Teachers’ Continuing Professional Development and Higher Education

This paper presents and analyses data gathered from a survey of teachers in a range of secondary school English departments. It seeks to establish the ways in which teachers perceive their subject knowledge Continuing Professional Development (CPD) needs and the ways in which they would like to engage with Higher Education (HE) English as part of their CPD. It also explores teachers’ reasons for wishing to undertake such study, and the ways in which they believe such studies could contribute to their development. Finally, it goes on to consider some of the constraints on CPD and the possible implications of this for Higher Education Institutions. The interface between schools and HE has, historically, been limited. However, engagement in CPD is one of the most significant ways in which dialogue between secondary and HE teachers of English can be fruitfully established.     

Youths in foster care with language delays: Prevalence,causes, and interventions

Children in the foster care system often face many educational challenges, including having an increased risk of language delays compared to the general population, with an estimated 35%–73% of the foster youth population experiencing language difficulties. Language delays are caused by many factors, but for children in foster care, one major antecedent is child abuse and neglect. Early delays greatly impact long‐term outcomes for children, including delays in their reading, writing, and social competence. This article explores possible causes of language delays for youths in foster care, describes the negative impact of language delays, and identifies evidence‐based practices for early intervention within the child welfare system and primary and secondary schools, specifically targeting practices for school psychologists, school counselors, school social workers, and speech pathologists.     

The effects of post-compulsory education and training systems on literacy and numeracy skills: A comparative analysis using PISA 2000 and the 2011 survey of adult skills

This article analyses the contribution of post-compulsory education and training systems to the development of literacy and numeracy skills across OECD countries. While there is extensive cross-country comparative research on the effects of primary and lower secondary education systems on aggregate skills levels, there has been little comparative analysis of system effects after the end of lower secondary education. This article uses a quasi-cohort analysis of the tested literacy and numeracy skills of 15-year-olds in PISA 2000 and 27-year-olds in the 2011 OECD Survey of Adult Skills (SAS) to estimate the gains in different countries in mean levels of competence in literacy and numeracy. We found that Nordic countries (Norway and Sweden) with comprehensive upper secondary education and training systems and German-speaking countries (Austria and Germany) with dual systems of apprenticeship were particular effective, whilst countries with mixed systems (England, Ireland, Northern Ireland and Spain) showed a relative decline in both literacy and numeracy. The education system characteristics that account for these differences are (a) the inclusiveness – as proxied by high rates of participation at 17/18 and low social gradients of level 3 completion; (b) the esteem of vocational programmes; and (c) curriculum standardisation with regard to the study of maths and the national language.     

Dietary nitrate supplementation does not improve cycling time-trial performance in the heat

This investigation examined the effect of beetroot juice (BR) supplementation, a source of dietary nitrate (NO₃^?), on cycling time-trial (TT) performance and thermoregulation in the heat. In a double-blind, repeated-measures design, 12 male cyclists (age 26.6 ± 4.4 years, VO_2peak 65.8 ± 5.5 mL.kg^?1.min^?1) completed four cycling TTs (14 kJ.kg^?1) in hot (35°C, 48% relative humidity) and euthermic (21°C, 52%) conditions, following 3 days supplementation with BR (6.5 mmol NO₃^? for 2 days and 13 mmol NO₃^? on the final day), or NO₃^–depleted placebo (PLA). Salivary NO₃^? and nitrite, core (T_c) and mean skin temperature (T_sk) were measured. Salivary NO₃^? and nitrite increased significantly post-BR supplementation (p < 0.001). Average TT completion time (mm:ss) in hot conditions was 56:50 ± 05:08 with BR, compared with 58:30 ± 04:48 with PLA (p = 0.178). In euthermic conditions, average completion time was 53:09 ± 04:35 with BR, compared with 54:01 ± 04:05 with PLA (p = 0.380). The TT performance decreased (p < 0.001), and T_c (p < 0.001) and T_sk (p < 0.001) were higher in hot compared with euthermic conditions. In summary, BR supplementation has no significant effect on cycling TT performance in the heat.     

Book reviews

Clinical sports medicine, Robert C. Cantu, (ed.), The Collamore Press, Lexington, Massachusetts, Toronto, 1984. 219 pp, £19.95 (hb), ISBN 0 669 06842 X

Sports injuries, a self‐help guide, Vivian Grisogono, John Murray Ltd, London, 1984. 293 pp, £7.95 (hb), ISBN 0 7195 4111 5

Athletes’ guide to mental training, Robert N. Nideffer, Human Kinetics, Champaign, Illinois (distributed in the UK by Eddington Hook & Co.) 1985. vii +156 pp, $9.95 (pb), ISBN 0 931250 96 X

Scientific foundations of coaching, R.R. Pate, B. McClenaghan and R. Rotella, Saunders College Publishing, Philadelphia, 1984. xii + 344 pp, £21.95(hb), ISBN 0 03 057961 9

Mathematics in sport, M. Stewart Townend, Ellis Horwood, Chichester, 1984. 202 pp (hb), ISBN 0 85312 717 4

Frontiers of exercise biology, ’Big Ten Body of Knowledge’ symposium series, Vol. 13 K.T. Borer, D.W. Edington and T.P. White (eds), Human Kinetics Publishers Inc., Champaign, Illinois, (distributed in the UK by Edington Hook & Co.), 1983. vii + 295 pp, $31.95(hb), ISBN 0 931250 49 8

The knee, Philippe Segal and Marcel Jacob, Wolfe Medical Publications, Frome, Somerset, 1984. 143 pp (hb), £15, ISBN 2 224 00887 2

Psychological foundations of sport, J.M. Silva and R.S. Weinberg (eds), Human Kinetics, Champaign, Illinois, (distributed in the UK by Eddington Hook & Co), 1984. xxiv + 528 pp, £22.50 (hb), ISBN 0 93 1250 59 5

Physical activity and the social sciences, W. Neil Widmeyer, Mouvement Publications Inc., Ithaca, 1983. 472 pp, £9.00 (pb), ISBN 0 932392 13 X     

Disciplining the Future: A Critical Organizational Analysis of Internet Studies

This article provides a critical, cautionary stance toward the future structure of “Internet studies” as a field. A social constructionist reading of the process of organizing reveals the ways in which apparently obdurate structures are constructed and negotiated through everyday discursive practices. Subsequent structures and practices function ideologically to control organizational members in a concertive fashion by shaping and directing the conceptual frameworks for inquiry and action in a seemingly natural way. Definitions and metaphors construct conceptual boundaries of meaning for the field of inquiry, delimiting and protecting over time what counts as Internet and Internet studies. Over time, origins of knowledge are hidden within the structure of the organizations and a culture of unobtrusive control emerges. Unless radical measures are taken to reflexively interrogate everyday routines and habitual ways of talking in academic environments, the future field of Internet studies will not transcend the traditions of the academy but will be entrenched in and reproduce traditional structures and a traditional scholarly enterprise.     

Physical Education Teachers in their Figurations: A Sociological Analysis of Everyday 'Philosophies'

This paper seeks to explain the socio-genesis of PE teachers' 'Philosophical' (or, rather, ideological) orientations from a sociological (specifically, figurational) perspective. Starting from the premise that such 'philosophies' cannot be adequately explained by studying either the ideas themselves or the teacher (him or herself) in isolation, it argues that PE teachers' everyday 'philosophies', and the underlying ideologies therein, can only be fully understood when teachers are located in the figurations they form with each other--as inescapably interdependent people. Two salient dimensions of the figurations of PE teachers are identified as their deeply-rooted attachments and associated convictions (e.g. towards the value of sport) and their practice of PE or, more precisely, the constraints circumscribing their practice. It is claimed that whilst various social processes (such as medicalization and professionalization) may well prove to be motors that drive psychical change towards health and academic ideologies within PE teachers' views on the nature and purposes of their subject, the particular blend of continuity alongside change--to be found at the personal, local and national levels of their figurations--manifests itself in the continuing pre-eminence of a sporting ideology in the everyday 'philosophies' of PE teachers.     

Busy doing nothing? Physical education teachers' perceptions of young people's participation in leisure-sport

Within the substantial body of research examining the professional knowledge of physical education (PE) teachers one particular area remains relatively under-explored: namely, their understandings of young people's participation in leisure-sport and the implications of this, if any, for the practice of PE. There are grounds for thinking, however, that in this aspect of their professional knowledge PE teachers might not be as conversant with patterns of participation—among young people, generally, and their own pupils, in particular—as one might expect. In order to examine this tentative hypothesis, the present study involved focus groups with a total of 29 PE teachers at six secondary schools in England. A central finding of the study was that PE teachers' perceptions of their youngsters' leisure-sport lives tended to be characterized by a blend of myth and reality. Many teachers, for example, underestimated the levels of participation in leisure-sport both of their own pupils and the 15–16 years age group, generally. Nevertheless, the teachers' observations regarding what amounted to growing and diversifying sporting repertoires among their pupils were, to a greater or lesser degree, commensurate with the profiles reported by the pupils, and with wider trends associated with the changing lifestyles and preferences of young people. The paper concludes by briefly locating this study of professional knowledge within the sociology of knowledge, while observing that the content and form of PE for Year 11 pupils at the six schools in this study appeared to be informed by the common-sense, everyday knowledge of PE teachers rather than by evidence from national or local surveys of young people or studies of their own pupils.