The impact of physical growth and relative age effect on assessment in physical education

Physical education (PE) is perhaps the school subject most likely to produce relative age effects (RAE). Like in sports, physical maturity gives students an advantage in PE, which might well be mistaken for superior ability. The aim of the present study is to investigate the extent to which physical growth, measured as height, and RAE reflect the assessment in Norwegian PE. Furthermore, we wanted to examine whether there is any gender differences in the assessment in PE as a function of physical growth and RAE. The participants (n?=?2978) were pupils in the last three years of secondary school (13–16 years old). A custom-made questionnaire was designed to collect the necessary data. The correlations between height and mark in PE for boys in 8th, 9th, and 10th grades are respectively r?=?0.14, r?=?0.32, and r?=?0.29. For girls, the correlations are r?=?0.11, r?=?0.33, and r?=?0.21. All correlations are significant (p?<?.05). The number of pupils achieving top marks was 114 in the first half of the year, whereas it was 65 in the second half of the year. The present study showed that physical growth has an impact on the pupils’ PE attainment. The physical growth is of course also mediated by the pupils’ age. RAEs were found in PE attainments also in the Norwegian school system for both genders, despite all the intentions expressed in the PE curriculum.     

Does (Non‐)Meaningful Sensori‐Motor Engagement Promote Learning With Animated Physical Systems?

Previous research indicates that sensori‐motor experience with physical systems can have a positive effect on learning. However, it is not clear whether this effect is caused by mere bodily engagement or the intrinsically meaningful information that such interaction affords in performing the learning task. We investigated (N = 74), through the use of a Wii Balance Board, whether different forms of physical engagement that was either meaningfully, non‐meaningfully, or minimally related to the learning content would be beneficial (or detrimental) to learning about the workings of seesaws from instructional animations. The results were inconclusive, indicating that motoric competency on lever problem solving did not significantly differ between conditions, nor were response speed and transfer performance affected. These findings suggest that adult's implicit and explicit knowledge about physical systems is stable and not easily affected by (contradictory) sensori‐motor experiences. Implications for embodied learning are discussed.     

Measuring social capital through network analysis and its influence on individual performance

Studies of social networks highlight the importance of network structure or structural properties of a given network and its impact on performance outcome. One of the important properties of this network structure is referred to as social capital, which is the network of contacts and the associated values attached to these networks of contacts. This study provides empirical evidence of the influence of social capital and performance within the context of academic collaboration (coauthorship) and suggests that the collaborative process involves social capital embedded within relationships and network structures among direct coauthors. Association between scholars' social capital and their citation-based performance measures is examined. To overcome the limitations of traditional social network metrics for measuring the influence of scholars' social capital within coauthorship networks, the traditional social network metrics is extended by proposing two new measures, of which one is non-weighted (the power–diversity index) and the other (power–tie–diversity index) is weighted by the number of collaboration instances. The Spearman's correlation rank test is used to examine the association between scholars' social capital measures and their citation-based performance. Results suggest that research performance of authors is positively correlated with their social capital measures. The power–diversity index and power–tie–diversity index serve as indicators of power and influence of an individual's ability to control communication and information.     

德国的体育教练员与教练员学院

德国的体育教练员一、德国教练员的概况德国的许多教练员都不是职业的,训练大多在晚上或节假日进行,只有国家队和大的训练基地才设有专职的教练员工作岗位。当然,少数在德国开展非常好的项目,如足球俱乐部,都会有职业教练。德国基层俱乐部教练员很多都是从事志愿工作的。德国教     

Reflective Functioning,Limit Setting,and Emotional Availability in Mother–Child Dyads

Objective. There is a need for better understanding the relation between parents’ mentalizing about their child and their actual behavior toward the child. Specifically, it is important to understand the significance of mentalization about discrete parental challenges in comparison with mentalization about the relationship in general in relation to their interaction with the child. This study aimed to examine parental mentalization and observed emotional availability. Design. Forty mothers were observed in a play situation with their children (aged 3–10 years) to rate the emotional availability in the interaction. Mothers were also interviewed with the parent development interview and about parental limit setting to assess parental reflective functioning. Results. Analyses showed moderate correlations between the reflective functioning scores and the emotional availability dimensions. Approximately 15% of the variance in emotional availability scales could be accounted for by the reflective functioning ratings. Conclusions. The results suggest that parents’ ability to mentalize about limit setting behaviors may affect interactions between the parent and child.     

Learning qualitative and quantitative reasoning in a microworld for elastic impacts

From a psychological point of view efficient teaching by means of an intelligent tutoring system necessarily involves that the communication of knowledge is adapted to the requirements of the learner: to her cognitive abilities, her pre-instructional knowledge and her learning capabilities. To tackle these topics in a precise way, we have developed the artificial-intelligence-based microworld DiBi (disk billiard) and MULEDS, a multi-level diagnosis system. The microworld DiBi sets up a learning environment which simulates elastic impacts as a subtopic of classical mechanics. DiBi enables and supports reasoning on different levels of mental domain representation ordered along the dimension ‘qualitative/quantitative’. This way of representing the domain provides a basis for passive adaptation in an advanced way. Correspondingly, active adaptation is supported by MULEDS, wherein student modeling is realized by assessing the student’s correct and/or incorrect domain-specific knowledge at these different levels. Within this psychological perspective, the use of instructional tools, such as the microworld DiBi and the computerized diagnosis system MULEDS, aims at gradually supporting and guiding the student in the construction of more and more powerful an sound domain representations. The progression through these levels of domain representation will enable the student to solve the problems posed by the domain in a flexible way.     

Follow-up of a preschool epidemiological sample: cross-age continuities and predictions of later adjustment with internalizing and externalizing dimensions of behavior

The continuity of behavioral adjustment from preschool through elementary school and junior high school years was examined. 541 children aged 9-15 years from a preschool epidemiological study were relocated and behavior checklist data obtained. Analyses focused on the relationship between internalizing and externalizing behavior dimensions from the preschool to follow-up periods. It was found that preschool externalizing symptoms were positively correlated with later externalizing and internalizing symptoms in the entire sample. Preschool internalizing symptoms, however, were predictive of later internalizing symptoms only for 2-year-old girls and 5- and 6-year-old boys. Similar results were obtained for clinically disturbed preschoolers. Results are consistent with previous findings regarding the longitudinal continuity of externalizing behavior but are at odds with reports of equal or greater stability of internalizing behavior. Given the magnitude of obtained correlations, even when significant, the results support the view that discontinuity rather than continuity in behavioral adjustment from preschool to later ages is the rule. The importance of examining other mediating variables in the prediction of behavioral adjustment and the need for models of development that encompass both stability and change are discussed.     

Early tracking and different types of inequalities in achievement: difference-in-differences evidence from 20 years of large-scale assessments

Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability - Research to date on the effects of between-school tracking on inequalities in achievement and on performance has been inconclusive. A...