Students' Knowledge About Environmental Matters and Their Belief in Their Own Action Possibilities–A Danish Study

Abstract

Drawing chiefly from Paul Shepard's (1982) Nature and Madness and David Abram's (1996) The Spell of the Sensuous, this essay draws attention to two underlying foundations of educational thought: the process of human social development and the emergence of language and literacy. A reading of Shepard and Abram implies that the meaning of human social development and the meaning of literacy must be recovered from our shared human heritage in which human beings developed a sense of interconnection with nonhuman others. This perspective suggests many challenges to environmental educators including (a) the need to take a more philosophical (and less instrumental) approach to our work, (b) the need for a working theory of development and literacy in education that takes nonhuman otherness seriously, (c) the need to advocate for more regular and extended experiences in the natural world in order to nurture relationship with otherness, (d) the need to reinvent “accountability” in education, (e) and the need to develop in all learners, including ourselves, a sense of at-homeness.     

Dialectical Features of Students’ Argumentation: A Critical Review of Argumentation Studies in Science Education

This paper explores the challenges of using the Toulmin model to analyze students’ dialogical argumentation. The paper presents a theoretical exposition of what is involved in an empirical study of real dialogic argumentation. Dialogic argumentation embodies dialectical features — i.e. the features that are operative when students collaboratively manage disagreement by providing arguments and engaging critically with the arguments provided by others. The paper argues that while dialectical features cannot readily be understood from a Toulminian perspective, it appears that an investigation of them is a prerequisite for conducting Toulminian analysis. This claim is substantiated by a detailed review of five of the ten most significant papers on students’ argumentation in science education. This leads to the surprising notion that empirical studies in the argumentation strand — even those studies that have employed non-dialectical frameworks such as the Toulmin model — have implicitly struggled to come to terms with the dialectical features of students’ discourse. The paper finally explores how some scholars have worked to attend directly to these dialectical features; and it presents five key issues that need to be addressed in a continued scholarly discussion.     

Self-reported physical activity within and outside the neighborhood: Criterion-related validity of the Neighborhood Physical Activity Questionnaire in German older adults

The Neighborhood Physical Activity Questionnaire allows to assess physical activity within and outside the neighborhood. Study objectives were to examine the criterion-related validity and health/functioning associations of Neighborhood Physical Activity Questionnaire-derived physical activity in German older adults. A total of 107 adults aged ≥60 years completed the Neighborhood Physical Activity Questionnaire and Short Form 12 Health Survey. A subsample of 58 participants wore piezoelectric pedometers for 7 consecutive days. Rank correlation coefficients (ρ) along with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were computed for the criterion-related validity and health/functioning associations of single Neighborhood Physical Activity Questionnaire modules and total physical activity. Criterion-related validity was moderate (ρ ≤ .60) for total physical activity, total walking, and neighborhood walking, but low (ρ ≤ .40) for walking outside the neighborhood. Health/functioning associations were moderate for recreation walking and low for total physical activity, total walking, and walking within as well as outside the neighborhood. The study provides low-to-moderate validity evidence of Neighborhood Physical Activity Questionnaire-derived physical activity in older adults.     

Movement pattern and physiological response in recreational small-sided football – effect of number of players with a fixed pitch size

Recreational soccer is an effective health-promoting activity, but it is unclear how different game formats influence internal and external load. Thus, to be able to advise how to maximise the outcome of recreational football, we examined movement pattern and physiological response in 11 untrained men (32.6 ± 6.7 yrs, 23.3 ± 4.9 fat%, 43.4 ± 5.3 ml·min^?1·kg^?1) during three football sessions comprising 4 × 12 min of 3v3, 5v5 or 7v7 with a constant pitch size of 20 × 40 m. Movement pattern, heart rate (HR), blood lactate and RPE were measured during and after the 12-min periods. Greater (P < 0.05) total distance and high-speed distance was covered during 3v3 than 5v5 (14 and 30%) and 7v7 (15 and 75%). Mean HR was higher in 3v3 (85.7 ± 5.7%HRmax) and 5v5 (84.2 ± 5.1%HRmax) than in 7v7 (80.7 ± 4.6%HRmax, P < 0.05) and percentage time >90%HR was higher in 3v3 (43 ± 18%, P < 0.05) than in 5v5 (28 ± 21%) and 7v7 (18 ± 14%). Blood lactate was higher in 3v3 (7.4 ± 2.7 mmol·l^?1) than in 7v7 (4.5 ± 2.2 mmol·l^?1, P < 0.001) but not in 5v5 (6.1 ± 2.1 mmol·l^?1, P = 0.061). RPE was higher in 3v3 (6.7 ± 2.3, P < 0.01) than in 5v5 (5.2 ± 2.2) and 7v7 (4.3 ± 2.3). In conclusion, higher external and internal load was found with fewer players, when the pitch size is fixed.     

More Effective Consolidation of Episodic Long‐Term Memory in Children Than Adults—Unrelated to Sleep

Abilities to encode and remember events in their spatiotemporal context (episodic memory) rely on brain regions that mature late during childhood and are supported by sleep. We compared the temporal dynamics of episodic memory formation and the role of sleep in this process between 62 children (8–12 years) and 57 adults (18–37 years). Subjects recalled “what–where–when” memories after a short 1‐hr retention interval or after a long 10.5‐hr interval containing either nocturnal sleep or daytime wakefulness. Although children showed diminished recall of episodes after 1 hr, possibly resulting from inferior encoding, unlike adults, they showed no further decrease in recall after 10.5 hr. In both age groups, episodic memory benefitted from sleep. However, children's more effective offline retention was unrelated to sleep.     

Stress-related psychological factors for back pain among athletes: Important topic with scarce evidence

Health issues represent a frequent problem for athletes, as this particular demographic is repeatedly confronted with physically and psychologically stressful situations. Back pain (BP) materialises as comparatively common health problem being regarded as functionally limiting and psychologically straining burden for athletes. According to research conducted on athletes with BP, biomechanical and physiological mechanisms emerge as influential, whereas stress-related psychological factors appear to be neglected. For athletic injuries, the essential impact of psychological processes on injury occurrence and return from injury has already been corroborated. Hence, the aim of this literature review is to: (1) introduce a conceptual differentiation between injuries and BP; (2) summarise the results obtained regarding stress-related psychological aspects for injuries; and (3) connect the injury research to the state-of-the-art evidence regarding stress-related factors for BP among athletes. A distinction between injuries and BP could be established based on previous definitions, despite the fact that a considerable overlap between both concepts prevails. Injuries can be attributed to a physical origin, whereas BP frequently lacks this physical criterion. For BP, our enquiry yielded four studies including psychological measures of stress – with two studies specifically examining the association between BP and psychological stress among athletes longitudinally. Abundant findings from the general population support the importance of considering psychological and specifically stress-related factors in BP prevention and rehabilitation, but evidence related to the athletic field remains elusive. Further scientific investigations with a wider methodological approach are needed to deepen the knowledge about the crucial relationship between psychological stress, BP, and athletes.     

Understanding Risk: Implications for Tracking High‐Risk Infants and Making Early Service Delivery Decisions

THIS PAPER EXAMINES current conceptualizations of risk and discusses ways in which identification and tracking of infants and children at‐risk might be accomplished. Models that have been developed for identifying and tracking children at‐risk are reviewed and the concepts of vulnerability and resiliency, as they relate to risk, are considered. Implications of the ways in which we define risk and develop tracking programs are considered.