Jos Tolboom

• dr.
• Mathematics and informatics curriculum developer at Netherlands Institute for Curriculum Development

Nowadays, mathematics teachers in K–12 strive to promote their students‘ mathematical knowledge and computational thinking (CT) skills. There is an increasing need for effective CT-embedded mathematics learning material and a better understanding of students’ views toward them. In this work, we present the results of a research study, which include...

To be able to support students’ competence development in solving physics problems over the course of a lesson series effectively, teachers need a proper appreciation of students’ deficiencies. As teachers commonly assess students’ competence by means of written tests, teachers are challenged to interpret students’ work on these tests and to interv...

There is an increasing interest in the integration of computational thinking (CT) in the K-12 curriculum. By integrating CT into other disciplines, the aim is to equip students with essential skills to navigate domain-specific challenges. This study conducts a systematic review of 108 peer-reviewed scientific papers to analyze in which K-12 subject...

In physics education, most teachers provide students feedback on their problem solutions through grades on written tests. The practice of feedback after a summative test does not often meet the needs of many students to improve their problem solving. In this paper we report on the development of a formative assessment instrument to allow teachers t...

This research aims to build a framework to classify individual differences between students in terms of learning outcomes, based on theories about emotional behavior. Some of these theories incorporate affective and emotional states from students.We investigate the emotions of a student while learning, so an important aspect in this research is the...

Computational thinking (CT) is gaining attention in education as a part of digital literacy and can be addressed in several disciplines, including mathematics. Through the lens of Brennan and Resnick’s framework, we investigated how computational concepts, practices, and perspectives can be addressed in upper-secondary statistics lessons using spre...

Because of its hands-on and integrative approach to STEM, educational robotics has become increasingly popular in recent years. Yet, a gender gap still exists in attitudes towards STEM studies and careers, especially among middle and high school students, potentially resulting in a lack of women in the STEM workforce. This study explores the effect...

Since the introduction of Informatics as an elective course in secondary education in the Netherlands in 1998, the implemented curriculum is being regularly monitored. The results of the large 2013 secondary Informatics teachers survey contributed to the revision of the Informatics curriculum. This revised curriculum came into effect in 2019. In li...

Computational thinking is a popular student skill on a steep rise today. Nevertheless, the assessment of this skill is a matter of contention. This pilot study examines whether computational and logical thinking are related. Therefore, we investigated the effect of a robotics course concerning logical thinking and computational thinking on 14-year-...

Due to technological advancements, robotics is findings its way into the classroom. However, workload for teachers is high, and teachers sometimes lack the knowledge to implement robotics education. A key factor of robotics education is peer learning, and having students (near-)peers teach them robotics could diminish workload. Therefore, this stud...

Recently, computational thinking has attracted much research attention, especially within primary and secondary education settings. However, incorporating computational thinking (CT) in mathematics or other disciplines is not a straightforward process and introduces many challenges concerning the way disciplines are organised and taught in school....

Computational thinking (CT) has gained much attention over the last decades. Because of its strong focus on problem solving, CT has the potential to contribute to mathematical problem solving and mathematical thinking. Therefore, CT might fruitfully be addressed in mathematics education. How to do so in mathematics education practice, however, is l...

In technology-rich mathematics education, teachers nowadays experience the challenge to foster both mathematical thinking and computational thinking. To address this issue, the main research question is: How can a teaching-learning strategy, focusing on the use of digital tools, support 16-17 years old pre-university students in developing computat...

The design and use of online materials for blended learning have been in the spotlight of educational development over the last decade. With respect to didactical courses, however, the potential of online and blended learning seems to be underexplored; little is known about its affordances for teacher education, and for domain specific didactical c...

On the 22nd and 23rd November 2016, experts of European STEM curriculum gathered to discuss the question ‘What is the position of mathematics education and of informatics education in a coherent STEM curriculum?’ Nine different national perspectives were sketched in papers. These papers were used as input for international discussion groups, which...

In 1998, informatics was introduced as an elective subject for all students in the upper grades of senior general secondary education and pre-university education in the Netherlands. Rather than focusing on digital literacy or the use of office applications, it focuses on informatics as a scientific discipline. In its first decade, it faced growing...

Despite a growing effort to implement computational thinking (CT) skills in primary schools, little research is reported about what CT skills to teach at what age. Therefore, the research questions that guide this study read: (1) How is age related to students' success in computational thinking tasks? (2) How are computational thinking tasks percei...

1. Een taalkundige kijk op vakteksten Eerste hoofdstuk waarin het begrippenapparaat wordt geïntroduceerd. We leggen uit wat welke aspecten we aan vaktaal kunnen onderscheiden en welke redeneerwijzen (genres) specifiek zijn voor de wiskundevakken. 2. Wiskundige denkactiviteiten met de genres Procedure en Verslag In dit hoofdstuk zien we wat kenmerke...

CIDREE is a network of educational organisations involved in curriculum development and/or educational research, set up in 1990 to establish closer working relationships at a European level. In November 2016, representatives of member countries gathered in order to address the research question 'What is the position of mathematics and informatics e...

How can science teachers support students in developing an appropriate declarative knowledge base for solving problems? This article focuses on the question whether the development of students’ memory of scientific propositions is better served by writing propositions down on paper or by making drawings of propositions either by silent or muttering...

In The Netherlands, the current informatics curriculum for upper secondary education was introduced in 1998 and only slightly modified in 2007. Meanwhile, both the scientific discipline and its impact on society have developed substantially. For this main reason, a curriculum reform has been carried out which has led to a new curriculum specifying...

Cognitive interviewing (CI) provides a method of systematically collecting validity evidence of response processes for questionnaire items. CI involves a range of techniques for prompting individuals to verbalise their responses to items. One such technique is concurrent verbalisation, as developed in Think Aloud Protocol (TAP). This article invest...

The learning and teaching strategy Learning by INquiry and Design (LIND) aims not only at developing scientific concepts, but also at so-called scientific attitudes and a great diversity of skills. Using the LIND strategy pupils are confronted with realistic situations that require mathematical skills. We observed that in this situations pupils exp...

In the Netherlands as well as worldwide, curriculum development in mathematics education is supposed to have an international character. At the same time, reform of the curriculum has more and more a permanent character. The Netherlands Institute for Curriculum Development (SLO) has developed a method in order to systematically and structurally ana...

Video is increasingly used as an instructional tool. It is therefore becoming more important to improve learning of students from video. We investigated whether student learning effects are influenced through an instruction about other viewing behaviours, and whether these learning effects depend on their prior knowledge. In a controlled environmen...

In educational design research it is common practice to develop and implement curriculum materials in order to address a particular educational problem. The intended instruction is usually hypothesised in so called hypothetical learning trajectories. After implementation in real life classrooms, the use of the materials is evaluated. One of the mai...

By decreasing the amount of contact time during the past fifteen years in mathematics education in senior secondary education in the Netherlands the issue of organizing this contact time more efficiently has become increasingly relevant. Research shows that feedback is one of the most powerful tools for enhancing learning achievements. At the same...

In mathematics education teachers experience a constant lack of time to properly instruct their students. In the Netherlands the contact time for mathematics in secondary education during the last fifteen years again declined. Mathematics is also perceived as difficult by students. This research focuses on the question: how can we better utilize co...

When video is offered to students in a Web-based Learning Environment through a streaming video server, digital traces of their viewing behaviour can be collected in log files. These traces can be linked to view behaviours like zapping. According to the literature, a zapping scenario could indicate the broken link between the educational task and t...

Informatics is currently being taught in high schools all over the world. In the Nether- lands, where all students are expected to become computer literate in the lower grades of high school (Hulsen et al., 2005), it has been decided not to consider computer literacy as being part of Informatics. What, then, should be the content of the Informatics...

In this paper, a proposal is being presented for a hierarchical decomposition of a digital learning environment. The purpose is to make a natural distinction between the technical, the design and the pedagogical aspects of a web-based learning environment. Each layer corresponds to a typical function in the organisation. The model thus implies a wa...

Publishes in 'The Automation Guide, AG, magazine for the IT-professional, April 25, 2002 Reaction on ‘Digital by nature’, a report by Netherlands Institute for Social Research, https://hdl.handle.net/11245/1.515162