Training School-Based Consultants: Some Thoughts On Grains of Sand and Building Anthills

This article reviews the major themes and issues emerging from this special issue on training school-based consultants. It is suggested that the building of anthills from individual and often seemingly disconnected grains of sand provides a useful metaphor for work in this arena. To date we have failed to establish a compelling and integrated body of empirical evidence addressing consultant training, although some excellent preliminary data have been reported. All agree that substantially more scholarly work is essential. It is proposed that the most important challenge facing us is the adoption of a unifying theoretical model to guide the organization and synthesis of our disparate "grains of sand" so that we can create meaningful and coherent "anthills" that can be of value to consultation trainers. Ecological and systems orientations are presented as the most appropriate and powerful approaches to achieve this goal. Small-N and qualitative research methodologies seem particularly well suited to this task. A number of specific research and practice ideas are suggested, although each has yet to garner sufficient empirical support and each is considered to be subsidiary to the adoption of an ecological paradigm to guide trainers and researchers in drafting a blueprint for future scientific work. As sure as worker ants can build phenomenally complex anthills from the most meager beginnings, so can we develop a scientific body of knowledge regarding consultant training. However, substantially more intellectual capital will need to be invested in this task if we are to succeed. Ultimately, it is up to us, as interested scholars, to make this happen.     

The dimensions of research in undergraduate learning

Most Australian Universities offer a selection of research-intensive pathways at the graduate level, which provides opportunities for independent inquiry and intellectual autonomy. Undergraduate students, however, are somewhat short-changed in their experience in research. They are exposed to a variety of areas and disciplines, which forms a general cluster of knowledge, but students graduate without obtaining the skills associated with research and inquiry. Digital communication networks and the ways in which information is disseminated in modern society play an important role in the way people live and learn. At the same time, younger generations are emerging with greater skills in digital literacy, which bears an impact on how knowledge is produced and information is shared. This prompts to question, are undergraduate students acquiring the generic attributes that will help them to cope with the complexities of an information-driven society? The following article is based on the premise that undergraduate students need to be empowered to construct their own knowledge as potential producers rather than mere consumers of knowledge. It provides a synthesis of cross-disciplinary perspectives and educational debates that support the argument for, and benefits of, providing research-enriched learning for undergraduate students. This article adopts a framework for the dimensions of research in undergraduate learning. The different models presented in this article aim to illustrate the various ways that research can be integrated with teaching to benefit learning.     

Learning about movies: the impact of movie release types on the nationwide box office

Major Hollywood studios typically release new movies in North America in one of the two ways, wide release or platform release. In this paper, we investigate how release form affects the demand of a new movie after it is nationally released. In particular, we focus on movies for which the platform release is pre-planned to make the problem tractable. We estimate our model using a sample of Hollywood movies that eventually received nationwide release from 1999 to 2003. Our results show that platform release shifts consumers’ perception of unobservable movie appeal through its first stage performance, which turns out to be a stronger effect than that of advertising. Meanwhile, we find that the demand for platform movies decays faster than for wide release ones after their national release. Using counterfactual analysis, we find that more than half of the platform movies which later went to national release would have earned higher profits if they had been given a wide release.     

The link between student-perceived teacher talk and student enjoyment,anxiety and discursive engagement in the classroom

This study seeks to understand the emotional connection of teachers' academically productive talk (APT) with student learning from the students' perspective. Using a sample of 2,225 students (N_{7th grade} = 1,146 and N_{8th grade} = 1,079) from 16 middle schools in a city of China, we investigate the relationship between students' perceptions of their teachers’ APT, student emotions (enjoyment and anxiety) and their discursive engagement with others in the mathematics classroom. Results from structural equation modelling and mediation analysis show that after controlling for gender, family resources and mathematics achievement, student-perceived teacher APT was positively associated with their discursive engagement with classmates. Furthermore, student enjoyment and anxiety in class mediated the relationship between student-perceived teacher APT and student discursive engagement with classmates. Multi-group analysis revealed that the model was invariant across genders and grades, indicating that the associations were applicable to male and female students as well as to seventh and eighth graders. These findings shed light on the emotional relationship of teacher APT with the discursive engagement of their students. Although prior research observes a positive relationship between teacher productive classroom talk and student discursive engagement primarily through classroom observations and teacher reflections, this study provides evidence from the students’ perspective and highlights the mediating role of student emotions in the relationship.     

Correlation analysis of performance measures for multi-label classification

In many important application domains, such as text categorization, scene classification, biomolecular analysis and medical diagnosis, examples are naturally associated with more than one class label, giving rise to multi-label classification problems. This fact has led, in recent years, to a substantial amount of research in multi-label classification. In order to evaluate and compare multi-label classifiers, researchers have adapted evaluation measures from the single-label paradigm, like Precision and Recall; and also have developed many different measures specifically for the multi-label paradigm, like Hamming Loss and Subset Accuracy. However, these evaluation measures have been used arbitrarily in multi-label classification experiments, without an objective analysis of correlation or bias. This can lead to misleading conclusions, as the experimental results may appear to favor a specific behavior depending on the subset of measures chosen. Also, as different papers in the area currently employ distinct subsets of measures, it is difficult to compare results across papers. In this work, we provide a thorough analysis of multi-label evaluation measures, and we give concrete suggestions for researchers to make an informed decision when choosing evaluation measures for multi-label classification.     

Outdoor life,nature experience,and sports in Norway: tensions and dilemmas in the preservation and use of urban forest

Abstract

How should contemporary societies promote physical activity in nature and preservation of the natural environment? Outdoor life occupies a central and contested position on this question in the Nordic countries. In Norway, a 1957 Act of Parliament took a major step by guaranteeing free public access to both public and private uncultivated land. This article explores the media debate that raged in 2008–2009, when the national government proposed new legislation intended to promote outdoor life, sport, nature experience and urban forest preservation around Oslo, Norway’s capital. Applying narrative and discourse methodologies, this case study reveals how the media debate evolved from an initial cacophony of voices into a schism between advocates of nature preservation and advocates of sport. The controversy explored here is increasingly relevant throughout all of Europe: how to encourage urban active living, sustainable recreation and democratic citizenship that embody distinct social practices, identities, emotional bonds and symbolic meaning.     

Cut points of the Actigraph GT9X for moderate and vigorous intensity physical activity at four different wear locations

ABSTRACT

Accelerometer cut points are an important consideration for distinguishing the intensity of activity into categories such as moderate and vigorous. It is well-established in the literature that these cut points depend on a variety of factors, including age group, device, and wear location. The Actigraph GT9X is a newer model accelerometer that is used for physical activity research, but existing cut points for this device are limited since it is a newer device. Furthermore, there is not existing data on cut points for the GT9X at the ankle or foot locations, which offers some potential benefit for activities that do not involve arm and/or core motion. A total of N = 44 adults completed a four-stage treadmill protocol while wearing Actigraph GT9X sensors at four different locations: foot, ankle, wrist, and hip. Metabolic Equivalent of Task (MET) levels assessed by indirect calorimetry along with Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curves were used to establish cut points for moderate and vigorous intensity for each wear location of the GT9X. Area under the ROC curves indicated high discrimination accuracy for each case.