Female Wheelchair Athletes and Changes to Body Image

This paper examined the effect of a psychological intervention program on attitudes to body image of female wheelchair athletes. A single case, multiple-baseline study was employed to examine the presentation of a brief, six session, cognitive behavioural intervention program on six National female wheelchair basketball players over a period of six weeks. Initially the six wheelchair athletes' satisfaction levels were compared to 20 able-bodied basketball players on four measures: the Physical Self-Perception Profile, Multi-Dimensional Body Image Scale, Social Physique Anxiety Questionnaire, and the Body Parts Questionnaire. Results indicated that as a result of the cognitive behavioural intervention program, physical self-perception increased for the wheelchair athletes and for 50% of the wheelchair athletes on the multi-dimensional components of body image, using the non-parametric split-middle technique. Further analysis revealed a significant effect of self-perceived competence across time indicating post-hoc significant differences between baseline data and Week 6 of the intervention program. With reference to caution due to the nature of case study research, it is asserted that this study shows promise for improving various aspects of body image satisfaction by means of a cognitive-behavioural approach and has potential for wheelchair athletes and other special populations.     

The Relative Merits of Different Types of Overall Evaluations of Teaching Effectiveness

An unresolved issue in student evaluations of teaching effectiveness (SETE) literature is what type of overall evaluation of teaching effectiveness should be used in personnel decisions. The objective of this study is to compare the merits of: (a) an overall evaluation made by students, (b) a weighted average overall evaluation with the weights determined by students, (c) a weighted average overall evaluation with the weights being determined by the individual instructors teaching their respective classes, (d) an unweighted average overall evaluation, and (e) a second-order factor that proxies for an overall evaluation. Our results indicate that: (a) all of these overall evaluations were very highly intercorrelated, (b) the unweighted and weighted average overall evaluations measured virtually the same thing, and (c) the second-order factor that served as an overall evaluation was most highly correlated with the other overall evaluations and had the advantage of being most understandable to the faculty.     

On Models and Mickey Mouse

The re‐issue of a nineteenth‐century French Drawing Course is the occasion for an examination of issues of ‘models of good practice’ in current art teaching. These are listed as an expanded set of student‐centred pedagogical paradigms, which embrace the forceful popular imagery of electronic games and comic strips. The formalist adaptations of comic‐strip imagery by artists in the 1970s which challenged traditional divisions between high and popular art, are contrasted with the scathing Marxist analysis by Dorfman and Matterlart, Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic, which still has political resonance. The darkly ambivalent, if much theorised, appropriations of popular imagery by contemporary artists Pettibon and Murakami are adduced as part of an on‐going problematic, where ideological readings are glossed over for fear of jeopardising the liberal consensus in art and education.     

Secure Base Representations in Children With Asthma: Links With Symptoms,Family Asthma Management,and Cytokine Regulation

Children's perceptions of caregivers as a secure base have been linked with socioemotional outcomes, but little is known about connections to physical health. We examined whether secure base representations are associated with children's symptoms, family management strategies, and inflammatory processes in children with asthma. Participants included 308 children (ages 8–17) and one parent. Children completed a blood draw to measure asthma-related immune functions and reported on perceptions of their mothers as a secure base and their asthma symptoms. Dyads completed interviews about asthma management. Analyses revealed that children's secure base perceptions were associated with better family asthma management and lower Type 2 T-helper cell cytokine production. These findings suggest that secure base representations may be protective for children with asthma.     

Choose Your Evidence

Science & Education - Schooling traditionally affords students more experience in learning and practicing procedures than in identifying what a situation calls for. When asked to choose...     

Children born from artificial reproductive technology: Implications for children,parents, and caregivers

One in six couples in the United States suffer infertility. Reproductive technology has been advancing at an astonishing rate. Thousands of children are being born from artificial reproductive technology (ART) that has existed for only a few years. These children are in your classrooms-as teachers do you know who they are? This article summarizes information on infertility treatments and the needs of parents and children, and it provides examples of what child care providers can do to assist in the healthy development of these families.     

Parental guidance of young children’s mathematics and scientific inquiry in games,cooking, and nature activities

ABSTRACT

This study investigated the influence of guidance instruction and type of activity on parental guidance of young children’s mathematics and scientific inquiry during cooking, games, and nature activities at home. Thirty families participated with their preschool-aged child; half were randomly assigned to an inquiry guidance instruction group and encouraged to support children’s reasoning with open-ended prompts and questions. Families participated in activities for one month, some of which they audio-recorded. Families engaged in processes of comparing, predicting, evaluating and concluding more often after inquiry guidance instruction, and incorporated inquiry processes into all activity types. Mathematics was most frequently observed in games and cooking. The results suggest that parents can use inquiry guidance to support preschoolers’ mathematics and scientific inquiry in a variety of activities performed at home. As children engage in inquiry-based learning during co-constructed activities with parents, they develop conceptual understanding of mathematics and scientific inquiry in a positive social context.     

When in Rome,Do as the Romans Do: A Comparative Analysis of Chinese and American New Teachers' Compliance-Gaining Strategies

The exchange of information and of member preferences are two different avenues for social influence during group discussion with potentially differing implications. The goal of the study was to evaluate the impact of three factors proposed to influence the relative proportion of preference and reason statements during group problem-solving discussion. As hypothesized, groups beginning in consensus discussed relatively more preferences than groups beginning in disagreement. Contrary to expectation, judgmental and intellective tasks did not differ in proportions of preference and reason statements. Opposite of prediction, the opportunity to form a pre-discussion preference resulted in a smaller proportion of preference statements than the absence of this opportunity.     

Examining the dimensionality of performance feedback messages: Source and recipient perceptions of influence attempts

Performance feedback is considered an effective means of influencing organizational members. Nevertheless, recipient perceptions regarding such attempts to motivate, change, and/or reinforce certain behaviors and attitudes will determine the eventual response. Often these responses are unexpected and less than desirable. Efforts to better understand the performance feedback construct have produced conceptions emphasizing its complexity and multidimensionality. However, a recent challenge to the usefulness and /or validity of such conceptualizations has prompted the research reported here. This study explores feedback recipients’ and sources’ perceptions of the underlying dimensionality or “hidden structure” of performance feedback messages.     

The preservation of digital information

The emergence of digital libraries and publication is still in its infancy, but is racing towards a maturity which just five years ago would have seemed impossible. The principal problems which must be solved to make digital information a routine part of the information landscape fall into two domains— technological problems and social problems. It is probably not too much to suggest that a solution to most current technological obstacles to this networked world of information can be found in the next five years. Many of these problems have been addressed over the last two years in this column. At the same time the social problems, which are principally institutional and economic—such as, property rights and infrastructure (e.g., responsibility for access over time)—are not so close to resolution and may be harder to solve than those which are technologically based. Similarly, we are just beginning to consider the issues of preservation of digital information. Here the problems reflect not only technical issues but also the social ones which makes them doubly difficult to solve. For libraries and archives to manage digital information successfully over the long-term, these problems must be emphatically solved. If they are not resolved at the outset the legacy of digital information will be enormously more complex than print and the problems of preserving print materials—acid papers and embrittlement—will seem trivial by comparison. The complexity of this domain is reflected in Deanna B. Marcum's column— CBL, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland.