Where the two shall meet: Exploring the relationship between teacher professional culture and student learning culture

This study focuses on the understudied connection between teachers’ and students’ perceptions of school culture. Utilizing a longitudinal sample of approximately 130,000 students and 9000 teachers in 225 New York City traditional public schools, we investigate how professional culture among teachers intersects with students’ collective emotional engagement—that is, the extent students together view the school environment as trusting and respectful, both between teachers and students and among students (i.e., student learning culture). We find that when the teachers report a strong collaborative culture, believe they have adequate materials, and feel physically safe, students report a stronger and more positive learning culture. Our results thus fill a gap in prior research on school change that has looked at either teacher or student perceptions of school culture but not the two together. Here, because our results demonstrate such a positive relationship between the collective views of teachers and the collective views of students regarding the environment in which these groups work, they suggest new avenues for research to examine how such subcultures within a school may, together, act as critical and interdependent levers for school change.     

What users want: Assessing government information preferences to drive information services

Access to government information has changed dramatically in the past 20 years. There are many indicators of information use, but it is challenging for service institutions to gain a current and comprehensive view of the research practices and preferences of their users. Information stakeholders must seek out current data to gauge the potential success of new initiatives and policies in order to meet user needs. To that end, a user study was conducted on the University of Montana campus in spring of 2006. The survey was sent to a random, stratified sample of the campus population. The instrument included questions on frequency of government information use, methods of locating and learning about government documents, awareness of the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP), and service and format preferences. The results show that the majority of researchers are using government information at least quarterly and that they most often use general search engines to find it. Respondents indicate a strong interest in alerting services, tutorials, virtual reference, and topic-oriented assistance. Although some respondents prefer printed materials for specific types of information, users generally want to find and access government information online. The results offer current data for program planning, collection development, and information policy creation.     

Delivering the Discourse—Urban Adolescents' Perceptions of Physical Education

abstract

This study investigates how National Curriculum policy for England and Wales has been translated into practice as perceived by the pupils who are its recipients. Results suggest that pupil entitlement as enshrined in the National Curriculum rationale is at best being provided at the level of access to activity and pupil experiences are differentiated sharply by activity, by gender and by school. The paper suggests that the physical education National Curriculum already advantages certain pupil groups rather than others, and that changes in the discourse of physical education, exemplified by the texts of the latest official publications, will, if translated into practice, militate further against access to a curriculum relevant to all pupils.     

A review of models of vertical, leg, and knee stiffness in adults for running, jumping or hopping tasks

Abstract The 'stiffness' concept originates from Hooke's law which states that the force required to deform an object is related to a spring constant and the distance that object is deformed. Research into stiffness in the human body is undergoing unprecedented popularity; possibly because stiffness has been associated with sporting performance and some lower limb injuries. However, some inconsistencies surrounding stiffness measurement exists bringing into question the integrity of some research related to stiffness. The aim of this study was to review literature which describes how vertical, leg and knee stiffness has been measured in adult populations while running, jumping or hopping. A search of the entire MEDLINE, PubMed and SPORTDiscus databases and an iterative reference check was performed. Sixty-seven articles were retrieved; 21 measured vertical stiffness, 51 measured leg stiffness, and 22 measured knee stiffness. Thus, some studies measured several 'types' of stiffness. Vertical stiffness was typically the quotient of ground reaction force and centre of mass displacement. For leg stiffness it was and change in leg length, and for the knee it was the quotient of knee joint moments and change in joint angle. Sample size issues and measurement techniques were identified as limitations to current research.