Effectiveness of a blended school-based mindfulness program for the prevention of co-rumination and internalizing problems in Dutch secondary school girls:a cluster randomized controlled trial

BackgroundA growing body of literature indicates that adolescent girls who talk with close friends about interpersonal problems or worries in an excessive, speculative way, and with an intense focus on distress (i.e., co-rumination) are at heightened risk for developing internalizing symptoms and disorders as well as reduced friendship quality. However, to date, there are no prevention programs available that target high levels of co-rumination between adolescent girls. As such, we developed the blended school-based mindfulness prevention program Happy Friends, Positive Minds (HFPM) that targets co-rumination at the dyadic level, i.e., between two close female friends. The aim of this trial is to evaluate the effectiveness of HFPM to reduce co-rumination and internalizing problems and to enhance wellbeing and social-emotional behavior in Dutch adolescent girls.MethodsA cluster Randomized Controlled Trial (cRCT) will be conducted to evaluate HFPM effectiveness. We will recruit 160 female friendship dyads (n = 320 girls) aged 13 to 15 years who will be characterized by high levels of self-reported co-rumination. The cRCT has two arms: (1) an intervention condition in which 160 girls (80 friendship dyads) will receive the 14-week HFPM program in two consecutive cohorts (cohort 1 in academic year 2023/2024 and cohort 2 in academic year 2024/2025, and (2) a control condition in which 160 girls (80 dyads) will receive care-as-usual (CAU) in two consecutive cohorts (cohort 1 in academic year 2023/2024 and cohort 2 in academic year 2024/2025). Data will be collected at baseline (T0), during the program (T1;T2; T3), immediately after the program (T4), and at 1-year follow-up (T5). Participant-level self-reported risk for (early onset) depression and anxiety, self-reported and observed co-rumination, self- and friend-reported friendship quality, self-reported positive and negative affect, self-reported interpersonal responses to positive affect, and self-reported anhedonia symptoms will be the outcome variables.DiscussionThis study will provide insights into the short-term and long-term effects of the HFPM program on girls’ internalizing problems, wellbeing, and social-emotional behavior.Trial registrationInternational Standard Randomized Controlled Trials, identifier: ISRCTN54246670. Registered on 27 February 2023

Selecting for Honors Programs: A Matter of Motivational Awareness

The honors programs at the Universities of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands were almost all initiated around 2008 and thus so far have yielded few data about outcomes, but we have a broad consensus that the honors programs should provide a better-than-average professional for the workplace and should give students a chance to perform to the best of their abilities. With this shared mission, we have had an ongoing discussion during our recruitment process about what criteria to use in the selection process. In January of 2012, there was an online discussion on the NCHC listserv about the role of the GPA in honors recruitment and retention in the U.S. Because Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences does not use grade-based admission requirements, relying instead on a competence profile that is added onto the existing competence profile the discipline uses, we were asked to provide insight into our methods. This request, combined with the NCHC email discussion, provided a reason to analyze the available literature concerning factors that lead to successful completion of an honors degree and that produce excellent and successful professionals. We have reviewed current selection criteria according to three models of excellence in order to determine the best criteria for accomplishing the mission of honors

Integrating Dynamic Systems Theory and City as Text™ Framework: In-Depth Reflections on ‘Lens’

City as Text™ provides a semi-structured learning environment in which small groups of people are challenged to examine parts of a city through “mapping, observing, interpreting, analyzing, reflecting.” In 2014, I (Ron Weerheijm) attended a City as Text (CAT) Faculty Institute in Lyon. During an early session on the hills overlooking the eastern part of Lyon, our group observed a Basilique, the Notre Dame de Fourvière (1872–1884; interior finished 1964). Having a degree in architecture, I looked at this church from architectural and historical viewpoints. I was puzzled. In a quick scan, many different styles competed for my attention, hurting my eyes with all those columns, bases, ceilings, and influences from the Greeks to the Moors and from Ancient Egyptian to French architecture all in one building. My impression was that the church had been built by an architect who had not been able to choose what style to build it in or what tradition to connect it to. At the time, I did not know that locals sometimes referred to the church as “an elephant lying on its back.” I was unconsciously viewing it as an architectural professional with knowledge about the styles and typology of buildings. From this perspective, the church did not fit into any category; it was an outlier. I concluded that the church was bombastic: I emotionally judged it to be ugly. One of our group was a Christian. She looked at the same church I did but reflected on it from a religious perspective: as a place of worship, a place to feel connected to God, and as a place where she could celebrate His “being.” Her upbringing determined her focus of reflections. Our views collided even though we observed the same building from the same hill on the same morning: I thought the church was ugly, whereas she felt it brought her “closer to God.” In our dialogue about why we saw what we saw, we discovered our divergent thoughts and feelings about the same object and could see that they reflected our backgrounds. Her Christian context enriched my perspective on this church, and my architectural context enriched my colleague’s reflections. Instead of accepting polarizing views, we became aware that our inner context strongly determines how we reflect on external cues and that we are frequently unaware of the impact these internal processes have on our communication with others in daily life

Powerful Learning Environments: A Guide to Designing Innovation Labs

The RUAS Honors Program aims to encourage students to develop into excellent professionals. To do so, RUAS has developed a competence profile entitled Learning to Innovate. This profile serves as a guide for designing a teaching approach which enables students to actively develop into such professionals. There are five crucial characteristics for designing learning environments which challenge students to master the said competence profile: a multidisciplinary issue drawn from actual practice; an authentic learning environment; professional excellence as both the aim and basis for assessment; qualified teachers setting high standards for their students; and working and learning in a Community of Learners made up of all those involved. In this paper, we first explain the essence of an Innovation Lab or I-lab. We then present some additional considerations and various different approaches to designing a powerful learning environment like the I-Lab

From honors education to regular education: learning from the content of innovations

At the introduction of honors programs in Dutch higher education, stakeholders assumed that honors education could stimulate innovation in regular education. Whether this assumption holds was researched in the ‘Transfer of honors education to regular education’ project. This article focuses on the question of whether teachers’ experiences with honors education stimulated innovations in regular education and about structural characteristics in relation to the content, teaching formats, and pedagogics of the innovations. Interviews were conducted with teachers from four universities of applied sciences in the Netherlands. The results show that teachers in regular education found honors programs to provide them an opportunity to work with content, teaching formats, and pedagogics that they were unfamiliar with. Through these teachers, the honors approach inspired innovation in regular programs. Strikingly, these innovations contain to some degree all 14 structural characteristics of honors education distinguished in this study. The findings indicate the great innovative potential of honors education for regular education

Vormgeving van honoursactiviteiten

In dit artikel worden verschillende aanpakken van honoursprogramma’s in het Nederlandse onderwijs met elkaar vergeleken en worden steutelfactoren voor effectieve honoursprogramma’s geïdentificeerd. Een van de honoursprogramma’s betreft het honoursprogramma van het domein Onderwijs en Opvoeding dat in het artikel uitgebreid wordt beschreven