Assessing the limitations of the Banister model in monitoring training

The aim of this study was to carry out a statistical analysis of the Banister model to verify how useful it is in monitoring the training programmes of elite swimmers. The accuracy, the ill-conditioning and the stability of this model were thus investigated. The training loads of nine elite swimmers, measured over one season, were related to performances with the Banister model. First, to assess accuracy, the 95% bootstrap confidence interval (95% CI) of parameter estimates and modelled performances were calculated. Second, to study ill-conditioning, the correlation matrix of parameter estimates was computed. Finally, to analyse stability, iterative computation was performed with the same data but minus one performance, chosen at random. Performances were related to training loads for all participants (R(2) = 0.79 +/- 0.13, P < 0.05) and the estimation procedure seemed to be stable. Nevertheless, the range of 95% CI values of the most useful parameters for monitoring training was wide: t(a) = 38 (17, 59), t(f) = 19 (6, 32), t(n) = 19 (7, 35), t(g) = 43 (25, 61). Furthermore, some parameters were highly correlated, making their interpretation worthless. We suggest possible ways to deal with these problems and review alternative methods to model the training-performance relationships.     

Occupational Memory Practice and Memory Beliefs with Age

This study examined effects of intensive memory use during one's profession on metamemory beliefs. Fifty-one actors and 60 controls aged from 20 to 73 years were compared with the Metamemory Inventory in Adulthood. Both intensive job-related memory practice and younger age were associated with stronger memory self-efficacy beliefs. Irrespective of age, actors reported a higher stability of their memory with time and a higher controllability. No significant effect was found on metamemory knowledge. These findings show the relevance of the dissociation between metamemory knowledge and metamemory beliefs. Both memory practicing during occupation and age appear to influence only metamemory beliefs.     

Education traditionnelle au Bénin,la place du sacré dans les rites initiatiques

The author shows how education among traditional communities in Benin is an initiatory process in which the acquisition of practical knowledge is closely interwoven with religion and custom. The stages of an individual's development may be marked by rites of passage, tests of prowess and endurance, and the acquisition of appropriate forms of knowledge such as the learning of tales and the oral traditions of the community. The aim is to prepare the individual to take his or her full place in society. The author also describes certain particular forms of education, such as the training of a shaman, which takes many years and involves learning complex divinatory processes as well as mastering traditional medicine.     

Towards strategic practices in basic research

Drawing upon the literature of business management, the authors develop an approach to the problems of managing the large research laboratories which have now become more common but which have to exist in the changed climate of the 1980s. The types of managerial problems which arise are classified, the politics of their management analysed and the form in which these problems manifest themselves is discussed. It is concluded that those who have charge of large laboratories must be determined to implement what the authors describe as strategic practice if the laboratories are to function efficiently.     

Mapping the typology of transition systems in a liberal market economy: the case of Canada

This research explores links between tertiary education institutions and between tertiary education and the labour market as determinants of provincial and national transition patterns in Canada. The study consists of a provincial analysis that maps the typology of transition systems across Canada’s devolved federated tertiary education structure. The results show that, nationally: the links between education and work are relatively loose aside from regulated occupations; there is an emphasis on general education; and qualifications are used as a screen for entry to the labour market. However, while Canada can be broadly understood as a liberal market economy, there is provincial diversity within the nation; and there are varying logics for the development of skill, deployment of labour, and relations between institutions. The institutional and policy frameworks, structure of jobs, and formation of skill in Canada’s largest provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec reveal diverse characteristics of transition systems. However, despite internal differentiation in the value of vocational education, variations at the provincial level have not been enough to shift the federal pattern as a whole. Instead, in Canada vocational education is generally stigmatised and viewed as signalling low ability and motivation.     

Educational television in the Ivory Coast

After two years of study and research, the Ivory Coast has drawn up a far-reaching, ambitious programme for televised education. The aim is to ensure that all children receive primary schooling, to achieve this in fifteen years, and to use the national network of schools equipped with television to provide education for children and adults alike all over the country. This is an ambitious project, calling for an exceptional effort on the part of a national community to raise, once and for all, the educational level of an entire population and to cut through the tangle of obstacles which developing countries encounter in their struggle against ignorance. This undertaking is a good example of a country and its government becoming aware of the close relationship between its economic development and its educational system. It reveals the essential links between the community and the school and the results of their interaction on a nation-wide scale and, of course, at the local level. It is an example, too, of the modernization of an educational system which is based alike on genuine national cultural values and on the use of the most up-to-date teaching methods and techniques—two principles which combine quite naturally, as I shall try to show here. now chief technical adviser to the Ivory Coast educational television programme.     

How do teachers’ approaches to geometric work relate to geometry students’ learning difficulties?

Various studies suggest that French students (grades 7 to 10) may solve geometric problems within a paradigmatic framework that differs from that assumed by teachers, a situation prone to misunderstandings. In this paper, we study the extent to which secondary school teachers recognise the conflicting paradigms and how they handle the geometric work conducted, in sometimes unintended ways, by their students. This is done by analysing teachers’ reactions to specific answers students offered to the Charlotte and Marie problem, an “ambiguous” problem with various solutions depending on the paradigm adopted. As a result of the study, we found that, beyond similarities due to a shared mathematical background, the way secondary schoolteachers handle students’ answers varies with their conceptions of geometric work. Implications are drawn regarding the teaching of geometry and the training of teachers.