Dimitri Van Maele
I am a researcher at the Expertise Centre for Social Innovation at Vives University College in Belgium (formerly known as KATHO and part of the association of the Catholic University of Leuven).
Until 2016, I was a postdoctoral researcher at Ghent Univ., Depart. of Sociology (Belgium). Since my doctoral studies I have focused on the importance of social relationships for schooling. In particular I have investigated the nature, antecedents and consequences of trust relationships in school. Trust is viewed as a key aspect of schooling since it relates to student achievement, professionalization, teachers' attrition-inducing job attitudes, etc. School culture, leadership, and teacher collaboration are regarded as key aspects of strong school trust.
After obtaining my PhD., I was appointed as the research coordinator of an interuniversitary research project: "Teaching in the Bed of Procrustes". This project focuses on explaining and diminishing the gender gap in secondary education. The research team mainly investigates teacher-student relationships, attitudes of students and teachers, students' gender identity and teaching approaches as predictors of boys' and girls' non-cognitive and cognitive outcomes in school.
Until 2016, I was a postdoctoral researcher at Ghent Univ., Depart. of Sociology (Belgium). Since my doctoral studies I have focused on the importance of social relationships for schooling. In particular I have investigated the nature, antecedents and consequences of trust relationships in school. Trust is viewed as a key aspect of schooling since it relates to student achievement, professionalization, teachers' attrition-inducing job attitudes, etc. School culture, leadership, and teacher collaboration are regarded as key aspects of strong school trust.
After obtaining my PhD., I was appointed as the research coordinator of an interuniversitary research project: "Teaching in the Bed of Procrustes". This project focuses on explaining and diminishing the gender gap in secondary education. The research team mainly investigates teacher-student relationships, attitudes of students and teachers, students' gender identity and teaching approaches as predictors of boys' and girls' non-cognitive and cognitive outcomes in school.
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Design: We use quantitative data gathered during the 2008-2009 school year from 673 teachers across 58 elementary schools in Flanders (i.e. the northern Dutch-speaking region of Belgium). Because teacher and school characteristics are simultaneously related to burnout, multilevel modeling is applied.
Findings:. Trust can act as a buffer against teacher burnout. Teachers’ trust in students demonstrates the strongest association with burnout compared to trust in principals or colleagues. Exploring relationships of trust in distinct school parties with different burnout dimensions yield interesting additional insights such as the specific importance of teacher-principal trust for teachers’ emotional exhaustion. Burnout is further an individual teacher matter to which school-level factors are mainly unrelated.
Implications: Principals fulfill an important role in inhibiting emotional exhaustion among teachers. They are advised to create a school atmosphere that is conducive for different kinds of trust relationships to develop. Actions to strengthen trust and inhibit teacher burnout are necessary, although further qualitative and longitudinal research is desirable.
Originality/value: This paper offers a unique contribution by examining trust in different school parties as a relational buffer against teacher burnout. It indicates that principals can affect teacher burnout and prevent emotional exhaustion by nurturing trusting relationships in school.
To appear in: M. DiPaola & W.K. Hoy (2015), Leadership and School Quality (pp. 171-196). Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing.
Trust is an important ingredient of school climates, which are conducive to learning. The mechanisms affecting trust perceptions are not often explored, however. In this chapter we examine the way in which the perception of trust may be influenced by direct relations with peers. We investigate the extent to which teachers’ trust is related to both faculty trust and the trust present in a teacher’s “peer neighborhood” at school. Social network and multilevel analysis, using data from 645 educators in 37 Dutch elementary schools, demonstrate that the trust from close peers and the number of peers sought out to discuss work affect individual trust, even when controlling for faculty trust. This suggests that school leaders and professionalization programs should not only focus on providing structural opportunities for teachers to interact, but also on the quality of exchanges at both the school level and the level of a teacher’s individual social network.
Design: We use quantitative data gathered during the 2008-2009 school year from 673 teachers across 58 elementary schools in Flanders (i.e. the northern Dutch-speaking region of Belgium). Because teacher and school characteristics are simultaneously related to burnout, multilevel modeling is applied.
Findings:. Trust can act as a buffer against teacher burnout. Teachers’ trust in students demonstrates the strongest association with burnout compared to trust in principals or colleagues. Exploring relationships of trust in distinct school parties with different burnout dimensions yield interesting additional insights such as the specific importance of teacher-principal trust for teachers’ emotional exhaustion. Burnout is further an individual teacher matter to which school-level factors are mainly unrelated.
Implications: Principals fulfill an important role in inhibiting emotional exhaustion among teachers. They are advised to create a school atmosphere that is conducive for different kinds of trust relationships to develop. Actions to strengthen trust and inhibit teacher burnout are necessary, although further qualitative and longitudinal research is desirable.
Originality/value: This paper offers a unique contribution by examining trust in different school parties as a relational buffer against teacher burnout. It indicates that principals can affect teacher burnout and prevent emotional exhaustion by nurturing trusting relationships in school.
To appear in: M. DiPaola & W.K. Hoy (2015), Leadership and School Quality (pp. 171-196). Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing.
Trust is an important ingredient of school climates, which are conducive to learning. The mechanisms affecting trust perceptions are not often explored, however. In this chapter we examine the way in which the perception of trust may be influenced by direct relations with peers. We investigate the extent to which teachers’ trust is related to both faculty trust and the trust present in a teacher’s “peer neighborhood” at school. Social network and multilevel analysis, using data from 645 educators in 37 Dutch elementary schools, demonstrate that the trust from close peers and the number of peers sought out to discuss work affect individual trust, even when controlling for faculty trust. This suggests that school leaders and professionalization programs should not only focus on providing structural opportunities for teachers to interact, but also on the quality of exchanges at both the school level and the level of a teacher’s individual social network.
Deze studie kadert binnen het Procrustes-project en baseert zich op gegevens van meer dan 5000 leerlingen uit 55 Vlaamse secundaire scholen. Er wordt onderzocht of jongens vaker dan meisjes een B- of C-attest krijgen na hun eerste jaar secundair onderwijs.
De genderkloof in het onderwijs wordt ruimer bekeken dan enkel in termen van verschillen tussen jongens en meisjes. Jongens en meisjes worden blootgesteld aan genderstereotypen die hun ideeën omtrent mannelijkheid en vrouwelijkheid beïnvloeden. Jongens en meisjes die van zichzelf vinden niet aan te sluiten bij de dominante visies op enerzijds mannelijkheid en anderzijds vrouwelijkheid, identificeren zichzelf als gender-a-typisch. Leerlingen die zichzelf als genderatypisch beschouwen, omdat ze zich anders voelen dan hun geslachtsgenoten, zouden zich wel eens minder thuis kunnen voelen op school. Dit kan hun schoolresultaten negatief beïnvloeden.
Jongens hebben ongeveer dubbel zoveel kans op een C-attest als meisjes, onder controle van andere kenmerken (bv. migratie-achtergrond, socio-economische status). Er is geen geslachtsverschil in het krijgen van een B-attest. Wie zich als minder gendertypisch identificeert, loopt meer kans op een C-attest dan wie zichzelf eerder als een typische jongen of meisje beschouwt. Dit geldt zowel voor jongens als voor meisjes. Leerlingen hebben dus meer kans om een jaar te moeten blijven zitten als ze zichzelf eerder als ‘anders’ beschouwen dan het beeld dat ze zelf hebben van een typische jongen of meisje. Genderatypische leerlingen voelen zich minder verbonden met school en dit verklaart deels waarom ze meer kans maken op een C-attest.
Aandacht voor de mate waarin jongens en meisjes zich verbonden voelen met hun school is nodig, al zeker voor die jongens en meisjes die van zichzelf vinden niet te passen binnen het dominante beeld van de typische jongen of het typische meisje. Genderstereotypen dienen doorbroken te worden, ook binnen de schoolmuren. Bovendien is er niet enkel sprake van een jongensprobleem in het Vlaamse secundair onderwijs. Ook de schoolloopbaan van sommige meisjes verloopt niet vlot. Een schoolbeleid dat genderstereotypen doorbreekt en leerkrachten ondersteunt bij het versterken van hun gendersensitiviteit in hun interacties met jongens en meisjes in de klas lijkt welgekomen en nodig.
education. The results of multilevel analyses indicate that boys show less sense of school belonging than girls, as do students with more traditional beliefs about gender roles. Moreover, student attitudes related to gender roles are strongly shared at the school level, so that we can speak of a gender role student culture. Students enrolled in more traditional gender role student cultures reveal less school belonging.