Book reviews

Clinical sports medicine, Robert C. Cantu, (ed.), The Collamore Press, Lexington, Massachusetts, Toronto, 1984. 219 pp, £19.95 (hb), ISBN 0 669 06842 X

Sports injuries, a self‐help guide, Vivian Grisogono, John Murray Ltd, London, 1984. 293 pp, £7.95 (hb), ISBN 0 7195 4111 5

Athletes’ guide to mental training, Robert N. Nideffer, Human Kinetics, Champaign, Illinois (distributed in the UK by Eddington Hook & Co.) 1985. vii +156 pp, $9.95 (pb), ISBN 0 931250 96 X

Scientific foundations of coaching, R.R. Pate, B. McClenaghan and R. Rotella, Saunders College Publishing, Philadelphia, 1984. xii + 344 pp, £21.95(hb), ISBN 0 03 057961 9

Mathematics in sport, M. Stewart Townend, Ellis Horwood, Chichester, 1984. 202 pp (hb), ISBN 0 85312 717 4

Frontiers of exercise biology, ’Big Ten Body of Knowledge’ symposium series, Vol. 13 K.T. Borer, D.W. Edington and T.P. White (eds), Human Kinetics Publishers Inc., Champaign, Illinois, (distributed in the UK by Edington Hook & Co.), 1983. vii + 295 pp, $31.95(hb), ISBN 0 931250 49 8

The knee, Philippe Segal and Marcel Jacob, Wolfe Medical Publications, Frome, Somerset, 1984. 143 pp (hb), £15, ISBN 2 224 00887 2

Psychological foundations of sport, J.M. Silva and R.S. Weinberg (eds), Human Kinetics, Champaign, Illinois, (distributed in the UK by Eddington Hook & Co), 1984. xxiv + 528 pp, £22.50 (hb), ISBN 0 93 1250 59 5

Physical activity and the social sciences, W. Neil Widmeyer, Mouvement Publications Inc., Ithaca, 1983. 472 pp, £9.00 (pb), ISBN 0 932392 13 X     

Beginning Statistics with Cuisenaire Rods

Cuisenaire Rods provide a concrete embodiment for teaching mean, median, and mode to middle schoolers. These statistical concepts are traditionally only taught abstractly, but may be better understood via manipulatives.     

Defining and navigating ‘action’ in a Participatory Action Research project

ABSTRACT

While the ‘action’ portion of a Participatory Action Research (PAR) project is a crucial component of the process, action tends to be challenging to define, achieve, and measure. The current paper both defines and describes action within the context of a particular PAR collaboration and explores the process and challenges of navigating and implementing action in a PAR project. The specific PAR project detailed in this paper was executed within a higher education setting and involves a group of undergraduate women co-researchers studying their experiences in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields.     

Disseminating development initiatives in British higher education: a case study

The Effective Teaching and Assessment Programme (ETAP) was commissioned and funded by the Higher Education Funding Councils for England, Scotland and Wales and ran during the academic year 1993–4. Its aim was to identify and disseminate best practice in specific subject areas, student support and resource based learning. ETAP supported five projects, each undertaken by a consortium of British higher education institutions. This paper reports an evaluation of the programme based on interviews with leaders of the individual projects, along with a questionnaire survey of potential users of the products of the programme. A framework is offered for interpreting the results of the evaluation. Six different meanings of the word dissemination are identified, corresponding to the different degrees to which users actively engage with the materials produced. These distinctions are applied to the data collected and the findings are summarised in terms of the key notions of awareness of what is available, the attitude of teaching staff towards centrally-produced materials, and the accessibility of those materials. The implications of these three concepts are discussed in relation to the technical, organisational and presentational issues which promote or hinder the effectiveness of the dissemination. A number of policy recommendations for Funding Councils and institutions are outlined.     

Parental support of numeracy during a cooking activity with four-year-olds

While research demonstrates the importance of numeracy-related activities performed at home for young children's mathematics achievement, few studies involve observational studies of the processes which support children's mathematical learning at home. On this premise, this study reports evidence from numeracy-related interactions between parents and their four-year-old child during cookery sessions at home. Numeracy group parents who received instructions to incorporate additional mathematics into the activity provided significantly more numeracy guidance and also created more opportunities for their children to practice advanced mathematics. Comparison group parents provided enough numeracy guidance to complete the recipe but rarely provided extensive or advanced numeracy guidance. Children in the numeracy group generated significantly more correct math responses during the activity than comparison group children, though there were no significant differences on the post-test. The findings suggest the need to raise parental awareness of opportunities to support and encourage mathematics in activities at home.     

Considering ‘teacher resilience’ from critical discourse and labour process theory perspectives

This article considers the construct of ‘teacher resilience’ from critical discourse and labour process perspectives in order to cast new light on what has been traditionally viewed from a psychological perspective. In this respect, the construct of resilience is placed in the broad political landscape of teachers’ work and the labour process of teaching, within a neoliberal globalised economic paradigm. Importantly, this article argues that any conceptualisations of teacher resilience should be critically appraised and not simply ‘taken for granted’. While the concept of developing ‘teacher resilience’ as a means, for example, of addressing alarmingly high rates of early career teacher attrition may sound like a good idea, it is important to consider the way such constructs can be used to shape and potentially control teacher identity and the nature of teachers’ work.     

False‐Belief Understanding and Social Preference Over the First 2 Years of School: A Longitudinal Study

The role of false belief in establishing children's social relationships during the transition to school was examined and compared to other social cognitive constructs. One hundred and fourteen 5‐year‐olds were recruited during their 1st year of school (Time 1); 106 children were retained 1 year later. False belief, emotion expression recognition, empathy, verbal ability, and peer‐rated social preference were measured at both times. False belief at Time 1 had a direct influence on concurrent social preference, over and above the influence of emotion expression recognition and empathy. False belief made no independent contribution to later social preference accounting for stability in social preference. The role of social cognitive development is discussed with respect to how children establish and maintain their position in a peer group.