Goalkeeping in the soccer penalty kick

The goalkeeper’s difficulty in the soccer penalty kick originates from the extreme spatiotemporal constraints of the situation. The present review claims that the current understanding is biased toward attributing a goalkeeper’s success in saving a penalty kick to perceptual–cognitive skill. To investigate the goalkeeper’s skill, researchers have often adopted video tasks. In doing so, they studied perceptual skill in isolation from action. We use affordance-based control theory to propose an alternative understanding and research methodology. We argue that goalkeepers in the penalty kick situation should regulate their actions in ways that sustain the perception of stoppability. To capture this, we outline the building blocks for a required lateral velocity model, in which the goalkeepers’ required actions are scaled to their maximum capabilities. In doing so, we provide new directions for research.     

‘It's actually very normal that I'm different’. How physically disabled youth discursively construct and position their body/self

In this paper, we explore how physically disabled youth who participate in mainstream education discursively construct and position themselves in relation to dominant discourses about sport and physicality that mark their bodies as ‘abnormal’ and ‘deviant’. We employ a feminist poststructuralist perspective to analyze the narratives about sport, physical education (PE), the body and self of four physically disabled Dutch youngsters. Our results indicate that although dominant societal discourses about sport and physicality construct disabled bodies as deviant, vulnerable and lacking and the disabled as ‘abnormal’, these youth constructed the self as ‘normal’. However, they did so in different ways. One of the interviewees used the alternative discourse ‘everyone is different, everyone is normal’ to position her disabled self as different and normal simultaneously. Hereby she resisted dominant notions about the abled body embedded in discourses about sport and physicality. This act of resistance enabled her to accept her disability as part of her self. Others normalized their disabled bodies by attempting to pass as able-bodied. They tried to minimize and/or hide their disability and in this manner reproduced ableist discourses about sport and physicality. Our interviewees also engaged in various performative acts of resistance. They challenged these dominant discourses by strategically using the possibilities a different/disabled self provided them. Overall the data indicate the important role that visible signifiers of disability played in the exclusionary practices that these disabled youth encountered and the subject positions they could claim. Since alternative constructions and positionings regarding the abled/normal body suggest ways in which the dominance of ableism may be disrupted, we conclude with an emphasis on the need for future research that explores such alternatives.     

Humans,nonhumans and the mediation of workplace learning in the senior school curriculum

This paper brings together concepts drawn from Actor Network Theory and data generated in a research project that was conducted across the island of Ireland. Using surveys and interviews with school staff, that research explored the limits and possibilities for workplace learning as a valued component of the senior school curriculum. The current paper works with the data from the Republic of Ireland only and brings into focus the full range of actors – both human and nonhuman – that generate, or constrain, productive workplace learning opportunities for students. In the wake of the Great Recession, it is suggested that such opportunities have gained increased importance. The analysis suggests attention to the full range of actors highlights areas for intervention, and the possibilities for alliances that may be beneficial for students and their schools, for employers who provide workplace learning placements, and for vocational learning itself.     

Visual illusions and the control of ball placement in goal-directed hitting

When hitting kicking, or throwing balls at targets, online control in the target area is impossible. We assumed this lack of late corrections in the target area would induce an effect of a single-winged Müller-Lyer illusion on ball placement. After extensive practice in hitting balls to different landing locations, participants (N = 9) had to hit a ball to a distant target specified by the vertex of a single-winged Müller-Lyer configuration. Impact velocity was not significantly "tricked" by the pictorial illusion, suggesting that, even when late corrections in the target area are absent, some motor behaviors are not susceptible to the influence of the visual environment surrounding the target.     

A field simulation study of the effectiveness of penalty kick strategies in soccer: late alterations of kick direction increase errors and reduce accuracy

This field experiment investigated the relative merits of approaching the penalty kick with either a keeper-independent or keeper-dependent strategy. In the keeper-independent strategy, the shooter selects a target location in advance and disregards the goalkeeper's actions during the run-up. In the keeper-dependent strategy, the shooter makes a decision resting on the anticipation of the goalkeeper's movements during the run-up. Ten intermediate-level soccer players shot at one of two visually specified targets to the right and left side of the goal. In the keeper-independent strategy condition, participants were told that the visually specified target would not change. In the keeper-dependent strategy condition, participants were told that in half of the trials the visually specified target would change side at different times before ball contact, indicating that the direction of the kick needed to be altered. The results showed that penalty-taking performance was apt to be less than perfect in the keeper-dependent strategy condition. A decrease in the time available to alter kick direction resulted in a higher risk of not only an incorrect but also inaccurate shot placement. It is concluded that anticipating the goalkeeper's movements may degrade penalty kick performance, mainly due to insufficient time to modify the kicking action.     

A systematic literature review on synchronous hybrid learning: gaps identified

Learning Environments Research - More and more higher educational institutions invest in technology-enhanced learning spaces, which raises the question of how these environments can be shaped to be...     

“Now you know what you’re doing right and wrong!” Peer feedback quality in synchronous peer assessment in secondary education

European Journal of Psychology of Education - This study explores the effects of peer assessment (PA) practice on peer feedback (PF) quality of 11th grade secondary education students...     

Risk of Early Onset Substance Use among Students with and without Mild Academic Disabilities: Results of a Discrete‐Time Survival Analysis

This study investigated the age of onset of substance use among 536 students with mild academic disabilities and 906 students without academic disabilities, and the extent to which emotional, conduct, and hyperactivity problems explain the differences between these two groups. Using discrete‐time survival analysis, the results of this study showed that students with a mild academic disability were not at higher risk for the onset of daily smoking, and were at a significantly lower risk for the onset of weekly alcohol use and cannabis use. Though students with a mild academic disability displayed higher scores on conduct, emotional, and hyperactivity problems compared with their counterparts without an academic disability, this was not reflected in an increased risk for early onset substance use.     

Explaining Male Dominance and Sex Segregation in Coaching: Three Approaches

This article discusses various approaches that have been used to explain coaching as a male-dominated occupation. Individual approaches look at the interests, qualifications, and choices of women to explain their absence in male-dominated jobs. Structural approaches assume that gender-differentiated work behavior is more a function of location in organizational hierarchy than of gender. In the third approach, social relations, gender is seen as a verb in that women and men collectively struggle over the power to give meaning to social facts, including the meaning of coaching. This approach shows how structures, jobs, activities in those jobs, workers, and places of work are gendered through the meanings we assign to them. The ways those meanings may be altered if and when the number of women in coaching begins to increase are described.     

‘It's just the way it is…’ or not? How physical education teachers categorise and normalise differences

This article explores how Dutch physical education (PE) teachers discursively construct body differences between students related to gender, (dis)ability and health. Our results show how disciplinary technologies of categorisation and normalisation are embedded in two distinct discourses that our participants used: the discourse of naturalness for explaining and managing differences in gender and ability and the discourse of transformation for explaining and managing differences in health. Both these discourses produced body norms in PE as male, abled and slender. However, how the teachers managed deviance and normalcy varies per discourse. ‘Fat’ bodies that were produced as deviant through the discourse of transformation were disciplined in explicit ways. The use of the discourse of naturalness resulted in justification and naturalisation of perceived differences in gender and (dis)ability and practices such as differentiated teaching.