Effect of a Treadmill Run to Exhaustion on Performance of Long Addition

Abstract

College students (N = 72) took a four-minute test of addition on two separate days, once preceded by an exhausting treadmill run and once without prior exertion. Scores were recorded for speed and accuracy for each minute and for the total four minutes. It was found that the exertion had a significant negative effect on accuracy for the total four minutes as well as for the second and fourth minute. No significant effect of exertion on speed was obtained. When control and experimental conditions were considered together a significant trend in favor of high fitness subjects was found on speed of addition. Significant differences in favor of medium and high fitness subjects were found on accuracy of addition.     

Attendance and attainment in a Calculus course

In this paper the relationship between attendance and attainment in a standard calculus course is investigated. Calculus could in principle be studied without attending lectures due to the wealth of material available (in hardcopy and online). However, in this study we will show that the pass rate of students attending classes regularly (>75% of the classes) is much higher than the pass rate of students attending fewer classes. We use a logistic model to investigate whether this correlation is significant. We will argue why we believe that this correlation between attendance and attainment is causal, i.e. why it is necessary for most students to attend classes in order to (improve their chances to) pass the exam.     

Differential school effects among low,middle, and high social class composition schools: a multiple group,multilevel latent growth curve analysis

This qualitative case study of an exceptional school in the south of England challenges the hypothesis that transformational leaders significantly impact on student outcomes. Interviews with staff and students, together with classroom observation, confirm that the head, appointed in 1995, has played an important role in transforming internal processes and in changing the context of the school. Although the observed and reported behaviour of leaders, teachers, and students matches expectations from the literature, the consequences for student achievement are unclear. Background variables seem to explain most of the apparent improvement in student outcomes. An effectiveness framework that assigns disproportionate value to examination results seems to have created a leadership paradox, where heads reported to be transformational produce only limited gains in performance. The study concludes that the government's determination to assume a strongly positive relationship between leaders and outcomes has compromised the principle of evidence-informed policy-making and that we need a different approach based on a broadly defined, qualitative conception of student success.