Embodied cognition as grounding for situatedness and context in mathematics education

In this paper we analyze, from the perspective of 'Embodied Cognition', why learning and cognition are situated and context-dependent. We argue that the nature of situated learning and cognition cannot be fully understood by focusing only on social, cultural and contextual factors. These factors are themselves further situated and made comprehensible by the shared biology and fundamental bodily experiences of human beings. Thus cognition itself is embodied, and the bodily-grounded nature of cognition provides a foundation for social situatedness, entails a reconceptualization of cognition and mathematics itself, and has important consequences for mathematics education. After framing some theoretical notions of embodied cognition in the perspective of modern cognitive science, we analyze a case study – continuity of functions. We use conceptual metaphor theory to show how embodied cognition, while providing grounding for situatedness, also gives fruitful results in analyzing the cognitive difficulties underlying the understanding of continuity. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Adult Learning Experiences from an Aquarium Visit: The role of Social Interactions in Family Groups

Abstract How and what adults learn in the context of a family visit to an aquarium is a valuable and important question to ask, given the significance of this demographic to institutions such as these. Based on a larger empirical work,¹ this paper reports on the nature and character of adult learning within a family group context while visiting the Vancouver Aquarium Marine Science Centre (Canada), and the longitudinal effects of such experience in the weeks following the visit. In this study a multiple or collective instrumental case study approach was employed to examine the learning experiences of the adult members of 13 family groups; this approach demonstrates that adults visiting the aquarium as part of a family group are active social learners and not merely facilitators of the experience for younger visitors or caregivers. Our outcomes also indicate that the adult members of the participant family groups learned in a multiplicity of domains including the cognitive, the social, and the affective, as a result of their visit to the Vancouver Aquarium. In addition, we discuss the longitudinal impacts of the aquarium visit and provide valuable insights as to the relevance of these experiences in visitors' everyday lives.     

SSTS: A syntactic tool for pattern search on time series

Nowadays, data scientists are capable of manipulating and extracting complex information from time series data, given the current diversity of tools at their disposal. However, the plethora of tools that target data exploration and pattern search may require an extensive amount of time to develop methods that correspond to the data scientist's reasoning, in order to solve their queries. The development of new methods, tightly related with the reasoning and visual analysis of time series data, is of great relevance to improving complexity and productivity of pattern and query search tasks. In this work, we propose a novel tool, capable of exploring time series data for pattern and query search tasks in a set of 3 symbolic steps: Pre-Processing, Symbolic Connotation and Search. The framework is called SSTS (Symbolic Search in Time Series) and uses regular expression queries to search the desired patterns in a symbolic representation of the signal. By adopting a set of symbolic methods, this approach has the purpose of increasing the expressiveness in solving standard pattern and query tasks, enabling the creation of queries more closely related to the reasoning and visual analysis of the signal. We demonstrate the tool's effectiveness by presenting 9 examples with several types of queries on time series. The SSTS queries were compared with standard code developed in Python, in terms of cognitive effort, vocabulary required, code length, volume, interpretation and difficulty metrics based on the Halstead complexity measures. The results demonstrate that this methodology is a valid approach and delivers a new abstraction layer on data analysis of time series.     

Superintendent’s leadership: the cultural aspects of the role enactment

This qualitative study seeks to create a better understanding of the work of school superintendents. This study was conducted using ethnographic techniques as a way to describe the practice of a Latino superintendent in a borderland community in south Texas. Guiding questions for this study were: What goes on in the workday life of a superintendent? and how does the superintendent enact his role as superintendent? Field study for this qualitative inquiry occurred over a period of seven months. Data for this study, including transgressive data, were collected primarily through participant observations, semi-structured ethnographic interviews, from artefacts and journal notes.     

Velocity observer design for the consensus in delayed robot networks

The consensus problem for networks of multiple agents consists in reaching an agreement between certain coordinates of interest using a distributed controller. It may be desirable that all the agents find a consensus at a given desired leader coordinate (Leader Follower Consensus Problem LFCP), or it may be only necessary that they agree at a certain coordinates value (Leaderless Consensus Problem LCP). Consensus has many practical applications in robot networks systems, where the interconnection of the agents may present variable time delays, hence rendering the stability analysis and control design more complex. Another problem that may arise is the possible lack of velocity measurements. In this work, a Proportional plus damping injection (P + d) controller together with a linear velocity observer is introduced. Our approach is able to solve both the LFCP and the LCP in networks of robots modeled as undirected weighted graphs with unknown asymmetric (bounded) variable time delays. Local (semi global) asymptotic stability is proven and simulation results are provided to test the performance of the proposed scheme.     

Exploring the perspectives of physically active and inactive adolescents: how does physical education influence their lifestyles?

Based on a socio-ecological framework for physical education (PE), this study explored and analysed the perspectives of physically active and inactive adolescent boys and girls with different socioeconomic status (SES), regarding the meanings that PE had on their physical activity (PA) lifestyles throughout childhood and adolescence. An interpretative and qualitative design was adopted and operationalised through an individual two-hours in-depth interview. Thematic analysis identified five main themes that distinguish active from inactive adolescents: ‘Early experiences of PE at primary school’; ‘PE experiences in middle and secondary school’; ‘Friendly, professional and pedagogue. That’s what I want from my PE teacher’; ‘Friends in PE and PA’; ‘Active lifestyles? Are schools and PE ready for making a difference?…’. Regardless of the lifestyle, girls revealed more PE negative experiences, related to uninteresting and competitive activities, groups’ constitution and logistic factors. SES played a major role on their PA and PE experiences, with low SES adolescents having limited opportunities inclusively within the primary school PE context. This study provides evidence for the importance of promoting positive PE and PA experiences in early years. Based on adolescents’ voices, several recommendations are discussed that can be considered for improving PE professionals’ effectiveness in promoting active lifestyles.     

Sodium bicarbonate ingestion increases glycolytic contribution and improves performance during simulated taekwondo combat

Purpose: To investigate the effect of sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO₃) on performance and estimated energy system contribution during simulated taekwondo combat. Methods: Nine taekwondo athletes completed two experimental sessions separated by at least 48?h. Athletes consumed 300?mg/kg body mass of NaHCO₃ or placebo (CaCO₃) 90?min before the combat simulation (three rounds of 2 min separated by 1 min passive recovery), in a double-blind, randomized, repeated-measures crossover design. All simulated combat was filmed to quantify the time spent fighting in each round. Lactate concentration [La^?] and rating of perceived exertion (RPE) were measured before and after each round, whereas heart rate (HR) and the estimated contribution of the oxidative (W_OXI), ATP (adenosine triphosphate)-phosphocreatine (PCr) (W_PCR), and glycolytic (W_{[ La^? ]}) systems were calculated during the combat simulation. Results: [La^?] increased significantly after NaHCO₃ ingestion, when compared with the placebo condition (+14%, P?=?0.04, d?=?3.70). NaHCO₃ ingestion resulted in greater estimated glycolytic energy contribution in the first round when compared with the placebo condition (+31%, P?=?0.01, d?=?3.48). Total attack time was significantly greater after NaHCO₃ when compared with placebo (+13%, P?=?0.05, d?=?1.15). W_OXI, W_PCR, VO₂, HR and RPE were not different between conditions (P?>?0.05). Conclusion: NaHCO₃ ingestion was able to increase the contribution of glycolytic metabolism and, therefore, improve performance during simulated taekwondo combat.     

Classifying documents with link-based bibliometric measures

Automatic document classification can be used to organize documents in a digital library, construct on-line directories, improve the precision of web searching, or help the interactions between user and search engines. In this paper we explore how linkage information inherent to different document collections can be used to enhance the effectiveness of classification algorithms. We have experimented with three link-based bibliometric measures, co-citation, bibliographic coupling and Amsler, on three different document collections: a digital library of computer science papers, a web directory and an on-line encyclopedia. Results show that both hyperlink and citation information can be used to learn reliable and effective classifiers based on a kNN classifier. In one of the test collections used, we obtained improvements of up to 69.8% of macro-averaged F ₁ over the traditional text-based kNN classifier, considered as the baseline measure in our experiments. We also present alternative ways of combining bibliometric based classifiers with text based classifiers. Finally, we conducted studies to analyze the situation in which the bibliometric-based classifiers failed and show that in such cases it is hard to reach consensus regarding the correct classes, even for human judges.     

Effects of replica running shoes upon external forces and muscle activity during running

Twelve participants ran (9 km · h(-1)) to test two types of running shoes: replica and original shoes. Ground reaction force, plantar pressure and electromyographic activity were recorded. The shoes were tested randomly and on different days. Comparisons between the two experimental conditions were made by analysis of variance (ANOVA) test (P ≤ 0.05). The time to first peak, loading rate of the first peak and impulse of the first 75 ms of stance were significantly different between the shoes (P ≤ 0.05), revealing an increase of impact forces for the replica shoes. The peak plantar pressure values were significantly higher (P ≤ 0.05) when wearing replica shoes. During running, the contact area was significantly smaller (P ≤ 0.05) for the replica shoe. The electromyographic activity of the analysed muscles did not show changes between the two shoes in running. These findings suggest that the use of replica running shoes can increase the external load applied to the human body, but may not change the muscle activity pattern during locomotion. This new mechanical situation may increase the risk of injuries in these movements.     

A Failed Project in Turkey's Sports History: The Law on Physical Education of 1938

The aim of this article is to analyse the Law on Physical Education of 1938 to demonstrate the state interventions in Turkey's sport history. The Law was claimed to be the first one in the world which made physical education (PE) and sports obligatory to its citizens and was created on the verge of the Second World War. It was prepared by Carl Diem under the direction of Atatürk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey. According to the Law, male citizens aged between 12 and 45 years, and female citizens between 12 and 30 years would be required to perform PE and sports regularly. For the execution of the Law, a General Directorate of Physical Education was founded. Many grand plans such as creating sports complexes, and training teachers and staff were made without taking the socio-economic conditions of the country into consideration. Ultimately, due to the effects of the economic and political conditions of the nation and the wider world, the Law failed to fulfil the expectations of its creators. Two government-supported journals named Beden Terbiyesi ve Spor and Ülkü are examined here as primary sources to see how the Law was enforced and how they reflected the Law and the period.