Can Cooperative Learning Achieve the Four Learning Outcomes of Physical Education? A Review of Literature

Physical learning, cognitive learning, social learning, and affective learning are positioned as the legitimate learning outcomes of physical education. It has been argued that these four learning outcomes go toward facilitating students’ engagement with the physically active life (Bailey et al., 2009; Kirk, 2013). With Cooperative Learning positioned as a pedagogical model capable of supporting these four learning outcomes (Dyson & Casey, 2012), the purpose of this review was to explore the empirical research in the use of Cooperative Learning in physical education reported on the achievement of learning in the physical, cognitive, social, and affective domains (or their equivalents). The review found that while learning occurred in all 4 domains, the predominant outcomes were reported in the physical, cognitive, and social domains. Affective learning was reported anecdotally, and it became clear that more work is required in this area. The article concludes by suggesting that research into the outcomes of this and other pedagogical models needs to focus on learning beyond the initial instructional unit and extend over a period of years and not just weeks.     

Educational Policy on Emotional Intelligence: Does It Make Sense?

Educational policy on emotional intelligence appears to be based more on mass-media science journalism than on actual educational and psychological research. The first section of this article provides an overview of the research areas of emotional intelligence, social and emotional learning, and character education; it further examines how these areas became linked in the popular press. The second section examines the scientific evidence for whether emotional intelligence underpins social and emotional learning, how emotional intelligence relates to success, and whether it is central to character. We conclude that educational policy in this area has outpaced the science on which it is ostensibly based, and recommendations for the future are made.     

Gender-Specific Linkages of Affective Social Competence With Peer Relations in Preschool Children

Research Findings: We examined whether affective social competence, or the ability to effectively send and receive emotional signals and to manage one's own emotional experience, contributes to preschool children's peer relations. Forty-two previously unacquainted preschoolers were observed while participating in a week-long playschool. Greater nonstereotypical emotion knowledge was related to girls' popularity and boys' likelihood of having a reciprocal friendship. Girls with greater skill at sending emotional communications and managing emotions were more likely to have a reciprocal friendship. Boys who were better at managing emotions compared to others in their group were less popular. The role of social context in the influence of affective social competence on children's peer relations is discussed. Practice or Policy: Results have implications for early childhood educators' promotion of children's socioemotional skills.     

Crisis in the Curriculum? New Counselors' Crisis Preparation,Experiences, and Self‐Efficacy

Professional counselors are responsible for providing crisis assessment, referral, and intervention ( Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs, 2009 ); however, little is known about their preparation and experiences in these areas. This study examined new professional counselors' (N= 193) crisis intervention preparation, crisis intervention self‐efficacy, and crisis intervention experiences. Although participants had limited crisis preparation during their master's programs, most engaged in crisis intervention during their field experiences. Implications for continuing education and counselor education are explored.     

Counseling Programs' Informed Consent Practices: A Survey of Student Preferences

This study examined 115 master's‐level counseling students' preferences for content, timing, and method of programmatic informed consent. Students rated the majority of items as moderately or extremely important to receive, and they indicated a desire for the informed consent to be facilitated through a combination of both oral and written methods throughout their programs of study. Results reinforce and go beyond the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (2009) and American Counseling Association (2005) expectations for informed consent. Implications for counselor education are discussed.     

“It’s Groundhog Day”: Foucault’s Governmentality and Crisis Discourses in Physical Education

ABSTRACT

Dominant discourses in physical education research center on subject-wide crisis. This is despite repeated calls to address enduring concerns about how physical education is taught. In short, the subject seems caught in Groundhog Day (defined by Oxford Dictionaries (n.d.) as “a situation in which a series of unwelcome or tedious events appear to be recurring in exactly the same way”). This article scrutinizes this position through Foucault’s lens of governmentality, which focuses particularly on power/knowledge relations and their relationship to subjectivity. Through this lens, research functions as a shaper of contemporary understanding and becomes a means for intervention by “experts.” The article is structured as a conversation between authors about dominant discourses in physical education research and issues of governmentality. It argues that research approaches such as action research are framed within other power/knowledge relations and may provide a way to wake up on a new day.     

The Superintendent's Leadership in School Improvement: A Rural Perspective

ABSTRACT

This paper contains a brief review of the research literature on superintendents’ leadership for school improvement as an introduction. Following that, the patterns of five superintendents’ leadership that evolved in five school improvement sites is reported; the activities in which the superintendents engaged in five quite different organizational settings is the focus. In addition, the strategies and events used by external assisters assigned to the sites to develop and enhance leadership behaviors are shared. The paper concludes with a short discussion of the unique conditions and influences on rural superintendents and their leadership for increasing educational effectiveness.     

Student-Generated Content: Enhancing learning through sharing multiple-choice questions

The relationship between students' use of PeerWise, an online tool that facilitates peer learning through student-generated content in the form of multiple-choice questions (MCQs), and achievement, as measured by their performance in the end-of-module examinations, was investigated in 5 large early-years science modules (in physics, chemistry and biology) across 3 research-intensive UK universities. A complex pattern was observed in terms of which type of activity (writing, answering or commenting on questions) was most beneficial for students; however, there was some evidence that students of lower intermediate ability may have gained particular benefit. In all modules, a modest but statistically significant positive correlation was found between students' PeerWise activity and their examination performance, after taking prior ability into account. This suggests that engaging with the production and discussion of student-generated content in the form of MCQs can support student learning in a way that is not critically dependent on course, institution, instructor or student.     

‘Seeing the trees not just the wood’: steps and not just journeys in teacher action research

Either action research by teachers uses the approach as a methodology to examine pedagogical change in a single intervention or it is used as means of understanding a journey of change. In contrast, this paper examines the significant impact of using action research in a second cycle of learning in the same context and with the same participants. Employing a number of data-gathering tools (reflective journals, unit diaries, post-cycle reflective analyses, student interviews and observations) this paper examines the residual and emergent effects of cooperative learning on the participants in a second, sequential unit of track and field athletics taught a year after the first intervention. It suggests that learning was both academic and social, and that participants felt the unit built on their prior learning about track and field because it was progressive, motivational and student-centred. The paper concludes by suggesting that, in seeking to understand a teacher’s pedagogical and curricular change process, we need to intersperse research that focuses on the journey toward change with research that explores the individual processes of change.