The Social Background of Ireland’s Pre-World War I Association Football Clubs,Players and Administrators: The Case of South and West Ulster

This paper examines the development of association football in the South and West Ulster counties of Fermanagh, Tyrone, Cavan, and Monaghan in the pre-World War One era against the backdrop of the sporting ‘revolution’ and the political and social climate in Ireland at that time. While the Irish Football Association was founded in Belfast in 1880 and the game’s early growth in Ireland was centred in East Ulster, South and West Ulster were areas which were rather dislocated from the hearth of soccer in the province’s largest city, where professional structures were in place by 1894 and where senior and junior association football clubs were strongest. The origins of a number of clubs are examined and it will be shown that despite a lack of major industry and a professional structure, by the early 1900s, the game of soccer had established a strong role within society in many local communities in the area. An examination of the social backgrounds of players and administrators illustrates that leagues and cups were played on a cross-community basis in many areas and that patronage, as well as player participation and administration, came from nationalists as well as unionists.     

The effects of signaling the US in backward conditioning: A shift from excitatory to inhibitory learning

The associative effects of “backward” US-CS pairings were compared when the pairing occasions were either consistently preceded by a well-trained CS+ or were unannounced. The investigation employed a conditioned emotional response procedure with rats, under conditions in which all subjects received the same schedule of shock USs, some signaled and others not, and the back-ward CS was arranged to follow either the former or the latter, in separate groups. The major finding was that although the backward CS became excitatory when it followed unsignaled USs, it became inhibitory when it followed signaled USs. This outcome, which is in line with prior findings of Wagner and Terry (1975), is in accordance with a “sometimes-opponent-process” model proposed by Wagner (1981). It is contrary to data reported by Fowler, Kleiman, and Lysle (1984) that may have resulted from a confounding of the different circumstances of backward conditioning with differences in the predictability of the US in the experimental context.     

Measurement Invariance in Confirmatory Factor Analysis: An Illustration Using IQ Test Performance of Minorities

Measurement invariance with respect to groups is an essential aspect of the fair use of scores of intelligence tests and other psychological measurements. It is widely believed that equal factor loadings are sufficient to establish measurement invariance in confirmatory factor analysis. Here, it is shown why establishing measurement invariance with confirmatory factor analysis requires a statistical test of the equality over groups of measurement intercepts. Without this essential test, measurement bias may be overlooked. A re-analysis of a study by Te Nijenhuis, Tolboom, Resing, and Bleichrodt (2004) on ethnic differences on the RAKIT IQ test illustrates that ignoring intercept differences may lead to the conclusion that bias of IQ tests with respect to minorities is small, while in reality bias is quite severe.     

Disablist bullying in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland: an investigation of student teachers’ knowledge,experience and confidence

This study explored the knowledge, experience and confidence of student teachers from Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in relation to disablist bullying. Adopting a mixed methodological approach of four focus groups (N = 18) and a pencil-and-paper questionnaire (N = 257), the study explored the students knowledge, experience and confidence in relation to disablist bullying. Results highlight that none of the participants, in either jurisdiction, had received guidance in relation to disablist bullying as part of their Initial Teacher Education (ITE). Results highlight the need for practical, solution-focused and evidence-based input at the level of ITE and Continuing Professional Development in both jurisdictions.     

The undergraduate-postgraduate-faculty triad: unique functions and tensions associated with undergraduate research experiences at research universities

We present an exploratory study of how undergraduates' involvement in research influences postgraduates (i.e., graduate and postdoctoral researchers) and faculty. We used a qualitative approach to examine the relationships among undergraduates, postgraduates, and the faculty head in a research group. In this group, undergraduates viewed postgraduates as more approachable than the faculty head both literally and figuratively. Mentorship by postgraduates presented unique challenges for undergraduates, including unrealistic expectations and varying abilities to mentor. The postgraduates and faculty head concurred that undergraduates contributed to the group's success and served as a source of frustration. Postgraduates appreciated the opportunity to observe multiple approaches to mentoring as they saw the faculty head and other postgraduates interact with undergraduates. The faculty head viewed undergraduate research as important for propagating the research community and for gaining insights into undergraduates and their postgraduate mentors. These results highlight how the involvement of undergraduates and postgraduates in research can limit and enhance the research experiences of members of the undergraduate-postgraduate-faculty triad. A number of tensions emerge that we hypothesize are intrinsic to undergraduate research experiences at research universities. Future studies can focus on determining the generalizability of these findings to other groups and disciplines.     

Video databases: An emerging tool in business education

A video database of business–leader interviews has been implemented in the assignment work of students in a Bachelor of Business Administration program at a primarily-undergraduate liberal arts university. This action research study was designed to determine the most suitable assignment work to associate with the database in a Business Strategy course and to analyze how the nature of learning was impacted by this technology intervention. Three different assignment approaches to accessing the online database were considered with students. Based primarily on quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews and focus groups, the study determined that this sample of students (N?=?65) preferred self-contained case study approaches that accessed regular interaction with the instructor and provided textual materials to supplement the database content.