The effectiveness concept is treated empirically: which kinds of instruction are effective for which kinds of goals in which subjects? The concrete research tasks that are undertaken have regard to the following topics.

Questions to be answered are to which degree text books are used and implemented as is intended by the designers of the materials, and which effects on learning strategies and achievement may be observed as a consequence of the use of different text books. GION has a long tradition of this kind of quality assessment of text books for different subjects in primary, secondary and vocational education.

Next to the effectiveness research of the text books themselves also effectiveness research takes place of teacher training in a better use of text books.

Different groups of students may have different quality requirements for the curriculum materials they use. Research is oriented to making explicit the requirements of good, as well qualitative as useable, curriculum materials. Quality assessment of curriculum materials may make use of the explicit requirements. Quality requirements are mainly being derived from the direct instruction and the cognitive instruction models.

Several research projects have dealt with quality assessment of text books for primary and secondary education making use of the procedure of expert judgement: experts were asked to judge text books on the quality requirements that were made explicit for their use.

In line with a recent research project into the use of new educational technology and it's influence on mathematical problem solving, new research in mathematical problem solving, particularly in science education is taken up. Especially the relationships between the use of curriculum materials and the use of computer aided instruction will be investigated with a view to producing knowledge on learning strategies of weak learners in the second phase of secondary education. Computer aided instruction may benefit from this knowledge.

In relationship with opportunity to learn questions are investigated about dosage of practical exercises, pacing of the instruction and of the learning processes, and the students' processing of the learning contents. Differences in opportunity to learn may be related to differences in students' processing of the learning contents. The investigation is important for differentiated instruction (differentiation in goals and in content) in primary education.

Longitudinal research into English as second language and the curricula in primary and secondary education is being prepared in line with international comparative research in English examinations, that has been carried out.

In line with a long tradition of research and partly as a consequence of evaluations of educational policy programmes questions are investigated about the impact of students' motivations to learn on their learning achievement. Motivation to learn seems, for example, next to ability the best predictor of achievement after some years. Students are differentlt motivated to learn in different subjects, so one has to distinguish between an 'achievement motivation' in general and 'subject specific affect' of students.

Also investigated are the interactions between students' motivations and teachers' instruction in their impact on achievement. Examples are the indirect effects of the meachanisms of evaluation, feedback and corrective instruction on the students' achievement by a probable impact on their motivation. Attributions of successes and failures to circumstances under the students' control versus attribution to their own ability (a circumstance beyond their control) are another example of a research issue within the complex interrelationships between teacher feedback, student motivation and learning achievement.

The research group on school organization and curriculum focusses on conceptual issues of school effectiveness, on issues of schools providing support to effective classroom processes of teachers and students, on issues of evaluation as quality assurance, and on issues of effective school improvement.

The size and the stability of school effects is one of the most important conceptual issues in effectiveness research, that may be analyzed in many of the research scheduled by this research group. It will be a routinely performed task in each longitudinal data set on school effectiveness.

Although most research project will probably limit themselves to measurement of basic skills, whenever it is possible, higher level cognitive skills and/or attitude measurements will be included in the research in order to test the validity of the effectiveness model for attaining other than basic skills.

Comparisons of school-level and classroom-level determinants of achievement are rare, especially such comparisons in which effectiveness treatments are actively controlled by researchers. The support the school level characteristics in fact provide for the classroom level characteristics is, whenever possible, routinely tested in the analyses of data.

In the research programme as a whole emphasis is given to the impact of classroom level factors. Focussing on school level characteristics this research group tries to demonstrate the supportive function of these characteristics. The supportive function of the school level characteristics is one of the relationships between the classroom level and the system levels above the classroom. In secondary and tertiary education also characteristics at the department level are studied and compared to the supportive function of school level characteristics.

The mechanisms of evaluation, feedback and reinforcement are mechanisms of control at the school level. Without such mechanisms schools have no control of their effectiveness. The specifics of these mechanisms are determined by the evaluation policy and the evaluation system at the school level, both of which indicate the educational quality factors in the comprehensive model of educational effectiveness (figure 1). Whenever possible these mechanisms will be included in research projects.

Curriculum refers to indicators - at the school level - of opportunity to learn. Schools are responsible for the school curriculum and for the purchase of curriculum materials. Curriculum research mostly compares curriculum documents (the school curriculum and the curriculum materials) with curriculum implementation. Curriculum research is therefor typically directed towards the way teachers implement the curriculum as provided by the school, i.e. towards problems at the interface between school and classroom levels. The way a curriculum is implemented determines the effectiveness of the curriculum concerned.

The way schools are governed may have impact on the achievements of students. This relationship is demonstrated particularly for schools in the Netherlands. Building on the tradition of research in school governance this phenomenon is studied further, especially as to the processes and mechanisms responsible for this relationship between governance and student learning.

Two kinds of activities will be undertaken in this context, viz. a theoretical analysis of the problems involved in the issue of combining the improvement and the effectiveness paradigms; and the development of an effective school improvement programme. An international cooperative project has been prepared. Funding is being requested of the European Commission.

The contextual conditions of school effectiveness are particularly studied in evaluation research of educational policy programmes. Educational policy programmes are mostly programmes of government policy. The programmes are implemented in primary and secondary education. The evaluation of educational policy programmes is mostly government sponsored. The programme evaluations mostly have a longitudinal as well as a multilevel design. They are conducted in great samples of schools. They gather data on students, teachers and schools. Because many of the programme evaluations are large scale evaluations, next to the general assessment of the programmes' effectiveness, several other issues are investigated and analyzed.

The evaluations of educational policy programmes compare the stated policy with (variations in) it's implementation at school and classroom levels. They also assess the general effectiveness of the educational policy programme.

Many educational policy programmes aim at the improvement of education for specific groups of students. This is either the main goal of the programme, as in the educational priority programme or in the programme for children with learning handicaps, or one of the programme goals, as in basic education.

The size and the stability of school effects and of programme effects is one of the most important conceptual issues in effectiveness research, that may be routinely analyzed in the large scale longitudinal programme evaluations.

The effects of educational programmes may differ, not only from one group of students to the other, but also from one school subject to an other, or from one type of goals to an other type. This differential effectiveness also may be routinely analyzed in large scale evaluations.

Large scale longitudinal evaluations that study - among others - cohorts of students, are typically adequate to include - and some in fact do include - longitudinal data on motivation, attributions and individual choices of students.

The comprehensive model of educational effectiviness is primarily interested in theoretical explanations and practical improvements of school and classroom effectiveness. The model is not interested in the costs of the improvements as such. The model may be supplemented with an analysis of costs and benefits of the - configurated - factors that influence effectiveness. So doing the actual decisions of schools and policy makers in order to improve educational quality may be understood and explained.

The aim of the program is to study problems and interventions directed on social cohesion, in particular focused on vocational and adult education, and health care. The policy and practical orientated mission of the program is related to theoretical and methodological reflections. The program's challenge is to find a fruitful balance between a practice-orientated and a theoretical field. The first kind of orientation has to result in publications for practitioners and policy-makers, the development and implementation of innovative methods and contributions to the public debate. The second orientation has to result in a better insight into the nature of social cohesion, the effectiveness of social interventions, and the improvement of the methodology of developmental research, programme evaluation and assessment.

Concerning the first theme (vocational and adult education), functional literacy of adults is one of the major research issues. The program director participates as Scientific Director of the Dutch contribution to the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS). IALS is a comparative study on adult functional literacy in seven countries, supported by national governments and international organizations such as the Unesco Institute for Education, OECD and the EC. Three dissertations have been planned on functional literacy: a national country study, functional literacy among older adults, and an in-depth comparison of literacy between the Netherlands and Flanders. The IALS-dataset is also used for the study of adult education participation across the lifespan, within the framework of a Unesco-OECD Project. Other research topics are the effectiveness of the current innova- tions in the field of Dutch vocational education and a historical study on education for lower educated young women. Also, developmental research is carried out in Mozambique, supported by Nuffic, and in South Africa. A dissertation on gender and development in Zambia was recently finished.

The second theme (health care) concerns contributions to the international debate on the rehabilitation of psychiatric patients. Because of the deinstitutionalization proces of psychiatric institutions, new methods and programs for rehabilitation have to be developed and evaluated. Additional research issues within this theme are 'health on the workplace' and the reasons behind consultation of the GP, and methodological issues of action research.

EMP/SKILLS - Skills and Employability Department