Het FOCUS-project: OpbrengstGericht Werken op basis van prestatie-feedback

In het FOCUS-project is een tweeejarige training ‘OpbrengstGericht Werken’ voor complete basisschoolteams ontwikkeld. Het is de bedoeling dat basisscholen door de training allereerst leren om de mogelijkheden van het leerlingvolgsysteem dat ze bezitten beter te benutten. De praktijk leert namelijk dat veel scholen maar een klein deel van die mogelijkheden gebruiken. Dat is zonde, omdat onderzoek duidelijk heeft aangetoond dat het goed benutten van feedback waarvan je over de kwaliteit van je eigen handelen leert sterk prestatieverbeterende effecten kan hebben. De training gaat echter verder. Scholen leren vervolgens namelijk om op basis van het inzicht in hun prestaties doelen te stellen die voldoen aan de principes van de goal setting theorie (uitdagende, haalbare en evalueerbare doelen). Daarnaast bieden we rekendidactische informatie aan evenals informatie over de kenmerken van rekensterke scholen, die scholen kunnen gebruiken om hun onderwijs zo aan te passen dat de kans op het behalen van de gestelde doelen groot wordt. In het artikel worden de ontwikkeling en inhoud van de training, evenals de ervaringen met scholen die de training volgden, nader beschreven

Accounting for quality improvement during the conduct of embedded pragmatic clinical trials within healthcare systems: NIH Collaboratory case studies

Embedded pragmatic clinical trials (ePCTs) and quality improvement (QI) activities often occur simultaneously within healthcare systems (HCSs). Embedded PCTs within HCSs are conducted to test interventions and provide evidence that may impact public health, health system operations, and quality of care. They are larger and more broadly generalizable than QI initiatives, and may generate what is considered high-quality evidence for potential use in care and clinical practice guidelines. QI initiatives often co-occur with ePCTs and address the same high-impact health questions, and this co-occurrence may dilute or confound the ability to detect change as a result of the ePCT intervention. During the design, pilot, and conduct phases of the large-scale NIH Collaboratory Demonstration ePCTs, many QI initiatives occurred at the same time within the HCSs. Although the challenges varied across the projects, some common, generalizable strategies and solutions emerged, and we share these as case studies. KEY LESSONS: Study teams often need to monitor, adapt, and respond to QI during design and the course of the trial. Routine collaboration between ePCT researchers and health systems stakeholders throughout the trial can help ensure research and QI are optimally aligned to support high-quality patient-centered care

Pragmatic clinical trials embedded in healthcare systems: generalizable lessons from the NIH Collaboratory

Background: The clinical research enterprise is not producing the evidence decision makers arguably need in a timely and cost effective manner; research currently involves the use of labor-intensive parallel systems that are separate from clinical care. The emergence of pragmatic clinical trials (PCTs) poses a possible solution: these large-scale trials are embedded within routine clinical care and often involve cluster randomization of hospitals, clinics, primary care providers, etc. Interventions can be implemented by health system personnel through usual communication channels and quality improvement infrastructure, and data collected as part of routine clinical care. However, experience with these trials is nascent and best practices regarding design operational, analytic, and reporting methodologies are undeveloped. Methods: To strengthen the national capacity to implement cost-effective, large-scale PCTs, the Common Fund of the National Institutes of Health created the Health Care Systems Research Collaboratory (Collaboratory) to support the design, execution, and dissemination of a series of demonstration projects using a pragmatic research design. Results: In this article, we will describe the Collaboratory, highlight some of the challenges encountered and solutions developed thus far, and discuss remaining barriers and opportunities for large-scale evidence generation using PCTs. Conclusion: A planning phase is critical, and even with careful planning, new challenges arise during execution; comparisons between arms can be complicated by unanticipated changes. Early and ongoing engagement with both health care system leaders and front-line clinicians is critical for success. There is also marked uncertainty when applying existing ethical and regulatory frameworks to PCTS, and using existing electronic health records for data capture adds complexity

The effects of professional development on the attitudes, knowledge and skills for data-driven decision making

The Dutch government and School Inspectorate encourage schools to use the student performance data they can obtain from their student monitoring systems to maximize student performance in a systematic and goal-oriented way. Research by the same Inspectorate (Inspectie van het Onderwijs, 2010) shows that students in schools which do so outperform students in schools where data-driven decision making (DDDM) is as yet less developed. The University of Twente developed a training course in which school teams learn to utilize data from computerized student monitoring systems in order to improve instructional quality and student performance. Parallel to the training activities, training effects are studied. The research findings show that the training activities had a positive effect on school staff's DDDM knowledge and DDDM skills. Staff attitudes towards DDDM were already high on the pre-tests and remained high on the post-tests

Leerachterstanden van vertraagde leerlingen op normaalvorderende leeftijdgenoten

Deze bijdrage brengt de achterstand in kaart van vertraagde leerlingen op normaalvorderende leerlingen in groep 4 van het Nederlandse basisonderwijs voor Technisch Lezen, Spelling en Rekenen-Wiskunde. Zowel de achterstand van vertraagde leerlingen in hetzelfde leerjaar als die van vertraagde leeftijdgenoten in groep 3 worden gerapporteerd. Daarnaast is onderzocht in hoeverre verschillen tussen vertraagde en normaalvorderende leerlingen van dezelfde leeftijd kunnen worden toegeschreven aan een verlengde kleuterperiode. Met propensity score matching zijn vergelijkbare groepen van vertraagde en niet-vertraagde leerlingen samengesteld. De prestaties van vertraagde leerlingen blijven duidelijk achter bij die van hun klasgenoten, maar nog veel meer bij die van leeftijdgenoten in hogere leerjaren

A matching activity when entering higher education: ongoing guidance for the students or efficiency instrument for the school?

In order to lower dropout rates and stimulate student success in higher education, the Dutch government implemented a new law demanding that every higher education institute offer a matching activity to applying students. This article evaluates how students and teachers experience this matching activity. Data were collected in a Dutch university of applied sciences through questionnaire (students: n = 1711, teachers: n = 52) and interview research (students: n = 136, teachers, n = 36). Results provide insights into useful and improvable aspects of the matching procedure. It also reveals a tension related to a ‘conflicting perspective’: the matching activity can be used as a selection-oriented instrument or as a guidance instrument, which leads to different perceptions on the effectiveness of the instrument

Effects of a data-based decision making intervention on student achievement

Data-based decision making (DBDM) is becoming important for teachers due to increasing amounts of digital feedback on student performance. In the quasi-experimental study reported here, teachers, principals, and academic coaches from 42 schools were trained for two years in using the results of half-year interim assessments for providing students with tailor-made instruction. Our results did not show any main effects of this DBDM training trajectory on student achievement but did indicate interaction effects with students’ low prior achievement levels and socioeconomic status. Teachers experience difficulties in translating student progress data into adaptive instruction in the classroom. Implications of our findings for teacher professionalization are discussed