ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a description of the student-and classroom-level factors of the proposed dynamic model. The reader can see that the way these two levels are defined is in line with the main principles of the model presented in Chapter 5. Although the dynamic model is multilevel in nature, more emphasis is given to factors operating at the teacher and the school level, since the main aim of EER is to identify factors in education that promote learning. For that reason, this chapter gives an overview of the factors operating at student level included in the dynamic model. Student background characteristics are taken into account because they explain to a large extent the variance between students in learning and achievement. At the classroom level the teacher is an important actor. Teacher background characteristics such as gender, age, education, beliefs, and motivation are an important topic in theory and research because these characteristics can explain the differences between teachers in the way they behave in classrooms. However, these characteristics are not included in the dynamic model, which concentrates on the teaching activities teachers perform in order to initiate, promote, and evaluate student learning.
