Foot strike patterns of recreational and sub-elite runners in a long-distance road race

Although the biomechanical properties of the various types of running foot strike (rearfoot, midfoot, and forefoot) have been studied extensively in the laboratory, only a few studies have attempted to quantify the frequency of running foot strike variants among runners in competitive road races. We classified the left and right foot strike patterns of 936 distance runners, most of whom would be considered of recreational or sub-elite ability, at the 10 km point of a half-marathon/marathon road race. We classified 88.9% of runners at the 10 km point as rearfoot strikers, 3.4% as midfoot strikers, 1.8% as forefoot strikers, and 5.9% of runners exhibited discrete foot strike asymmetry. Rearfoot striking was more common among our sample of mostly recreational distance runners than has been previously reported for samples of faster runners. We also compared foot strike patterns of 286 individual marathon runners between the 10 km and 32 km race locations and observed increased frequency of rearfoot striking at 32 km. A large percentage of runners switched from midfoot and forefoot foot strikes at 10 km to rearfoot strikes at 32 km. The frequency of discrete foot strike asymmetry declined from the 10 km to the 32 km location. Among marathon runners, we found no significant relationship between foot strike patterns and race times.     

Leveraging Librarian Liaison Expertise in a New Consultancy Role

This paper presents a case study of an advisory role that librarians successfully developed with faculty editors to increase the visibility and readership of an open access scholarly publication. The study represents an example of how expertise among liaison librarians and other library service professionals can be leveraged in new consultancy roles in support of evolving library service models. It also depicts local application of a hybrid model for librarianship that combines the functional specialist and subject librarian liaison roles in implementing advisory activities and recommendations. The liaison librarians successfully used their knowledge of scholarly communications and applied innovative bibliometric analysis to help enhance the discoverability and user experience of an online journal publication. The librarians made specific recommendations for optimizing journal website content organization, search functionality, metadata standards and marketing opportunities that were subsequently implemented by the editors and platform managers. The faculty editor places a high value on these recommendations, and the librarian advisory role continues to develop. Our study also outlines many of the essential considerations that scholar-editors and librarian advisors can use to help implement open access scholarly publishing projects successfully.     

Young People's Images of Old Age in Chile: Exploratory Research

According to gerontological thought, an important part of senior citizens' disabilities are products of their social exclusion rather than factors associated with their physical or mental health. How these exclusions come about was the purpose of the research reported in this article. The study was conducted among 682 Chilean university students using a semantic differential test. A generalized negative image on old age was observed. The conclusion is that social images of old age affect the well-being of present and future senior citizens.     

Effects of a 1-day environmental education intervention on environmental attitudes and connectedness with nature

Besides cognitive learning effects, short-term environmental education (EE) is often regarded as ineffective in intervening with participants' environmental attitudes and behaviour. However, in Germany, school classes often participate in such 1-day EE programmes because they better match the school curriculum in contrast to longer (residential) programmes. We therefore monitored a 1-day outreach EE programme on global climate change to reveal whether environmental attitudes and/or connectedness with nature of tenth graders are affected. Students from German high schools (college preparatory secondary school level, ‘Gymnasium’) (N?=?114) from age 14 to 19 participated in the programme (treatment group). It consisted of two student-centred learning units on the topic of climate change. Additionally, we chose a control group of students who did not participate in the programme. To measure students' environmental attitudes and connectedness with nature, we administered the Two Major Environmental Values (2-MEV) and the Inclusion of Nature in Self scale in a pre-, post- and retention test design. The pre-test was administered 1 week before, the post-test directly after and the retention test 4 to 6 weeks after programme participation. Analyses revealed a positive long-term effect only for utilitarian values (one of the two major environmental factors of 2-MEV) which decreased significantly. Therefore, depending on the programme's content, short-term EE programmes indeed may have an influence on participants' environmental attitudes.     

Content-Related Knowledge of Biology Teachers from Secondary Schools: Structure and learning opportunities

Teachers’ content-related knowledge is a key factor influencing the learning progress of students. Different models of content-related knowledge have been proposed by educational researchers; most of them take into account three categories: content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and curricular knowledge. As there is no consensus about the empirical separability (i.e. empirical structure) of content-related knowledge yet, a total of 134 biology teachers from secondary schools completed three tests which were to capture each of the three categories of content-related knowledge. The empirical structure of content-related knowledge was analyzed by Rasch analysis, which suggests content-related knowledge to be composed of (1) content knowledge, (2) pedagogical content knowledge, and (3) curricular knowledge. Pedagogical content knowledge and curricular knowledge are highly related (r_latent?=?.70). The latent correlations between content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge (r_latent?=?.48)—and curricular knowledge, respectively (r_latent?=?.35)—are moderate to low (all ps?<?.001). Beyond the empirical structure of content-related knowledge, different learning opportunities for teachers were investigated with regard to their relationship to content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and curricular knowledge acquisition. Our results show that an in-depth training in teacher education, professional development, and teacher self-study are positively related to particular categories of content-related knowledge. Furthermore, our results indicate that teaching experience is negatively related to curricular knowledge, compared to no significant relationship with content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge.     

The influence of situational emotions on the intention for sustainable consumer behaviour in a student-centred intervention

Within the curriculum guidelines for Bavaria, we designed a hands-on educational programme for teaching sustainability with regard to agriculture, food and consumerism, partly implemented on a farm as an out-of-school learning setting. The participants were fifth graders (N?=?176). The research followed a quasi-experimental design and used the subscale consumerism of the General Ecological Behaviour Scale and situational emotions (interest, well-being, boredom) to focus data collection activities. The study monitored the students’ knowledge increase and their Inclusion of Nature in Self (INS) scores as possible influencing factors on environmental behaviour. After participation in the programme, while we found that the students intended to consume in more environmentally friendlier ways, this intention did not persistent over a seven-week time span, nor did it relate to the INS or knowledge scores. There was, however, a high correlation with positive situational emotions like interest (r?=?.46, p???.001) and well-being (r?=?.39, p???.001), and a negative correlation with boredom (r?=??.42, p???.001). We conclude that the ‘effect’ of the programme immediately measured after the intervention was strongly linked to situational (short-term) emotions, and should be considered in educational planning as well as the evaluation of sustainability teaching and learning.     

Prediction of academic performance prior to intersections within a multi-tiered school system

Diagnostic information is a centrepiece of educational decision making. Far-reaching decisions like placements within multi-tiered school systems may have a huge long-term impact on the achieved level of education. Therefore, such decisions should be substantiated or complemented by objective and prognostically valid information. To this end, we assessed academic self-concept, reading comprehension, orthographic abilities, and geometric and problem-solving skills prior to the selection of subsequent school forms in Grade 4 in order to model the pedagogical decisions of the teachers (Lenhard, Hasselhorn, & Schneider, 2011 Lenhard, W., Hasselhorn, M., & Schneider, W. (2011). Kombiniertes Leistungsinventar zur allgemeinen Schulleistung und für Schullaufbahnempfehlungen in der vierten Klassen (KLASSE 4) [Combined performance inventory for the determination of school performancy and schooling recommendations in Grade 4]. Göttingen, Germany: Hogrefe. [Google Scholar]). The article describes the longitudinal results of an independent sample of 76 students and how well their academic performance was predicted 18?months later by the psychometric approach compared to teacher recommendations. Standardized tests had a high prognostic validity and predicted the choice of higher educational levels in subsequent school years. Teachers were more successful in determining grouping decisions for students with lower educational attainments.     

Young Children''s Understanding of the Role That Sensory Experiences Play in Knowledge Acquisition

3 studies investigated whether young children understand that the acquisition of certain types of knowledge depends on the modality of the sensory experience involved. 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children were exposed to pairs of objects that either looked the same but felt different, or that felt the same but looked different. In Study 1, 36 children were asked to state, when one of these objects was hidden inside a toy tunnel, whether they would need to see the object or feel it in order to determine its identity. In Study 2, 48 children were asked to state which of 2 puppets knew that an object hidden inside a tunnel possessed a given visual or tactile property, when one puppet was looking at the object and the other was feeling it. In Study 3, 72 children were asked, in a scenario similar to Study 2, to state for each puppet whether he could tell, just by looking or by feeling, that the hidden object possessed a certain visual or tactile property. Children were also asked what was the best way to find out whether a given object possessed a certain visual or tactile property. Results of all 3 studies suggest that an appreciation of the different types of knowledge our senses can provide (i.e., modality-specific knowledge) develops between the ages of 3 and 5. The results are discussed in relation to young children's developing understanding of the role that informational access plays in knowledge acquisition.     

Distribution of the sensible within the Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action: maintaining patterns of inclusion and exclusion?

ABSTRACT

This paper revisits The Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action through Jacques Rancière’s writing about the distribution of the sensible. It questions the supports provided within the Maltese state education system and asks readers to ‘think again’ by asking what has been left out. The Salamanca Statement is seen as reflected within the Maltese education system, both of which, however, position people and services in particular spaces. As systems, they have a totalising quality, which disables thought or any possibility outside that which is given. They also make assumptions about equality that is achieved, whereas Rancière writes about equality as a starting point and a presupposition. This is what gives democracy and politics a possibility, two values that are at the heart of inclusion.     

Effective strategies for mental and written arithmetic calculation from the third to the fifth grade

The strategies used to solve mental and written multidigit arithmetical addition, subtraction, multiplication and division were observed in 200 third, fourth and fifth grade children. A strategy was classified as effective if it resulted in the correct solution at least 75% of the time. For mental addition and subtraction, primitive strategies such as counting on fingers and counting on (mental counting from a specific point), and the more sophisticated strategy 1010 (solution of the calculation problem using tens and units separately) were more effective than the strategies learned at school. In written addition, subtraction and multiplication there was a shift from the CAR+to the CAR- strategy (tabulating with, or without, a carried amount) from the third to the later grades. Results show that typical strategies taught at school progressively substitute every other strategy both in mental and written calculation, but without reaching the criterion of effectiveness. The implications for maths curricula are discussed.