In the context of public budget cuts and rural areas facing depopulation and aging, local governments increasingly encourage citizen engagement in addressing local livability issues. This paper examines the non-engagement of mid-aged and elderly residents (45+ years old) in civic initiatives that intend …

Decomposition is an ecosystem process, mainly important in the carbon and nitrogen cycles. When looking at what drives decomposition, there are three major drivers. These are plant litter quality, microbes and soil animals (detritivores). A large problem in understanding the decomposition process is …

Due to socio-political issues in Dutch society, citizenship education (CE) became obligatory by law in the Netherlands in 2006. Schools were to decide on their local CE curriculum. This contribution intends to open up the black box of school-based curriculum-making efforts for CE. It reports on a four-year …

: To have sustainable societies, we need to accelerate the energy transition towards clean energy solutions, however, awareness and understanding of the process is still limited, especially among young people. In addition, the topic has mainly been approached from an engineering angle, ignoring the social …

The native fish populations in New Zealand have proven to be declining. There are various reasons for this change in population size, one of the biggest being structures that form barriers to migration. This shows the need for fish passage options that are better adjusted to these ‘weaker’ swimmers and …

The Knowledge Centre NoorderRuimte conducts practice-oriented research into the built environment in the Northern Netherlands. In Oldambt, a region in the northeast of the province Groningen, it was observed that the current demographic, behavioural and economic development causes a low business succession …

This entry begins by reviewing the definitions of “human”, “environment” and “dichotomy”, consequently turning to the debates concerning the human–environment relationship. Synthesizing various studies, the capability of advanced tool use; language, hyper-sociality, advanced cognition, morality, civilization, …

The traditional paternalistic approach in health care is increasingly developing towards a patient-centered care (PCC) approach. However, not all patients are able to take advantage of the positive effects of PCC. Inadequate health literacy (HL) is an important limiting factor in the ability of patients …

Collaborative learning tasks may represent an effective way to stimulate higher-order processes among high-ability students in regular classrooms. This study investigated the effects of task structure and group composition on the elaboration and metacognitive activities of 11th grade preuniversity students …

INAUGURAL LECTURE The world is in disarray. Species are extinct, climates are changing, we are becoming unhealthier. To liberate ourselves from this doom scenario we need to take care of ourselves and our environment. The solutions of former generations offer no future solace. Moreover, these caused …