Balancing between the present and the past:Promoting students’ ability to perform historical contextualization

‘Why would you burn witches? They do not exist!’ Such statements are familiar for history teachers. Whether it concerns witch hunts, the rise of Hitler, or the exchange of New Amsterdam for Suriname, students find it difficult to explain and interpret such historical events. This is because students often view the past from a present-oriented perspective. Historical contextualization promotes students’ awareness of this perspective and helps them to consider differences in values, beliefs, and knowledge between people. This thesis examined how students’ ability to perform historical contextualization can be increased. First it is investigated how students’ ability to perform historical contextualization can be measured and how students of different ages and educational levels perform this ability. Subsequently, it is examined how history teachers promote historical contextualization in their classrooms. Finally, classroom materials that can promote students’ ability to perform historical contextualization were tested. The results indicate that historical contextualization must be explicitly taught to students of different ages and educational levels, not only to students in upper secondary education but also to students in lower secondary and elementary education. Furthermore, history teachers should engage students more in historical contextualization processes and not only demonstrate historical contextualization themselves. The four tested design principles (raising awareness of present-oriented perspectives, reconstructing a historical context, promoting historical empathy, and the use of historical contextualization to explain and interpret historical phenomena) can help teachers to increase students’ ability to perform historical contextualization

An evaluation of the accounting rate of return : evidence for Dutch quoted firms

Although the accounting rate of return (ARR) is traditionally regarded as an important profitability measure in ratio analysis, there has been relatively little theoretical and empirical analysis on its statistical properties and its intrinsic ability to explain market returns. This paper provides an empirical examination of the distributional properties and a time-series analysis of the ARR’s of listed Dutch companies for the years from 1978 to 1997. Furthermore we examine how the ARR is related to market return and risk. We investigate the distributional properties of the accounting rate of return. Our study confirms prior international research which concludes that ARR follows a non-normal distribution. Previous US and UK studies suggest that time series earnings or ARR can be characterized by a random walk or a mean-reverting process. The time series results of our sample are characterized by mean reversion. This paper extends the empirical research on ARR by deriving a panel data analysis that yields more reliable estimates. Researchers using US data found that the ARR was deficient as a representation of market returns and was not related to systematic risk. We find the opposite.

Methodiek Schoolverlatersinformatiesysteem 2003

Dit werkdocument gaat in op de methodiek die in het uitvoeringsjaar 2003 gehanteerd wordt binnen de schoolverlatersonderzoeken zoals die door het ROA worden uitgevoerd. Het betreft de enquêtes Registratie van Uitstroom en Bestemming van Schoolverlaters (RUBS), HBO-Monitor en WO-Monitor. Deze enquetes zijn sinds 1996 in vergaande mate geïntegreerd in het Schoolverlatersinformatiesysteem (SIS), waardoor een vergelijkbaar systeem ontstaan is met gegevens over schoolverlaters uit vrijwel het gehele secundair en tertiair onderwijs. In het kader van het onderzoek binnen dit informatiesysteem is onder andere het rapport en de statistische bijlage van Schoolverlaters tussen onderwijs en arbeidsmarkt 2003 gepubliceerd. Daarnaast zijn er nog specifieke rapportages, te weten een rapport over de arbeidsmarktpositie van afgestudeerden van het HBO en een rapport over de arbeidsmarktpositie van afgestudeerden van het kunstonderwijs.labour market entry and occupational careers;