Objective: The present study examined coaching’s impact on students’ mental health wellness, perception of inclusion, and attitudes to learning. Design: In a pretest-intervention-posttest control...Show moreObjective: The present study examined coaching’s impact on students’ mental health wellness, perception of inclusion, and attitudes to learning. Design: In a pretest-intervention-posttest control group design, 102 students (mean age 18.2 years) participated in either coaching or a regular tutoring period at an institution of vocational education in the Netherlands. Method: Students were randomly assigned to the experimental or control condition. Questionnaires of wellbeing, perceptive inclusion, and attitudes to learning were completed pretest and posttest, while coached students completed an additional two questionnaires of coach and coaching perception. Results: There was a statistical trend in gains of mental health wellness in the experimental group compared to the control group, while the effect of coaching on perceptive inclusion and learning attitudes were not significant. The perception of coaching could predict gains in learning attitudes and perceptive inclusion, and a statistical trend showed perception of coach could predict learning attitudes. Conclusion: Evidence-based coaching methods can be implemented into educational institutions as an intervention to promote mental health wellness, while further research should investigate the importance of coachee perceptions of the experience and their coach to achieve coaching benefits.Show less
Static tests are widely used in the assessment of children’s abilities, but dynamic tests form a promising alternative with advantages in regard to accuracy and predictability. The aim of this...Show moreStatic tests are widely used in the assessment of children’s abilities, but dynamic tests form a promising alternative with advantages in regard to accuracy and predictability. The aim of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of a dynamic test of reading and writing in children with and without dyslexia. Additionally, the influence of working memory on learning and reading is investigated. The study uses a pretest-training-posttest experimental design and includes a preliminary investigation of working memory, participants are 78 school-aged children. Test instruments are altered for online administration to comply with covid restrictions. Our findings show that the dynamic test is effective for prosodic awareness, but not for phonemic awareness. No significant differences between children with and without dyslexia were found. In regards to working memory, there is some indication of a relationship between working memory and reading, but the current study provides no support for a relationship between working memory and learning. In order to properly investigate the influence of working memory on reading and learning, more research on these topics should follow as the dynamic test is improved upon.Show less
Dynamic testing seems to provide insight into children’s potential for learning. The current study aimed to gain more insight into the effectiveness of group-administered computerized dynamic...Show moreDynamic testing seems to provide insight into children’s potential for learning. The current study aimed to gain more insight into the effectiveness of group-administered computerized dynamic testing in potentially gifted children (N = 48), to further investigate the relationship with test anxiety, and to gain more insight into the instructional needs of the children. All groups of children showed a significant increase in correctly solving the analogies from pretest to post-test. A difference in progression between the dynamic testing condition and the control condition was found. However, this difference appeared not to be significant. In addition, although visual differences were found in the progression lines of children with different levels of test anxiety and their instructional needs, no statistically significant differences were found. Implications of the findings were described in the discussion. In conclusion, the computerized group-administered dynamic test might have practical advantages for educational or clinical practice but first requires more research.Show less
