Predicting elite Scottish athletes’ attitudes towards doping: examining the contribution of achievement goals and motivational climate

Understanding athletes’ attitudes to doping continues to be of interest for its potential to contribute to an international anti-doping system. However, little is known about the relationship between elite athletes’ attitudes to drug use and potential explanatory factors, including achievement goals and the motivational climate. In addition, despite specific World Anti-Doping Agency Code relating to team sport athletes, little is known about whether sport type (team or individual) is a risk or protective factor in relation to doping. Elite athletes from Scotland (N = 177) completed a survey examining attitudes to performance-enhancing drug (PED) use, achievement goal orientations and perceived motivational climate. Athletes were generally against doping for performance enhancement. Hierarchical regression analysis revealed that task and ego goals and mastery motivational climate were predictors of attitudes to PED use (F (4, 171) = 15.81, P < .01). Compared with individual athletes, team athletes were significantly lower in attitude to PED use and ego orientation scores and significantly higher in perceptions of a mastery motivational climate (Wilks’ lambda = .76, F = 10.89 (5, 170), P < .01). The study provides insight into how individual and situational factors may act as protective and risk factors in doping in sport.     

Public Emotions and their Personal Consequences: The Nationalizing Affects of the Australian Football League since 1990

This article examines the historical and emotional consequences of the Victorian Football League's decision to ‘go national’. Many saw the emergence of the Australian Football League (AFL) as a threat to the authentic attachments of supporters. As many localized social practices were ‘rationalized’, however, engagement with the League increased across Australia. This article suggests that this success can be explained, in part, by the ways in which public representations of the AFL provided new points of identification for supporters. Drawing on recent work by critical theorists of emotion, I suggest that the already passionate culture of Australian rules supporting has been reworked by the animation of nationalistic attachments and the increasingly intimate representation of players in Australian public life. Ironically, though, these new modes of representation have opened the AFL out to heated debates about the emotions of the players themselves. The contested emergence of the crying AFL player in Australian public life since 2000 is both a product of these shifts and an example of the unruliness of identification and idealization. Attachments to players in the language of national identity, I suggest, are psychically volatile because they are connected to how supporters understand their own identities, lives, and losses.     

Investigating how college students’ task definitions and plans relate to self-regulated learning processing and understanding of a complex science topic

Winne and Hadwin (2008) identified four phases of self-regulated learning (SRL) including defining the task, setting goals and making plans, studying (i.e., learning), and adaptation. The vast majority of SRL research has focused on processing during the third phase, studying. In this study, we developed coding rubrics that allowed us to examine how the results of college students’ processing during phases one and two of Winne and Hadwin’s model, task definitions and plans, affected their SRL processing while learning with a hypermedia learning environment (HLE), and their subsequent academic performance. Our findings showed that, on average, participants gained both factual knowledge and integrated conceptual understanding over the course of learning with the HLE. The quality of participants’ task definitions and plans at pretest, as well as their SRL processing during learning, were related to learning outcomes. On average, participants’ task definitions improved from pretest to posttest. The findings from this study and the associated coding methodologies have implications for educational research and practice.     

Novice teacher growth and personal models of mentoring: choosing compassion over inquiry

This article presents a model of mentoring which may be used as an analytic tool for reflecting on practices commonly employed in supporting beginning teachers. Eighteen mentors and 36 intern teachers whom they mentored were participants in the study. Analysis of data revealed three general patterns of mentoring—responsive, interactive, and directive—and eight dimensions of mentoring related to: (a) emotional availability; (b) levels of engagement; (c) degree of investment in mentoring relationships; and (d) the capacity for criticalness in their mentoring. Variability among mentors in their ways of enacting the three general mentoring patterns was accounted for by their individual preferences in the eight dimensions of mentoring. Cases representing each general pattern of mentoring are presented, and instances reflecting shifts in general mentoring patterns are explored. Implications for teacher educators who select, prepare, support, or serve as mentors are discussed.     

Advertising

Richard W. Pollay, ed. Information Sources in Advertising History (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1979---$22.50)

James H. Leigh and Claude R. Martin Jr., eds. Current Issues and Research in Advertising 1979 (Division of Research, Graduate School of Business Administration, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Mich.---$5.00, paper)

Charles H. Patti's Advertising Management: Cases and Concepts (Columbus, Ohio: Grid, 1978---$14.95)     

Learning by doing? Prospective elementary teachers' developing understandings of scientific inquiry and science teaching and learning

This study examined prospective elementary teachers' learning about scientific inquiry in the context of an innovative life science course. Research questions included: (1) What do prospective elementary teachers learn about scientific inquiry within the context of the course? and (2) In what ways do their experiences engaging in science investigations and teaching inquiry‐oriented science influence prospective elementary teachers' understanding of science and science learning and teaching? Eleven prospective elementary teachers participated in this qualitative, multi‐participant case study. Constant comparative analysis strategies attempted to build abstractions and explanations across participants around the constructs of the study. Findings suggest that engaging in scientific inquiry supported the development more appropriate understandings of science and scientific inquiry, and that prospective teachers became more accepting of approaches to teaching science that encourage children's questions about science phenomena. Implications include careful consideration of learning experiences crafted for prospective elementary teachers to support the development of robust subject matter knowledge.     

MENTORING IN GERONTOLOGY EDUCATION: NEW GRADUATE STUDENT PERSPECTIVES

Involvement in a mentor-student relationship is an invaluable experience for new graduate students. These students frequently have opportunities and experiences provided to them by their mentor that may be otherwise unattainable. Mentoring can help new graduate students develop academically, personally, and professionally. This article describes mentoring in gerontology education from the perspectives and personal experiences of new graduate students in sociology and gerontology. Discussed in this article are types and phases of mentoring, the need for a mentor in gerontology education, selection a mentor, and issues related to mentoring and career advancement.     

Frequency and Efficacy of Talk-Related Tasks in Primary Science

Pupil talk and discussion are seen as having important social and cognitive outcomes. In science classes, pupils’ collaborative talk supports the construction of meaning and helps examine the status of evidence, theory and knowledge. However, pupil interactive talk in groups is rare in science lessons. The research reported is part of a project to increase the amount of pupil-pupil talk in primary schools through a programme of teaching and professional development. Pupils’ self-reports of the frequency and learning efficacies of talk related activities in science lessons were collected before and after a programme of teaching in 24 schools in one of the most socially and educationally deprived areas of England. Findings showed pupils valued talking about their ideas over listening to those of other pupils. Science talk frequency (STF) was closely correlated with science talk efficacy (STE) and both were positively correlated with pupils’ attitudes to school science. Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) of the correlation of STF with STE showed values were independent of gender and ability but that school experience was a significant factor. After the teaching programme and, contrary to expectations, the frequency of talk activities in science lessons appeared to have decreased but varied according to class grades. The degree of correlation between STF and STE was stronger after the teaching in over half of the schools. Schools where STF/STE strengthened most as a result of teaching were those involved in an additional initiative to use modelled talk related to industrial contexts.     

The Habits of Mind Necessary to Generate New Ways of Teaching in a Career of Constant Change

In this paper we explore the philosophy, pedagogy and implementation of the third year course sequence in the M.A. in Educational Technology program at Michigan State University. We discuss how “little-r” revolutions in teaching and learning, i.e., technology facilitated revolutions specific to individual classrooms and contexts, are used to introduce our students to the thinking patterns of designers and innovators. This is accomplished by an overlapping emphasis on learning by design, trans-disciplinary creative cognitive tools, innovative technology, and reflective practice. In this environment, we also transition our students from acting as consumers of educational media to being producers of educational experiences. That is, not only do the students construct new educational media, they consider the aesthetic and affective implications of technology use for teaching and learning. Finally, given the rapid evolution of educational technologies, we support students as they establish a foundational vision for the interplay of education and technology that will serve them into the future, as they, and their learners, adapt tonew and emerging digital environments.