PhD conferral Mr Roel J.F. Ariës, MSc.

Key words: secondary school, teachers, adolescent students, reasoning skills, working memory training

“An evidence-based approach to working-memory based training in secondary education to improve reasoning test achievements”

Secondary school teachers regularly observe that adolescent students have insufficient reasoning skills to properly answer reasoning test questions. This problem could be addressed by developing learning strategies to train the working memory. This thesis contributes to our knowledge and insight into effective working memory based strategies. It evaluates the effectiveness of a combined working memory capacity and reasoning strategy training to acquire reasoning skills. This could provide the necessary tools for both teachers and students to improve school test results in humanities courses. This dissertation shows that a combined content-based working memory capacity and reasoning-strategy training can be an effective instrument to enhance school based reasoning achievement. Reasoning achievements in school test results do not seem to be affected by motivation levels when students use the combined training method. Furthermore, the combined working memory capacity and reasoning strategy training does not appear to discriminate between low or high achieving students in terms of improvements on reasoning tests.