“Brothers Gonna Work It Out:” Understanding the Pedagogic Performance of African American Male Teachers Working with African American Male Students

Drawing from ethnographic data, this paper explores how African American male teachers working with African American male students performed their pedagogy. This paper highlights how teachers’ understanding of African American males social and educational needs shaped their pedagogical performance. Interestingly however, teachers’ performance was contingent on the diverse ways they imagined African American males should engage within their social and political worlds. These findings suggest then that African American male teachers’ pedagogic performances were both complex and multifaceted.     

Improving fine motor skills in young children: an intervention study

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of the Primary Movement programme on the fine motor skills of children in an early years setting in an area of high social disadvantage. Primary Movement is a programme which can be used as an early intervention technique to help children inhibit persistent primary reflexes that have been shown to adversely affect motor and cognitive development. Previous research has found that the programme can have significant effects in increasing the motor and academic attainments of children, aged 8–11 years. A repeated measures design was used to evaluate the impact of the Primary Movement intervention, in comparison to a control intervention, on the fine motor skills of 65 Reception children, aged four to five years. The results from this study provide evidence that the Primary Movement programme had a significant effect on improving the fine motor skills of the children. This research provides further evidence to support the use of the programme within the Early Years curriculum.     

Social justice and school linkages in teacher education programmes

This paper investigates current research into the role of education in combating social injustice, assembles this research to indicate key features of a teacher education programme that would assist education for social justice, and links these features to one innovative university teacher education programme to ascertain some of the practical difficulties in establishing such a programme. The research indicated key approaches that would enhance the probability that graduates from teacher education programmes will be able to pursue social justice initiatives.     

Reliability and Validity of Finger Strength and Endurance Measurements in Rock Climbing

Purpose: An advanced system for the assessment of climbing-specific performance was developed and used to: (a) investigate the effect of arm fixation (AF) on construct validity evidence and reliability of climbing-specific finger-strength measurement; (b) assess reliability of finger-strength and endurance measurements; and (c) evaluate the relationship between finger flexor all-out test scores and climbing ability. Methods: To determine the effect of AF, 22 male climbers performed 2 maximal strength and all-out tests with AF (shoulder and elbow flexed at 90°) and without AF (shoulder flexed at 180° and elbow fully extended). To determine reliability, 9 male climbers completed 2 maximal strength tests with and without AF and an all-out and intermittent test without AF. Results: The maximal strength test without AF more strongly determined climbing ability than the test with AF (r² = .48 and r² = .42 for sport climbing; r² = .66 and r² = .42 for bouldering, respectively). Force and time variables were highly reliable; the rate of force development and fatigue index had moderate and low reliability. The maximal strength test with AF provided slightly higher reliability than without AF (intraclass correlation coefficient [ICC] = 0.94, ICC = 0.88, respectively). However, smaller maximal forces were achieved during AF (484 ± 112 N) than without AF (546 ± 132 N). All-out test average force had sufficiently high reliability (ICC = 0.92) and a relationship to sport climbing (r² = .42) and bouldering ability (r² = .58). Conclusion: Finger strength and endurance measurements provided sufficient construct validity evidence and high reliability for time and force parameters. Arm fixation provides more reliable results; however, the position without AF is recommended as it is more related to climbing ability.     

Benefactors and beneficiaries in social capital exchanges

Abstract

Social capital research that specifically interrogates the motives for both benefactors and beneficiaries typically gives short shrift to the motives of beneficiaries, instead focusing on those of benefactors. Building on ideas first proposed in gift-giving and help-seeking research, this paper pays particular attention to the motives of recipients in social capital exchanges. Based on fieldwork in a youth baseball league in the American Southwest, I will argue that recipient motives for accepting (or asking for) help from another parent in the league are complex and worth studying on their own merit. Motives are explored for three of the four types of benefits typically exchanged in the Valley City Little League: Emotional Support, Information Sharing, and Job Information Sharing. Childcare is treated elsewhere.     

The curious case of child care: an anomaly within social capital exchange motives in a youth sport organization

Abstract

Examinations of motives for benefactors and beneficiaries in social capital exchanges typically examines motives of benefactors, leaving those of recipients unexamined. Based on 18 months of fieldwork in a youth baseball league in the American Southwest, I propose in this paper that, in some cases, the motives of beneficiaries are in fact more complicated and interesting to interrogate than the motives of benefactors. I provide a detailed look at one of these types of exchanges in particular that was typical within the Valley City Little League, that of childcare. Based on this work, I propose that social capital researchers will do well to advance the overall concept by placing a greater emphasis on recipient motives.     

The vibrational mode structure of a golf ball

In this paper, we report the discrete frequencies at which golf balls can vibrate, the mode patterns of these vibrations and how these modes can be excited. There are two broad classes of modes: those that radiate sound waves and those that do not. Both silent and acoustic modes are excited by tangential (i.e. spin-producing) impact forces; only acoustic modes are excited by radial impact forces. Exact analytical results for a homogeneous ball core are compared with finite element numerical results for both a core and a model two-piece ball. Correspondences are readily established for the important low-frequency modes, and the good agreement suggests the validity of these results for real golf balls. The results potentially provide the basis for a rapid, simple and non-destructive method of measuring the effective high-frequency elastic shear modulae of balls (and ball cores) as well as a method for 'tuning' the performance of balls for specific clubs. Some of these aspects are explored further in our companion paper in this issue.