The developmental and professional activities of female international soccer players from five high-performing nations

ABSTRACT

We study the developmental and professional activities engaged in by 86 female adult soccer players from the senior national teams of Australia, Canada, England, Sweden, and the United States of America. Players completed the Participation History Questionnaire (PHQ) to elicit the amount and type of activities engaged in across their developmental and professional years, including milestones, soccer-specific activity and engagement in other sport activity. Greater specialisation than diversification characterised their childhood developmental activities, including all players starting in soccer in childhood and accumulating more hours in soccer activity than other sports during this period. However, interindividual variation further characterised these childhood activities, with a proportion of players diversifying into other sports and/or soccer play to a greater or lesser degree during childhood when compared to the other players. The amount of coach-led soccer practice increased for all players across their development culminating in an average of 15–16 h/wk across a 40-week season in early adulthood. In contrast, the amount of engagement in other sports and soccer peer-led play varied between players but generally decreased across adolescence to negligible amounts in late adolescence. Findings are commensurate with the deliberate practice framework and early engagement.     

The Empirical Attitude, Material Practice and Design Activities

This article is an argument about something that is both important and severely underemphasized in most current science curricula. The empirical attitude, fundamental to science since Galileo, is a habit of mind that motivates an active search for feedback on our ideas from the material world. Although more simple views of science manifest the empirical attitude through relation of theories to data, we describe more recent philosophical scholarship that characterizes the relation of theories to data through phenomena (regularities in nature’s behavior that can be identified and characterized through data). This view highlights the centrality of material practice, in which scientists design data collection events to inform phenomena. Thus manifestation of the empirical attitude in science is characterized as a design endeavor that involves considerably sophisticated coordination among theories, phenomena, data, and data collection events. If we want students to learn how to participate in such work, curricula should break down these complex processes into more basic components at least at the outset. Our recommendation is to begin with design activities that can focus on the empirical attitude initially without the complex coordination with phenomena and data. We present an example of such an activity and share results that suggest design activities can target the empirical attitude and be built upon in curricula to gradually include coordination with phenomena and theories.     

Examining the potential of critical and Kaupapa Māori approaches to leading education reform in New Zealand’s English-medium secondary schools

This paper discusses expectations, policies and practices that currently underpin education within the New Zealand context. It acknowledges the ongoing failure of this policy framework to positively influence reform for Indigenous Māori students in regular, state-funded schools and highlights the need for extensive change in the positioning and expectations of educators if Māori learners are to realize their true potential. The paper then considers leadership models to reimagine and lead a transformative educational reform that aims to include the aspirations and contributions of all members of the school’s communities, especially those who have historically been marginalized. Finally it considers the implications of this model for international application.     

A comparison of learning and motivation among high school students

The academic performance of minority high school students, particularly in urban inner-city settings, is of great interest to educators and individuals concerned with the academic development of these students. It is widely recognized that in order to positively influence academic achievement related factors such as learning and study behavior, motivation, attitudes, self-concept, and other pertinent psychosocial characteristics should also be targeted for positive change. The present study compared 20 sophomore students who participated in a special program and 128 of their nonprogram peers on achievement and related measures. The program at a target high school was structured to positively impact achievement, as well as related student behavior and attributes. Significant differences were found on achievement, attendance, learning and study behavior and skills, self-concept, and other pertinent psychosocial attributes.     

Preliminary comparison of the performance of the National Library of Medicine's systematic review publication type and the sensitive clinical queries filter for systematic reviews in PubMed

Objective:The National Library of Medicine (NLM) inaugurated a “publication type” concept to facilitate searches for systematic reviews (SRs). On the other hand, clinical queries (CQs) are validated search strategies designed to retrieve scientifically sound, clinically relevant original and review articles from biomedical literature databases. We compared the retrieval performance of the SR publication type (SR[pt]) against the most sensitive CQ for systematic review articles (CQrs) in PubMed.Methods:We ran date-limited searches of SR[pt] and CQrs to compare the relative yield of articles and SRs, focusing on the differences in retrieval of SRs by SR[pt] but not CQrs (SR[pt] NOT CQrs) and CQrs NOT SR[pt]. Random samples of articles retrieved in each of these comparisons were examined for SRs until a consistent pattern became evident.Results:For SR[pt] NOT CQrs, the yield was relatively low in quantity but rich in quality, with 79% of the articles being SRs. For CQrs NOT SR[pt], the yield was high in quantity but low in quality, with only 8% being SRs. For CQrs AND SR[pt], the quality was highest, with 92% being SRs.Conclusions:We found that SR[pt] had high precision and specificity for SRs but low recall (sensitivity), whereas CQrs had much higher recall. SR[pt] OR CQrs added valid SRs to the CQrs yield at low cost (i.e., added few non-SRs). For searches that are intended to be exhaustive for SRs, SR[pt] can be added to existing sensitive search filters.     

Pursuing a Multidimensional View of Transfer

Training researchers and practitioners have typically focused their attention on one type of transfer, the transfer of tasks that require trainees to learn and apply a prescribed standard procedure. Further, researchers and practitioners have examined this type of transfer in situations where supervisors hold trainees accountable for applying the trained knowledge and skill, Performance professionals have developed theoretical frameworks, training principles, and training guidelines to improve transfer based on this conception of transfer. In contrast, this paper presents a multidimensional perspective to training transfer. One dimension concerns task adaptability-a continuum from relatively closed tasks, where task steps are highly prescribed, to relatively open tasks, where the task steps can be adapted to varying circumstances of the job. The other dimension concerns worker autonomy-a continuum from heavily supervised to highly independent work. Based on this expanded perspective of transfer, for each combination of variable, we offer principles for effective transfer as well as specific problems which must be solved to achieve the best results. We also provide suggestions for evaluating training success and derive research propositions that deserve attention.