Schaaleffecten en Onderwijskwaliteit

Statistische analyse van data voor het voortgezet onderwijs laat zien dat er geen eenduidig verband bestaat tussen schaalgrootte en kwaliteit. Actief overheidsbeleid gericht op schaalverandering kan volgens dit onderzoek niet gebaseerd worden op wetenschappelijk bewijs

On modelling and stabilizability of voltage-controlled piezoelectric material

In this paper, we present a new piezoelectric actuator and piezoelectric composite model and show the well-posedness of these systems. Furthermore, we show that the piezoelectric composite is stabilizable for certain system parameters. In this work, we also review several piezoelectric beams, actuators, and composite models and provide improved definitions of the different electromagnetic considerations, i.e. fully dynamic electromagnetic field, quasi-static electric field, and the static lectric field assumption.Comment: 19 pages, 5 figures, 2 tables. This work is intended to be submitted for possible publication. Copyright may be transferred without notice, after which this version may no longer be accessibl

Concurrentie bevordert onderwijsrendement niet

Keuzevrijheid bestaat al jaren in het voortgezet onderwijs en maakt dat scholen onderling concurreren. Door de beschikbaarheid van meer informatie kunnen ouders en leerlingen steeds beter kiezen. Concurrentie tussen scholen leidt echter niet tot meer onderwijsrendement in termen van cijfers of slagingspercentages

How asymmetrical task dependence and task interdependence interact:an individual level study into the effects on affective reactions

Purpose ? This study investigates whether research and practice on task design and work teams could benefit from a more nuanced perspective on task (inter)dependencies among team members. Prior research often overlooked that task interdependence captures the average exchange of resources, while asymmetrical task dependence captures the inequalities within an individual's work relationships. To date, no study on work teams has combined the two aspects. Design/methodology/approach ? Data was obtained from 262 individuals working in 67 work teams. Multilevel and bootstrapping analyses were used. Findings ? Drawing from interdependence theory and power-dependence theory it was argued, and subsequently found, that asymmetrical task dependence interacts with task interdependence, and affects the job satisfaction of individuals and their affective commitment to their team. Implications ? A key practical implication is that both asymmetrical task dependence and task interdependence should be taken into account when optimizing intra-team task dependencies, for instance when (re-)designing jobs or teams. Originality/value ? This study contributes to research on asymmetrical task dependence within work teams, by investigating a) its interaction with task interdependence, b) its effects on the affective reactions of workers, and c) its effects on the individual level of analysis

School Choice and Competition

The literature suggests that competition among schools might increase quality. However, not much empirical evidence is present as only a few countries allow competition at a large scale. One exception is the Netherlands. Free parental choice is the leading principle of the Dutch education system since the beginning of the 20th century. Based on panel data for the Netherlands we show that there is a relation between competition and student achievement in upper secondary education, but that it is negative. In addition, private schools have higher quality levels

Psychological Contract Breach, Job Attitude and Behaviours Across Cultures: A Meta-Analysis

Although research on psychological contract breach (PCB) has grown in recent years, most of the studies have taken an individual-level perspective to explain PCB effects on employee behavior, thereby overlooking the possibility that the national cultural context might affect employee responses to psychological contracts. This study, therefore, investigates whether employees in various cultures react differently to psychological contract breaches. Drawing on the GLOBE cultural framework, we expected that national cultural practices moderate the relationship between PCB and a key work attitude (such as organizational commitment) and job behaviors (i.e. in-role performance, turnover intention, and counterproductive behaviours). Using meta-analytic data from 176 studies, we found that the results largely support our hypotheses. The study updates and expands prior meta-analyses on psychological contracts and opens a new area of inquiry by showing that cultural practices at the national level can influence the processes of how psychological contract breaches affect employee behaviors at the individual level

The Impact Of Economic Factors On The Relationships Between Psychological Contract Breach And Job Behaviors: A Meta-Analysis

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the macro-economic factors that may moderate the psychological contract breach and work outcome relationship. Design/methodology/ approach This study conducted a meta-analysis based-on data from 95 studies. Findings The study revealed that the inflation rate and the unemployment rate of a country moderated the association among employee psychological contract breach, job performance and turnover. Research limitations/ implications The availability of more detailed macro-economic data against the PCB and outcome relationship for other countries and studies examining the impact of micro-economic data for psychological contract breach and outcome relationship would provide a better understanding of the context. Social implications Employment policies to capture the impact of macro-economic circumstances as discussed. Originality/value The paper contributes to understanding the impact of macro-economic indicators on the relationships among psychological contract breach, job performance and turnover

Improved detection of artifactual viral minority variants in high-throughput sequencing data

textabstractHigh-throughput sequencing (HTS) of viral samples provides important information on the presence of viral minority variants. However, detection and accurate quantification is limited by the capacity to distinguish biological from artificial variation. In this study, errors related to the Illumina HiSeq2000 library generation and HTS process were investigated by determining minority variant frequencies in an influenza A/WSN/1933(H1N1) virus reverse-genetics plasmid pool. Errors related to amplification and sequencing were determined using the same plasmid pool, by generation of infectious virus using reverse genetics followed by in duplo reverse-transcriptase PCR (RT-PCR) amplification and HTS in the same sequence run. Results showed that after "best practice" quality control (QC), within the plasmid pool, one minority variant with a frequency >0.5% was identified, while 84 and 139 were identified in the RT-PCR amplified samples, indicating RT-PCR amplification artificially increased variation. Detailed analysis showed that artifactual minority variants could be identified by two major technical characteristics: their predominant presence in a single read orientation and uneven distribution of mismatches over the length of the reads. We demonstrate that by addition of two QC steps 95% of the artifactual minority variants could be identified. When our analysis approach was applied to three clinical samples 68% of the initially identified minority variants were identified as artifacts. Our study clearly demonstrated that, without additional QC steps, overestimation of viral minority variants is very likely to occur, mainly as a consequence of the required RT-PCR amplification step. The improved ability to detect and correct for artifactual minority variants, increases data resolution and could aid both past and future studies incorporating HTS. The source code has been made available through Sourceforge (https://sourceforge.net/projects/mva-ngs)

Psychological contact breach, job attitude and behaviours across cultures: A meta-analysis

Although research on psychological contract breach (PCB) has grown in recent years, most of the studies have taken an individual-level perspective to explain PCB effects on employee behavior, thereby overlooking the possibility that the national cultural context might affect employee responses to psychological contracts. This study, therefore, investigates whether employees in various cultures react differently to psychological contract breaches. Drawing on the GLOBE cultural framework, we expected that national cultural practices moderate the relationship between PCB and a key work attitude (such as organizational commitment) and job behaviors (i.e. in-role performance, turnover intention, and counterproductive behaviours). Using meta-analytic data from 176 studies, we found that the results largely support our hypotheses. The study updates and expands prior meta-analyses on psychological contracts and opens a new area of inquiry by showing that cultural practices at the national level can influence the processes of how psychological contract breaches affect employee behaviors at the individual level