Experiencing risk,surveillance, and prosumption: health and physical education students’ perceptions of digitised health and physical activity data

ABSTRACT

Digital technologies are now considered important in shaping young people's engagement in and with health and physical activity. Recent discussions show that the use of digital technologies to track health and fitness may over-emphasize the linear understanding of the body and health generally underpinned by Western health ideologies such as healthism. Other studies have shown the increased use of digital technologies in teaching Health and Physical Education (HPE) and as a means to enhance health and increase physical activity. Despite the opportunities and risks apparent in these studies, little is known about how HPE students make choices, negotiate, and resist or embrace the digitalisation of physical activity, exercise, and more broadly health. This study examines HPE students’ meaning making of risk and surveillance associated with the self-digitisation of exercise. The study further investigates how the concept of ‘prosumption’; the production, curation and consumption of self-data within the context of digitised health and physical activity, is understood. Based on the findings, we have constructed a typology of prosumers that can be used as a pedagogical device to illustrate the various kinds of subject positions students take up with digital technology in health and physical activity. This study extends the current understanding of prosumers by identifying the ‘ambivalent prosumer’. The results provide insights that have direct pedagogical implications in HPE teacher education specifically in the areas of knowledge production and consumption of knowledge through digital technology in health and physical activity.     

Spectacle,spectatorship, and gender anxiety in television news coverage of the 1970 women's strike for equality

This essay examines television news coverage of the August 2 6, 19 70 Women's Strike for Equality, the first major media event of the second wave offeminism in the U.S. It explores three levels on which the news reports on the three broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC), rely on notions of women and visual pleasure: first, in their positioning of the Strike as sheer spectacle; second, in their verbal and visual framing of the Strike as absurdist entertainment rather than reasoned protest, and third, in their emphasis on the issue of femininity under attack, an emphasis in which femininity is largely represented by women's bodies. I conclude with a discussion of the ways in which the framing of the events functions both to assert and to assuage a profound sense of gender anxiety on the part of the assumed male spectator for the coverage.     

A new generation of grey literature: The impact of advanced information technologies

A basic challenge of the Weinberg Report addressed the question of information overload. The Weinberg Panel was extremely concerned with the proliferation of scientific literature and the specific issue of how to sift through reams of data to find the “gems” of wisdom, or that which is truly new and useful. In the early 1960s when the report was being written, computers were not part of the information access and retrieval infrastructure. Writing twenty-five years later, in 1988, Dr. Weinberg recognized that the panel had not adequately taken into account the impact of the computer and the growth of the information industry. Today we have a new world of microcomputers and networked information which is fundamentally shifting the paradigm of scientific communication. We have new capabilities, including electronic publishing, visualization techniques, even virtual reality. Without getting into a great debate about the definition of “grey literature,” the main characteristics have traditionally been described as: rapid publication, wariable formats, no public peer review, and no commercial source of general availability. With networked information and multi-media technology, the new world of grey literature is emerging with an interesting set of new and revived challenges. This article looks at the most interesting characteristics, and based on them, presents the thesis that in the 1990s we are facing a new generation of “grey literature”.     

Engagement of Academic Libraries and Information Science Schools in Creating Curriculum for Sustainability: An Exploratory Study

In 2010, the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education released, “Sustainability curriculum in higher education: A call to action,” encouraging infusion of sustainability topics into universities' teaching and research. Since then, academic programs and research related to social, economic, and environmental sustainability have enriched university curricula. An exploratory study was conducted to determine the position and engagements of academic libraries and information science schools in their contributions to scholarly sustainability activities and curricular initiatives. This article presents the results of the study which reveals a number of engagements by library professionals in the areas of sustainability, such as increasing open access to research, building sustainability-related collections and research guides, and incorporating sustainability content into information literacy. While academic libraries and information science schools are engaged in a broad spectrum of initiatives that support their institutions' sustainability research and curricular functions, this study indicates that such activities require a more targeted approach.     

Trustees versus Directors,Whom Do They Serve? Boards,For‐Profits and the Public Good in the United States

Postsecondary education in the United States is provided by public, not‐for‐profit and for‐profit institutions. Public and not‐for‐profit institutions are expected to serve the public good due to state control or chartering requirements; for‐profit institutions are not. Therefore, the decision to serve the public good is vested in the board. The for‐profit director's role as representative of shareholders' interests does not ensure deference to the public good. Currently, national priorities are aligned with shareholder interests creating an environment ripe for expansion of for‐profit education. However, there are implications as national priorities shift to positions that do not complement shareholder interests. Most critically, continued growth of for‐profit postsecondary education may lead to a reduction of service of the public good by all institutions. Private institutions (not‐for‐profit or for‐profit) exist in every large country; therefore, a thorough analysis of the legal distinctions among sectors is encouraged to understand the implications of growth.     

Multi-candidate reduction: Sentence compression as a tool for document summarization tasks

This article examines the application of two single-document sentence compression techniques to the problem of multi-document summarization—a “parse-and-trim” approach and a statistical noisy-channel approach. We introduce the multi-candidate reduction (MCR) framework for multi-document summarization, in which many compressed candidates are generated for each source sentence. These candidates are then selected for inclusion in the final summary based on a combination of static and dynamic features. Evaluations demonstrate that sentence compression is a valuable component of a larger multi-document summarization framework.     

Parents’ participation on school councils analysed through Arnstein’s ladder of participation

Although parent school councils are the archetypal arrangement for engaging parents in school improvement planning, their effectiveness is negligible when it comes to building parents’ capacity for and confidence in educational decision-making. Using Arnstein’s ladder of citizen participation, this qualitative case study investigated the nature and degree of parents’ participation on six school community councils (SCCs) in Saskatchewan, Canada. Focus groups and interviews with SCC parent members, and school and district leaders were the chief data sources. In most schools, the SCC structure did not dislodge time-honoured barriers that restricted parents’ influence on extracurricular issues. A conceptual examination of participation affords a process-oriented understanding of parent involvement that complements the existing focus on the factors that impact school council effectiveness as an outcome.     

Re-viewing student teamwork: preparation for the ‘real world’ or bundles of situated social practices?

Research in Australian business education continues to emphasise the importance of students learning teamwork as an integral part of the undergraduate curriculum. However, entrenched conceptual and practical confusion as to what the term ‘teamwork’ means and how it ought to be enacted remains a vexed issue capable of distorting and diminishing teamwork, learning and related pedagogy. In this paper, we critically re-examine the view that developing teamwork in an undergraduate business degree equips students for work in the real world. By focusing on the ‘real world’ metaphor-in-use in a cross-disciplinary business capstone subject, we interrogate the spatio-temporal dimensions of teamwork and its realist conceptions and performance. The research draws upon the perceptions of interviewed academics conducting teamwork activities in undergraduate business courses and the lived experiences of the authors. The findings highlight how the use of multiple models of teamwork, constructed by competing discourses and linked to the dualities and invocations constructed by ‘the real world’ metaphor, further exacerbate confusion. We suggest re-viewing and re-valuing student teamwork as the performance of situated, social practices opening new spaces for student teamwork, learning and pedagogical practice.     

Faculty roles and role preferences in ten fields of professional study

Teaching faculty in ten entry-level professional fields reported varying amounts of time devoted to teaching, research, consulting, and professional practice but did not differ in time devoted to administration. The faculty member's own role view was most closely related to time use, but for time spent in teaching and research, faculty age and institutional type (but not gender) were also significant predictors. Even after several general demographic characteristics and environmental variables that potentially differentiate professional from discipline-based faculty are taken into account, different professional fields may be characterized by group climates which influence or reinforce certain faculty roles.     

Science Supports Education: The Behavioral Research Base for Psychology's Top 20 Principles for Enhancing Teaching and Learning

Psychological science has much to contribute to preK‐12 education because substantial psychological research exists on the processes of learning, teaching, motivation, classroom management, social interaction, communication, and assessment. This article details the psychological science that led to the identification, by the American Psychological Association's Coalition for Psychology in Schools and Education, of the “Top 20 Principles from Psychology for PreK‐12 Teaching and Learning.” Also noted are the major implications for educational practice that follow from the principles.