High-quality teacher-student relationships are related to a wide range of positive student outcomes, especially in students with special educational needs. To enable tailored support to help teachers engage in positive relationships with these students, it is important to identify and understand the different types of teacher-student relationships…

Although cooperative learning is an effective instructional method, it cannot be taken for granted that students will gain new knowledge when engaging in a cooperative activity. Even if cooperative learning is effectively designed, problems might arise regarding cognitive, behavioral and motivational aspects of learning. For students to gain…

Background: Gifted children learn differently compared to their peers in several ways. However, their educational needs are often not met in regular schools, which may result in underachievement and social-emotional and behavioral problems. A pullout program, the "Day a Week School" (DWS), was offered to gifted children in 25 elementary…

Developing fluency in arithmetic facts is instrumental to mathematics learning. This study compares the effects of two practice conditions on children's fluency in simple multiplication facts. Third and fourth graders in the Netherlands (N = 282) practised in either a conventional "recall" condition where they produced answers to…

The present study examined teachers' domain-specific self-efficacy (TSE) in relation to individual students with a variety of social-emotional behaviors in class. Using a sample of 526 third- to sixth-grade students and 69 teachers, multilevel modeling was conducted to examine students' externalizing, internalizing, and prosocial behaviors as…

A large body of research has shown that for novice learners, instruction that relies more heavily on worked examples than on problem solving, is more effective for learning as shown by higher test performance. Moreover, this beneficial effect is often obtained with less acquisition time and lower cognitive load during acquisition and test phase.…

In this study, we investigate whether changes in child social cognitive functioning and parenting are the mechanisms through which an individually delivered real-world child intervention, Stay Cool Kids, aimed at preventing externalizing problem behavior in high-risk elementary school children, induces changes in child behavior. Moreover, we…

This study examined the longitudinal relations between competence (academic achievement and social preference) and problem behavior (loneliness and aggression) in 741 elementary school boys and girls in the Netherlands (Grades 1-5). Also, we examined the moderation effects of having no friends, aggressive friends, or nonaggressive friends on the…