Paul van geert

• University of Groningen

Various studies have been published based on complex dynamic systems theoretical (CDST) interpretations of second language development (SLD). According to these approaches, a second language emerges in a specific and dynamic communicative context as a result of a process of self‐organization. This research has provided empirical support for the exi...

Teachers use situated knowledge to deal with the complex and diffuse educational contexts they operate in. To be able to take deliberated action, based on the situated knowledge, reflection is necessary during the teacher training. Video cases with common, real world situations are suitable for reflection because of their holistic and diffuse chara...

Video footage is frequently used at teacher education. According to Sherin and Dyer (2017), this is often done in a way that contradicts recent studies. According to them, video is suitable for observing and interpreting interactions in the classroom. This contributes to their situated knowledge, which allows expert teachers to act intuitively, imm...

Wanneer een situatie complex is en veel dingen met elkaar verweven zijn wordt er vaak, vanuit de hulpverlening, in een analyse gestreefd naar overzicht en ordening van de feiten om zo tot een beslissing en advies voor mogelijk handelen te komen: hoe nu verder? Echter, in de praktijk werkt deze zoektocht vaak contraproductief. De theorie van complex...

In the past decades, complex dynamic systems theory (CDST) has been used as an important framework for studying second language development. CDST is a metatheory of change and focuses on processes. Even though it has been broadly accepted as an inspiring dimension of research in psychology, sociology and second language development, some scholars h...

In primary music education a key question is what teachers can do to stimulate students’ musical creativity. For the answer, delving into teacher-student interaction during the creative processes in the naturalistic setting of primary music lessons is required. Twenty-six music lessons from thirteen teachers and their classes of seven Dutch schools...

In this article, I answer the questions from Witherington and Boom's introduction to this special issue in the form of an imaginary interview, led by David Boom, equally imaginary editor of The Processual Inquirer, an obscure but interesting journal that appears in imaginary physical print only, and which, as a consequence, has so far left no trace...

Dynamic systems theoretical approaches conceive of language acquisition as a complex system of interacting components or variables. In such a system, language emerges in a communicative context as a result of a process of self-organization. This theory demands a focus on the system as a whole, a radically different perspective on causality, and a r...

Psychological science constructs much of the knowledge that we consume in our everyday lives. This book is a systematic analysis of this process, and of the nature of the knowledge it produces. The authors show how mainstream scientific activity treats psychological properties as being fundamentally stable, universal, and isolable. They then challe...

This chapter discusses the practice of measurement in psychological research. Here, where we cast doubt on the basic assumptions and endeavours underlying the act of measuring in mainstream psychology. Next, we introduce the processual alternative, which stresses the study of activity as situated and coupled with an environment. This chapter explai...

With this chapter, we sketch a picture of a future process-oriented praxis. We describe what is required to instigate a theoretical shift toward a process commitment, and what that shift might look like for the psychological praxis. To flesh this out, we conceptualize psychological science as a complex dynamic system whose behaviour is currently do...

We reflect on the relative ‘success’ versus ‘failure’ of psychology as a research field, and we challenge the widelybheld notion that we are in a reproducibility (or replication) crisis. At the centre of our discussion is the question: does psychology have a future, qua science, if the phenomena it studies are changing all the time and contingent o...

Science communication is an important practice in psychological research. With this chapter, we examine this practice in mainstream psychological research. We look at the ways that our words, definitions, and descriptions (of experimental studies) create a world of categories, called ‘natural kinds’. We describe how these natural kinds are construc...

Psychological science constructs much of the knowledge that we consume in our everyday lives. This book is a systematic analysis of this process, and of the nature of the knowledge it produces. The authors show how mainstream scientific activity treats psychological properties as being fundamentally stable, universal, and isolable. They then challe...

This chapter demonstrates how concrete practices align and form a praxis, using the field of self-esteem research as a case study – as one of the most popular concepts in both academic and pseudo psychology. The mainstream praxis of self-esteem research is dissected in the context of enacting a substance ontology. Here Aristotle’s distinction betwe...

Psychological science constructs much of the knowledge that we consume in our everyday lives. This book is a systematic analysis of this process, and of the nature of the knowledge it produces. The authors show how mainstream scientific activity treats psychological properties as being fundamentally stable, universal, and isolable. They then challe...

With this chapter, we deal with the problem of research ‘uncertainty’: how it is defined and dealt with in the standard praxis of psychological research. It stresses that the idea of measurement ‘error’ (in the sense of variability) is predominantly valid under a substance ontology. The processual alternative is described, stemming from a complex d...

Psychological science constructs much of the knowledge that we consume in our everyday lives. This book is a systematic analysis of this process, and of the nature of the knowledge it produces. The authors show how mainstream scientific activity treats psychological properties as being fundamentally stable, universal, and isolable. They then challe...

We discuss the broad organizational power-structures that regulate the virtues of doing science, the values upheld, and the introduction of novices into the scientific community. Aristotle’s scheme of knowledge is used to introduce the relevance of a value-laden praxis, of phronesis, which is the virtue of ‘doing’. We discuss these ideological issu...

With this chapter, we contrast the mainstream explanatory practices with forms of causality that are processual: complex causality. Complex dynamic systems are used as a framework, incorporating principles such as emergence, self-organization, circular causality, and perturbations. With this alternative, processes themselves are seen as causes, mak...

The small and somewhat fringe praxis of processual self-esteem research is described with respect to its enactment of a process ontology. The chapter shows that a process approach has resulted in a focus on ‘how’ questions in self-esteem research (rather than on predictive validity, for example) and a more pluralistic approach to the operationaliza...

Psychological science constructs much of the knowledge that we consume in our everyday lives. This book is a systematic analysis of this process, and of the nature of the knowledge it produces. The authors show how mainstream scientific activity treats psychological properties as being fundamentally stable, universal, and isolable. They then challe...

Psychological science constructs much of the knowledge that we consume in our everyday lives. This book is a systematic analysis of this process, and of the nature of the knowledge it produces. The authors show how mainstream scientific activity treats psychological properties as being fundamentally stable, universal, and isolable. They then challe...

We fully endorse Arocha’s (2021) thesis about the fundamental importance of studying variability in real, observable processes and agree with his critique of the standard practice of psychological research. However, we regret that Arocha’s article does not acknowledge a rich body of research that has been around for almost three decades and that do...

This study aimed to explore the interaction between teachers and young students in terms of their question and answer patterns during science lessons and to investigate whether this changes over the course of an intervention called ‘Language as a Tool for learning science’ (LaT). It also compared experienced teachers with novices. A total of 16 tea...

Transfer is not static but a dynamic process of learning. In this article, the concept of transfer and the implications of its study are reconsidered from the theoretical basis of the complex dynamic system approach. We describe “transfer” as an emergent process that implies not a copy of knowledge applied to a new situation, but a new configuratio...

Transfer is not static but a dynamic process of learning. In this article, the concept of transfer and the implications of its study are reconsidered from the theoretical basis of the complex dynamic system approach. We describe “transfer” as an emergent process that implies not a copy of knowledge applied to a new situation, but a new configuratio...

We developed a teacher professionalisation intervention, called “Language as a Tool for Learning Science”, that focuses on language use during early elementary science lessons, based on video feedback coaching. The aim of this study was to investigate possible changes in teacher student behaviour during this intervention, by analysing teacher-stude...

Among the different dynamical systems which have been considered in psychology, those modeling the dynamics of learning and teaching interaction are particularly important. In this paper we consider a well known model of proximal development and analyze some of its mathematical properties. The dynamical system we study belongs to a class of 2D noni...

We used a validated agent-based model—Socio-Emotional CONcern DynamicS (SECONDS)—to model real-time playful interaction between a child diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and its parent. SECONDS provides a real-time (second-by-second) virtual environment that could be used for clinical trials and testing process-oriented explanations of...

We used a validated agent-based model -- Socio-Emotional CONcern DynamicS (SECONDS) -- to model real-time playful interaction between a child diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and its parent. SECONDS provides a real-time (second-by-second) virtual environment that could be used for clinical trials and testing process-oriented explanati...

Within education, the importance of creativity is recognized as an essential 21st-century skill. Based on this premise, the first aim of this article is to provide a theoretical integration through the development of a framework based on the principles of complex dynamic systems theory, which describes and explains children’s creativity. This model...

Theory of Mind (ToM) refers to the ability to attribute beliefs to oneself and others. The present study used a dynamic systems approach to assess how environment may affect the development of second-order ToM (e.g., John knows that Mary knows that he went out yesterday). ToM is divided into two major dimensions: comprehension (i.e., to understand...

The variability of self-esteem is an important characteristic of self-esteem. However, little is known about the mechanisms that underlie it. The goal of the current study was to empirically explore these underlying mechanisms. It is commonly assumed that state self-esteem (the fleeting experience of the self) is a response to the immediate social...

Understanding the development of talent has been a major challenge across the arts, education, and particularly sports. Here, we show that a dynamic network model predicts typical individual developmental patterns, which for a few athletes result in exceptional achievements. We first validated the model on individual trajectories of famous athletes...

Using an extended definition of sexuality, this mixed-methods study builds on existing research into adolescents' emergent sexual development by longitudinally examining adolescents' sexual behavior trajectories (i.e., from less to more intimate sexual behavior). Over a 2-year period, 45 adolescents (M age = 15.9 years) reported on their sexual beh...

The present study was aimed at investigating the effects of a video feedback coaching intervention for upper-grade primary school teachers on students’ cognitive gains in scientific knowledge. This teaching intervention was designed with the use of inquiry-based learning principles for teachers, such as the empirical cycle and the posing of thought...

From the literature, we know that young children engage in inquiry as an organized activity aimed either at confirming or refuting the relevance of certain ideas. The current study provides a characterization of changes in inquiry using a multiple case study of four 5-year old children. Three computer-based tasks were presented to the children as m...

Developmental research has long focused on regularities in language acquisition, minimizing factors that might be responsible for variation. Although researchers are now increasingly concerned with one or another of these factors, this volume brings together research on three different sources of variation: language-specific properties, the nature...

Subconsciously, experienced teachers make use of situated knowledge: knowledge that is connected to, and arises from, the interactions between the physical environment where the action takes place and a material body acting in that environment. Since situated knowledge is important in day-to-day teaching to solve incidents, it should be taught in t...

Introducción. Los estudios de Evaluación Dinámica sobre las capacidades cognitivas revelan que los niños pequeños se benefician de la mediación (asistencia/ayuda) mientras ejecutan tareas que requieren esfuerzo cognitivo. La metodología de Evaluación Dinámica consiste en un formato de evaluación de pretest-mediación-posttest en donde la fase de med...

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...

This article concentrates on the question what kind of model - conceptual and statistical - can serve as a good working model for the study of learning and teaching processes qua processes. We claim that a good way of answering this question is to begin by observing a teaching and learning process as, where, and when it occurs. In addition, a conce...

Introduction. Studies of Dynamic Assessment of cognitive abilities reveal that young children profit from assistance while carrying out tasks that elicit cognitive effort. Dynamic assessment refers to a test format of a pretest-mediation-posttest in which the mediation phase includes scaffolding to assist the child to grasp the purpose of the task....

The aim of this study was to investigate interpersonal coordination in young children during dyadic problem solving, by using Cross-Recurrence Quantification Analysis (CRQA). We examined the interactions of seven dyads of children (Mage= 5.1 years) in a longitudinal design (6 sessions) with a sequence of problem-solving tasks increasing in difficul...

In this article, we aim to shed light on a technique to study intra-individual variability that spans the time frame of seconds and minutes, i.e., micro-level development. This form of variability is omnipresent in behavioural development and processes of human experience, yet is often ignored in empirical studies, given a lack of proper analysis t...

As humans, we continuously adapt our behavior to changes in our environment, and our cognitive abilities continuously develop over time. A major question for scientists has been to discover the (cognitive) mechanism that underlies the control of human behavior in real-time, as well as cognitive development on the long-term. This chapter will discus...

As humans, we continuously adapt our behavior to changes in our environment, and our cognitive abilities continuously develop over time. A major question for scientists has been to discover the (cognitive) mechanism that underlies the control of human behavior in real time, as well as cognitive development in the long term. This chapter will discus...

Studying real-time teacher-student interaction provides insight into student's learning processes. In this study, upper grade elementary teachers were supported to optimize their instructional skills required for co-constructing scientific understanding. First, we examined the effect of the Video Feedback Coaching intervention by focusing on change...

In order for out-of-school science activities that take place during school hours but outside the school context to be successful, instructors must have sufficient pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) to guarantee high-quality teaching and learning. We argue that PCK is a quality of the instructor-pupil system that is constructed in real-time intera...

This paper aims to gain insight into language production and academic language of 4- and 5-year-old students and their teachers in the course of a teacher intervention during kindergarten science education. The study is based on videotaped classroom observations, and specifically focuses on the academic language use of students (Nintervention = 18,...

The current article proposes a theoretical model of self-esteem called the Self-Organizing Self-Esteem (SOSE) model. The model provides an integrative framework for conceptualizing and understanding the intrinsic dynamics of self-esteem and the role of the context across 3 levels of development: The macro level, which is the level of trait self-est...

Research on Theory-of-Mind (ToM) has mainly focused on ages of core ToM development. This article follows a quantitative approach focusing on the level of ToM understanding on a measurement scale, the ToM Storybooks, in 324 typically developing children between 3 and 11 years of age. It deals with the eventual occurrence of developmental non-linear...

Based on in-depth interviews, Hardy et al. focused on the role of psychosocial factors in the development of elite and super-elite athletes. They reveal interesting differences and commonalities in the frequencies at which certain aspects related to life events, personality, contextual factors, etc. were reported. Here, we argue that insights in th...

This study used a dynamic approach to explore bidirectional sequential relations between the real-time language use of teachers and students in naturalistic early elementary science lessons. It also compared experienced teachers (n = 22) with novice teachers (n = 8) with respect to such relations. Verbal interactions were transcribed and coded at t...

The present study examined the relation between study progress in the first year of education and different aspects of the process of study choice of 89 students of higher professional education. This study consists of three parts. Firstly, we explored which concepts are important in open interviews concerning choice of study and study progress. Se...

Learning implies change. Inside and outside schools, we aim for students to change into people with more skills and knowledge, as well as with a growing sense of agency and responsibility. Furthermore, education itself is subject to constant change. In this article, we examine change in three case studies in the context of individual music lessons...

Objectives: This exploratory study assessed young Dutch people’s emerging sexual experiences in everyday life, in addition to examine the feasibility of a mixed-methods diary study. Methods: Using one-week diaries, 12- –17-year-olds recorded qualitative reports of their everyday romantic and sexual experiences. Results: The qualitative findings ide...

In many modern societies adolescents are expected to make crucial choices for their future career path. In order to develop suitable career commitments it is necessary to explore both broadly and in-depth, and determine how well an option could fit with own interests and capabilities. Recently, the negative side of exploration processes has been em...

Traditional analyses of reasoning and interactions often describe the building of knowledge by comparing general outcomes of group data (e.g., averages, frequencies and percentages) and as a result, often neglect the underlying individual processes. In this paper, we present a case study of two dyads of children (four to six years old) working on a...

Abstract: Intra-individual variability is a central topic in Dynamic Systems studies of human development, because the theory predicts that particular forms or properties of intra-individual variability will serve as indicators or predictors of transitions, bifurcations, and stable states in individual development. Currently, there are almost no st...

This study builds on existing research into how young people’s emergent sexual development is connected to parent–child sex-related communication through avoidance vs. disclosure. Over the course of one year, a total of 21 young people (age range 12–17.5) reported in longitudinal qualitative diaries their (1) everyday sexual experiences and (2) sex...

Dynamical systems are quite important in psychological research as virtually all psychological processes occur in time. In this chapter we show how to implement a dynamical model of proximal development using a spreadsheet, R and C++ . We discuss strengths and weakness of each approach. Using a spreadsheet or a statistical software such as R make t...

Is de dagboekmethode een geschikte manier om de effectiviteit van een interventie te meten? Deze vraag staat centraal in dit artikel. Met behulp van dagboeken onderzochten de auteurs de effectiviteit van het interventieprogramma ‘Weerbaarheid In het BasisOnderwijs’, kortweg WIBO, in groep 7 en 8 van het basisonderwijs. De dagboekboekmethode levert...

This article describes the effectiveness and sustainability of teacher professional development interventions from a complexity view point as well as a more ‘standard’ viewpoint. The first aim of this study is to give a theoretical overview of effective aspects of interventions regarding teachers’ professionalizing using recent literature. The seco...

Across different domains, from sports to science, some individuals accomplish excellent levels of performance. For over 150 years, researchers have debated the roles of specific nature and nurture components to develop excellence. In this article, we argue that the key to excellence does not reside in specific underlying components, but rather in t...

As children learn they use their speech to express words and their hands to gesture. This study investigates the interplay between real-time gestures and speech as children construct cognitive understanding during a hands-on science task. 12 children (M = 6, F = 6) from Kindergarten (n = 5) and first grade (n = 7) participated in this study. Each v...

To fully understand the effect of science education interventions on students’ performance, insight is needed in the properties of teaching-learning processes in individual teacher–student pairs. The assessment of students’ performance during group-based interventions in inquiry learning has been given much attention in the recent years, while the...

Dynamic systems approaches have much to offer to theory, research and practice in developmental psychopathology. From the standpoint of dynamic systems theory, it is unhelpful to think of psychopathology in terms as a set of fixed forms that lie within individual persons. Instead, patterns of maladaptive behavior are emergent phenomena that arise a...

This study on psychological momentum (PM) in sports provides the first experimental test of an interconnection between short-term PM (during a match) and long-term PM (across a series of matches). Twenty-two competitive athletes were striving to win a prize during a rowing-ergometer tournament, consisting of manipulated races. As hypothesized, athl...

Health Related Quality of Life (HRQOL) is a person-centered concept. The analysis of HRQOL is highly relevant in the aged population, which is generally suffering from health decline. Starting from a conceptual dynamic systems model that describes the development of HRQOL in individuals over time, this study aims to develop and test a quantitative...

The aim of this study was to examine (1) the temporal structures of variation in rowers’ (natural) ergometer strokes to make inferences about the underlying motor organization, and (2) the relation between these temporal structures and skill level. Four high-skilled and five lower-skilled rowers completed 550 strokes on a rowing ergometer. Detrende...

In the context of an educational or clinical intervention, we often ask questions such as “How does this intervention influence the task behavior of autistic children?” or “How does working memory influence inhibition of immediate responses?” What do we mean by the word influence here? In this article, we introduce the framework of complex dynamic...

De ‘Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Functions’ (BRIEF) wordt steeds vaker gebruikt in de klinische praktijk. Het is een vragenlijst welke klachten op het gebied van het executief functioneren (EF), bij kinderen in de leeftijd van 5 tot 18 jaar, in kaart brengt. Ouders vullen deze vragenlijst in. De BRIEF is niet voorbehouden aan een specifie...

In this essay, we discuss an emergent developmental science. It provides an approach to development that redefines its theoretical and methodological basis in the general theory of complex dynamic systems. Its methodological research choices are in line with a focus on actual developmental processes, as they occur in individual cases, such as indiv...

This article describes a study on mutuality in mother-child interaction during reading and playing sessions. Within mother-child interaction, mutuality is seen as important in language acquisition. The study was executed within a group of Netherlands Antillean mother-child dyads who participated in an intervention programme. Mutuality was operation...

This study gives an overview of Project STARS (Studies on Trajectories of Adolescent Relationships and Sexuality), a four-wave longitudinal study of 1297 Dutch adolescents. First, the sample, measures and four sub-projects are described. Second, hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to examine how key variables from the individual domain...

Psychological processes unfold on various timescales in accord with internally generated patterns. The intrinsic dynamism of psychological process is difficult to investigate using traditional methods emphasizing cause-effect relations, however, and thus is rarely incorporated into social psychological theory. Methods associated with nonlinear dyna...

Language development viewed from a dynamic approach to complex systems is in line with an emergentist, usage-based view of language and language development. The main difference, however, is in terms of the object inquiry and the methods and techniques used. The approach focuses on the process itself and on quantification of change rather than on t...

Ageing process involves the entire western world and in particular Europe. The analysis of demographic and health changes of the aged population is increasingly urgent in order to answer to the new individual and societal requests. An important concept in this regard is Health Related Quality of Life (HRQOL) during ageing, on which this paper will...

Research regarding the variability of state self-esteem (SSE) commonly focuses on the magnitude of variability. In this article we provide the first empirical test of the temporal structure of SSE as a real time process during parent–adolescent interactions. We adopt a qualitative phenomenological approach, whereby moment-to-moment emotional and be...

Effects of physical exercise during educational tasks on learning are not obvious. This study examines the effects of movement on learning fraction skills at a physically active Playful Learning Environment (PLE). Employing a mixed-method approach, we investigated whether differences in motivational and verbal helping behaviour processes (underlyin...

The process of unfolding learning and developmental potential is discussed from the viewpoint of complex dynamic systems. After a brief overview of the notions of unfolding and potential in the context of development and education, a definition of complex dynamic systems is given, emphasizing the aspects of self-organization and emergence. The conc...

We propose a new definition of learning potential as an emergent phenomenon. It emerges in the process of creating a unique scaffolding situation through the realtime interaction between teacher and child. We provide a model for analyzing the behavioral sequences within these scaffolding dynamics and illustrate it with the data of two qualitatively...

In various domains, experts are found to possess elaborate domain-specific representations they developed over years. In this study, we provide the first systematic attempt to characterise the short-term representations among individuals with different expertise levels. We showed videos of soccer game plays to expert, near-expert and non-expert soc...

Intraindividual variability is a key component in explaining children's development and learning. Studying this type of variability on the micro-timescale can help us understand real-time constructive processes and the subsequent long-term development. The aim of this article is to study the process of children's understanding of floating and sinki...

We propose a new defi nition of learning potential as an emergent phenomenon. It emerges in the process of creating a unique scaffolding situation through the real-time interaction between teacher and child. We provide a model for analyzing the be-havioral sequences within these scaffolding dynamics and illustrate it with the data of two qualitativ...