Digital Discernment: An E‐Commerce Web Site Evaluation Tool

Students entering the business workforce today may well share some responsibility for developing, revising, or evaluating their company's Web site. They may lack the experience, however, to critique their employer's Web presence effectively. The purpose of developing Digital Discernment, an e‐commerce Web site evaluation tool, was to prepare students for this work. The tool provides them with a listing of criteria with which to assess e‐commerce sites, lets them evaluate pre‐selected sites qualitatively and quantitatively, and allows them to compare their evaluations with their peers. In this article, we discuss and examine the effectiveness of this tool and consider the ways in which it can help students in their future business careers.     

Evaluating Teacher-Leaders for Careers as Administrators: Effects of Job Attributes, Teacher Leader Role, and Teaching Assignment Area

Recruitment of public school administrators is an important issue due to the shortage of qualified job applicants nationwide. The shortage of applicants requires school districts to evaluate their internal pools of potential applicants for administrative vacancies. This evaluation research addressed the recruitment of teacher-leaders to serve as assistant principals (APs) using a recruitment simulation technique. The participants were secondary school teacher-leaders who were counselors, school council members, department chairs, or resource teachers. The evaluation technique used involved an innovative experimental design approach. Teacher-leaders, whose current or past primary teaching assignment was in the core content areas (e.g., English/language arts, mathematics, science, social studies), rated the job of AP highest. Resource teachers rated the job significantly higher when the AP job emphasized instruction than when the job emphasized discipline. Implications for recruitment practice and future research are discussed.     

Conducting research in sports engineering education

This aim of this paper is to provide recommendations for developing sports engineering education research (SEER) both at the individual and community levels. The emergence of this field can be positively informed by reflection on similar developments in other fields, particularly engineering education and health science education research. The large traditional engineering disciplines, including chemical, electrical and computer, and mechanical, have well-developed communities and publication venues for educational research. Health professions, including kinesiology, rehabilitation, nursing, and medicine, have allied with sports engineering to develop educational research that can inform methods and provide opportunities for dissemination. As an interdisciplinary field, it is also critical to draw on the growing body of interprofessional education research. The rich literature relating to discipline-based educational research (DBER) and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) can support individuals moving into this field, and observations by communities in other disciplines can provide guideposts for sports engineering. There are well-established processes and methodologies that can be adapted from other discipline-based educational research fields. As stand-alone sports engineering education programs are relatively rare and young, there is an opportunity available to create a culture that values research on education in the field.     

Staff Attitudes Regarding Permanent Expulsionary Punishment (PEP) from Australian Government Schools: Comparing Queensland with Other Jurisdictions

This mixed-methods study considers ‘permanent expulsionary punishments’ (PEP) from government schooling. Analysis considers the literature, available PEP data from two jurisdictions, and attitudinal data from Australian staff, in considering the contribution of policy, agency, and discourse (PAD) to the causes of PEP. It compares attitudes in a Queensland sample with those in other Australian jurisdictions. Across Queensland schools, 2007–2014, rates for the two categories of PEP almost doubled and more than quadrupled. This contrasts with neighbouring state, New South Wales (NSW), where the rate of PEP remained constant. PEP may disproportionately impact equity groups, already vulnerable to poor academic, and therefore social mobility, outcomes: especially those of First Nation Heritage (FNH). Thus, pre-identified gaps in educational outcomes for FNH children are stretched, despite this purportedly being a national education and social justice priority. The findings are that discernible differences exist between participants from Queensland, and other jurisdictions. However, despite these differences, responses overall were polarised reasonably uniformly across jurisdictions. Most participants attributed influence onto both family and child with fewer attributions onto schooling systems or PEP itself. Other considered factors which might influence attitudes include cohort differences like gender, age and experience.

     

The Influence of Physical Education on Physical Activity Levels of Urban Elementary Students

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of physical education in shaping physical activity patterns. Seventy-one Hispanic and African American elementary students participated in the study. Students attended one 30- and one 60-min physical education class weekly. Pedometer steps were used to estimate physical activity. Data suggest that students did not engage in enough physical activity on a daily basis to incur health benefits. There were significant step differences in 0-, 30-, and 60-min physical education days, with the most steps occurring on 60-min days. Results from the study suggest physical education may be an important source of physical activity for Hispanic and African American students, especially girls, and may influence participation in physical activity outside of class.