Excellent education in preschool and its effects on cognitively excellent pupils
The problematic relationship between regular education and the development of cognitively excellent pupils on cognitive, motivational, social and emotional variables has been recognised for a long time. Research shows the early years of education to be crucial for their school career. Therefore, the learning processes of the cognitively excellent children in particular should be optimally supported by level-appropriate play and learning material. This study proposes an experiment in which such a curriculum will be implemented in regular mixed-ability schools, in order to examine the effects on the cognitive, social, emotional, and motivation development of cognitively excellent pupils.
Summary
In a multi-level randomised design 41 schools are randomly assigned to two school groups in which the intervention is implemented in phases. The intervention, which is called “excellent education”, uses competence-based learning to optimise the learning processes of cognitively excellent pupils. The hypotheses are: 1) excellent education for cognitively excellent pupils will result in enhancement of cognitive, social, emotional, and motivation outcomes compared to cognitively excellent pupils who do not attend excellent education; 2) longer duration of excellent education will result in higher cognitive outcomes. Interactional multilevel analysis will be used to analyse, study, and check the learning processes. In the modelling, individual and instructional variables will be integrated at pupil level, class level, and school level.
This is a follow-up experiment of earlier research. This earlier research is published as:
- Mooij, T. (2007). Contextual learning theory: Concrete form and a software prototype to improve early education. Computers & Education, (48)1, 100-118.
- Mooij, T. (2007). Design of educational and ICT conditions to integrate differences in learning: Contextual learning theory and a first transformation step in early education. Computers in Human Behavior, 23(3), 1499-1530.
- Mooij, T. (2008). Education and self-regulation of learning for gifted pupils: Systemic design and development. Research Papers in Education, 23(1), 1-19.
- Mooij, T., & Driessen, G. (2008). Differential ability and attainment in language and arithmetic of Dutch primary school pupils. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 78(3), 491-506.
- Mooij, T. (2009). Education and ICT-based self-regulation in learning: Theory, design and implementation. Education and Information Technologies, 14(1), 3-27.
Elma Dijkstra, PhD student
prof. dr. Ton Mooij, daily supervisor
prof. dr. Paul Kirschner, supervisor
The project is financed by the Dutch Ministry of Education.
Grant for research into education of highly gifted children (news item on celstec.org)
