Development and validation of the Perceived Game-Specific Soccer Competence Scale

ABSTRACT

The objective of this study was to create a valid, self-reported, game-specific soccer competence scale. A structural model of perceived competence, performance measures and motivation was tested as the basis for the scale. A total of 1321 soccer players (261 females, 1060 males) ranging from 12 to 15 years (13.4 ± 1.0 years) participated in the study. They completed the Perceived Game-Specific Soccer Competence Scale (PGSSCS), self-assessments of tactical skills and motivation, as well as technical and speed and agility tests. Results of factor analyses, tests of internal consistency and correlations between PGSSCS subscales, performance measures and motivation supported the reliability and validity of the PGSSCS. The scale can be considered a suitable instrument to assess perceived game-specific competence among young soccer players.     

Thinking aloud together: A teacher’s semiotic mediation of a whole-class conversation about percents

How does classroom interaction support students’ apprenticeship into the ways of speaking, writing, and diagramming that constitute the practice of mathematics? We address this problem through an interpretative analysis of a whole-group conversation about alternative ways of solving a problem involving percent discounts that occurred in a sixth grade classroom. This research study draws upon Dewey’s theory of inquiry, Vygotsky’s cultural–historical psychology, Freudenthal’s realistic mathematics education, and Halliday’s systemic functional linguistics (SFL). From Freudenthal, we borrow the notions of mathematizing and guided reinvention—the former notion offers a view of mathematics as an activity of structuring subject matter and the latter one provides insights into the processes whereby mathematizing is learned and taught in the classroom. We glean from Dewey his view of reflective thinking as inquiry and the role that conversations may serve therein. We rely upon Vygotsky’s notions of a verbal thinking plane and a social phase of learning in order to reconsider the function of whole-class interaction in apprenticing students into mathematizing. Finally, SFL provides us with tools for explaining the choices of grammar and vocabulary students and teachers make as they realize meanings in whole-group conversations. Treating the selected whole-class conversation as a text, we focus our analysis on how this text came to mean what it did. Our central questions are as follows: What meanings were realized in the whole-class conversation by teacher and students and how were these meanings realized? How did the teacher’s lexico-grammatical choices guide the students’ choices? In addressing these questions, we advance an interpretation of the conversation as paradigmatic of students and teacher thinking aloud together about percents.     

Reliability of power and velocity variables collected during the traditional and ballistic bench press exercise

This study aimed to examine the reliability of different power and velocity variables during the Smith machine bench press (BP) and bench press throw (BPT) exercises. Twenty-two healthy men conducted four testing sessions after a preliminary BP one-repetition maximum (1RM) test. In a counterbalanced order, participants performed two sessions of BP in one week and two sessions of BPT in another week. Mean propulsive power, peak power, mean propulsive velocity, and peak velocity at each tenth percentile (20–70% of 1RM) were recorded by a linear transducer. The within-participants coefficient of variation (CV) was higher for the load–power relationship compared to the load–velocity relationship in both the BP (5.3% vs. 4.1%; CV ratio = 1.29) and BPT (4.7% vs. 3.4%; CV ratio = 1.38). Mean propulsive variables showed lower reliability than peak variables in both the BP (5.4% vs. 4.0%, CV ratio = 1.35) and BPT (4.8% vs. 3.3%, CV ratio = 1.45). All variables were deemed reliable, with the peak velocity demonstrating the lowest within-participants CV. Based upon these findings, the peak velocity should be chosen for the accurate assessment of BP and BPT performance.     

Learning design and learning analytics in mobile and ubiquitous learning: A systematic review

Mobile and Ubiquitous Learning (m/u-learning) are finding an increasing adoption in education. They are often distinguished by hybrid learning environments that encompass elements of formal and informal learning, in activities that happen in distributed settings (indoors and outdoors), across physical and virtual spaces. Despite their purported benefits, these environments imply additional complexity in the design, monitoring and evaluation of learning activities. The research literature on learning design (LD) and learning analytics (LA) has started to deal with these issues. This paper presents a systematic literature review of LD and LA, in m/u-learning. Apart from providing an overview of the current research in the field, this review elicits elements of common ground between both communities, as shown by the similar learning contexts and complementary research contributions, and based on the research gaps, proposes to: address m/u-learning beyond higher education settings, reinforce the connection between physical and virtual learning spaces, and more systematically align LD and LA processes.     

“Lo que yo en realidad quería hacer”: Rationales of Latina/o DACA Recipients for Pursuing Careers as Teachers

The Urban Review - The decision to rescind Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) will have major repercussions amongst beneficiaries, especially in terms of employment. One of the sectors...     

Towards emotion awareness tools to support emotion and appraisal regulation in academic contexts

Educational technology research and development - This paper studies learners’ emotion awareness in university level academic contexts as a first step to help learners regulate their...     

Job change in later life: A process of marginalization?

Adopting a longitudinal approach, this article examines downward occupational mobility (DOM) later in working life and its effects on job satisfaction and perceptions of working conditions of older workers in Europe. The main aim was to test whether the risk that workers will be negatively impacted and marginalized in the labor market due to demotion into lower quality jobs is offset by benefits. Based on an ordinal logistic regression of merged Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe and English Longitudinal Study of Ageing datasets, the study found a positive significant impact of DOM on overall job satisfaction. Moreover, DOM was associated with a statistically significant reduction in workload pressure, although it did increase physical work demand. This article adds to the literature on marginalization of workers with indications that the lower income and status associated with DOM at older ages may have offsetting benefits.     

Sustainable development as a driver for educational innovation in engineering school: the case of UniLaSalle

ABSTRACT

The potential relationships between innovation and sustainability processes, in engineering education, is neither obvious nor simple, especially when innovation, generally speaking, is promoted regardless of sustainability. We used UniLaSalle (In January 2016, the ‘Institut Polytechnique LaSalle Beauvais’, a French engineering school, merged with another higher education engineering school (ESITPA, Rouen). Both campuses (Beauvais and Rouen) have a common name: UniLaSalle (www.unilasalle.fr). As the interview began during 2015, this article only describes the situation of the Beauvais campus.) as a ‘living Lab’ to identify and analyse the reasons for the integration of innovation and Sustainable Development (SD) in training programmes. The aim is to explore, in a perception and reflective approach, how SD can be understood as a driver for specific innovation attitudes in higher education engineering school. This paper adopts an empirical approach based on a qualitative study, using NVivo 9 software to analyse non-numerical data. Our research suggests that SD can be a structural driver for innovation if it is integrated in a transdisciplinarity approach and not just as a discipline per se.     

Analysis and evaluation of lecturers’ activity in Learning Management Systems: Subjective and objective perceptions

Learning Management Systems (LMS) have become the principal resource for the distribution of educational material and collaboration among lecturers and students in Higher Education. The potential of these platforms does not limit to a simple manager of contents, but they also offer a wide range of tools that support the development of different methodologies according to the learning modality, namely on-campus, blended or online. This work analyzes the use of LMS and the interactions with their different tools from the lecturers’ point of view, in order to detect possible incidents, check the tools’ utility and evaluate their complexity. All these metrics represent valuable information to the Degree Coordinators, if they are presented in a suitable manner, to detect and resolve deficiencies in the methodology. For the analysis of the teaching activity two methods are employed: (1) surveys, to measure the subjective perception of lecturers when using LMS tools; and (2) visual analysis of the real lecturer’s activity through OnlineData, a graphical analytic tool developed as part of our work to monitor LMS tools metrics. The results of both methods show differences among the perceived self-usage and actual usage, especially for the e-learning methodologies