A Game for Christmas? The Argylls,Saxons and Football on the Western Front,December 1914

Historians know that any mention of football and World War I will involve discussions of the Christmas truces of 1914 and the mythical football match between British and German troops. Many British soldiers denied that any truce had occurred let alone a football match. However, while there is indisputable evidence of truces, triangulating proof of football has been elusive. In this paper, a case study of the British 2/Argylls and the German 133/Saxons is developed. The underlying reasons behind the truce are discussed and why some combatants, in the short break from trying to kill each other, probably played football, even though certainly not as the formal match of popular imagination. It is argued that the truce was a result of unique circumstances and was not an overwhelmingly inspirational moment for the majority of troops involved; they all returned to the fighting. Most participants on both sides of the truce probably regarded it as an unexpected holiday and some availed themselves of the opportunity to play their favourite game. The paper concludes by examining recent commemorative events of Christmas 1914 and how they may have contributed to the myth of ‘The Football Match’.     

Understanding student engagement in online learning environments: the role of reflexivity

It is important to develop understanding of what underpins the engagement of students in online learning environments. This article reports on a multiple case study that explored student engagement in a set of postgraduate degrees offered on a fully online basis. The study was based on a theorization of student engagement as the exercise of intentional human action, .or agency. It identified ways in which tasks and social relations in the online learning environments triggered reflexivity on the part of students, with ‘reflexivity’ understood to mean the ordinary mental capacity to consider oneself in relation to one’s social setting. A different relationship between reflexivity and student engagement was in view than that identified by Margaret Archer with regard to reflexivity and social mobility. Rather than displaying one dominant mode of reflexivity, the students considered in the study were seen to draw on a range of modes. The engagement of these students in their learning was also seen to depend on the manner in which they engaged in reflexivity centred on the pursuit of shared goals, that is in collective reflexivity. Specific practices were seen to trigger constructive forms of collective reflexivity, while fractured and restricted forms of collective reflexivity were linked to student disengagement in relation to joint tasks. As well as adverting to the importance of collective reflexivity to learning, the study highlights scope for dissonance between the modes of reflexivity and practices favoured by an online learning environment and the reflexive profile of the student.     

An investigation of the five-factor model of personality and coping behaviour in sport

Coping strategies are important for performance in sport and individual differences may contribute to the coping strategies adopted by athletes. In this study, we explored the main and interactive effects of the big five personality dimensions on sport-related coping and compared personality profiles of discrete groups of athletes. Altogether, 253 athletes (mean age 21.1 years, s=3.7) completed the NEO-FFI (Costa & McCrae, 1992), and the Coping Function Questionnaire for Sport (Kowalski & Crocker, 2001). Results showed that extraverted athletes, who were also emotionally stable and open to new experiences (a three-way interaction effect), reported a greater use of problem-focused coping strategies. Conscientious athletes (main effect), and athletes displaying high levels of extraversion, openness, and agreeableness (a three-way interaction effect), reported a greater use of emotion-focused coping strategies, and athletes with low levels of openness, or high levels of neuroticism (main effects), reported a greater use of avoidance coping strategies. Different personality characteristics were observed between higher-level and lower-level athletes, between men and women athletes, and between individual and team sport athletes. These findings suggest that the five-factor model of personality can help distinguish various levels of athletic involvement and can help identify the coping strategies athletes are likely to adopt during participation.