Masculinity Politics, Myths and Boys' Schooling: A Review Essay

This essay reviews two recently published American books about masculinity politics—Michael Kimmel's pro-feminist Manhood in America and his edited collection The Politics of Manhood —in order to comment critically on the current debate underway in various parts of the world on 'boys' and their schooling which sees them as the 'new victims' of the educational process.     

Connecting with the horizon: developing teachers’ appreciation of mathematical structure

A professional learning program for teachers of junior secondary mathematics regarding the content and pedagogy of senior secondary mathematics is the context for this study of teachers’ mathematical and pedagogical knowledge. The analysis of teachers’ reflections on their learning explored teachers’ understanding of mathematical connections and their appreciation of mathematical structure. The findings indicate that a professional learning program about senior secondary mathematics can enable practicing teachers to deepen and broaden their knowledge for teaching junior secondary mathematics and develop their practice to support their students’ present and future learning of mathematics. Further research is needed about professional learning approaches and tasks that may enable teachers to imbed and develop awareness of structure in their practice.     

Practicum Placement in a Counseling-Employment Agency for Disadvantaged Youth

In order to emphasize the development of skills in helping the culturally disadvantaged, graduate students were given practicum placement in a Department of Labor-financed agency which gave counseling and employment training to disadvantaged youth. Students attended staff meetings, interviewed staff members concerning the work they performed, and discussed client contacts with caseworkers, in addition to interviewing agency clients. Increased awareness of problems, broadened conceptualizations, and expansion of interpersonal skills were seen as advantages of the practicum. Limitations included some lack of goal clarity and inefficiency of time use in dealing with this clientele.     

Let's Talk About Maths: The Role of Observed “Maths‐Talk” and Maths Provisions in Preschoolers' Numeracy

Developmental cognitive neuroscience highlights the importance of interactions between children and their environment. As young children spend increasing time in childcare, it is key to investigate the impact of “maths‐talk” and maths provisions in preschools. Qualitative insights from early educators indicate a greater bias toward counting activities than would be expected given the Early Years curriculum. In addition, we quantified the observed breadth of preschool practitioners' maths language (e.g., place‐value language), setting‐based maths provisions (e.g., quality of maths‐related activities), and their relation with children's early numeracy skills. In settings with greater practitioners' breadth of maths language, children display greater cardinality skills although our data call for the further investigation of parental socioeconomic status and education. We conclude with a discussion on the need to operationalize children's maths learning environments as diversely as possible. Enriching practitioners' skill sets may be an effective and needed way of improving early maths outcomes.     

Sports’ disciplinary legacy and the challenge of ‘coaching differently’

Be empowering. Be athlete-centered. Be autonomy supportive. These are three related topics currently being promoted by sport psychologists and sport pedagogists in an effort to recognize athletes’ unique qualities and developmental differences and make coaching more holistic and coaches more considerate. This has led us to ask, how likely are such initiatives to lead to coaches putting their athletes at the center of the coaching process given that coaches’ practices have largely been formed through relations of power that subordinate and objectify athletes’ bodies through the regular application of a range of disciplinary techniques and instruments [e.g. Barker-Ruchti, N., &; Tinning, R. (2010). Foucault in leotards: Corporeal discipline in women's artistic gymnastics. Sociology of Sport Journal, 27, 229–250; Heikkala, J. (1993). Discipline and excel: Techniques of the self and body and the logic of competing. Sociology of Sport Journal, 10, 397–412; Gearity, B., &; Mills, J. P. (2012). Discipline and punish in the weight room. Sports Coaching Review, 1, 124–134]? In other words, to try to develop athlete-centered coaches capable of coaching in ways that will empower their athletes without also problematizing the discursive formation of coaches’ practices concerns us [Denison, J., &; Mills, J. P. (2014). Planning for distance running: Coaching with Foucault. Sports Coaching Review, 3, 1–16]. Put differently: how can athlete empowerment initiatives be anything more than rhetoric within a disciplinary framework that normalizes maximum coach control? It is this question that we intend to explore in this paper. More specifically, as Foucauldians, we will argue that coaching with greater consideration for athletes’ unique qualities and developmental differences needs to entail coaching in a less disciplinary way and with an awareness and appreciation of the many unseen effects that disciplinary power can have on coaches’ practices and athletes’ bodies.     

Idea generation in biomedical engineering courses using Design Heuristics

ABSTRACT

With increasing demand for improved medical equipment and healthcare, next-generation biomedical engineers need strong design skills. Equipping biomedical engineering students with tools for idea generation and development can increase student design success. Design Heuristics are an ideation tool developed through empirical studies of product designs. While identified in the mechanical engineering space, Design Heuristics may be applicable in biomedical engineering design. In our study, we implemented a Design Heuristics session during upper-level undergraduate and first-year graduate biomedical engineering design courses. We examined the applicability of Design Heuristics within individual and team concept generation contexts. The findings demonstrated that biomedical engineering students were able to use Design Heuristics to generate multiple concepts, and that initial concepts produced using Design Heuristics were carried over into final team design. The results support the applicability of Design Heuristics to student idea generation in biomedical engineering design.