Acute cardiovascular responses to interval exercise: A systematic review and meta-analysis

ABSTRACT

Interval exercise training is increasingly recommended to improve health and fitness; however, it is not known if cardiovascular risk is different from continuous exercise protocols. This systematic review with meta-analyses assessed the effect of a single bout of interval exercise on cardiovascular responses that indicate risk of cardiac fibrillation and infarction compared to continuous exercise. Electronic databases Medline, CINAHL, Embase, Scopus and Cochrane were searched. Key inclusion criteria were: (1) intervals of the same intensity and duration followed by a recovery period and (2) reporting at least one of blood pressure, heart rate variability, arterial stiffness or function. Cochrane Risk of Bias tool and GRADE approach were used. Meta-analyses found that systolic blood pressure responses to interval exercise did not differ from responses to continuous exercise immediately (MD 8 mmHg [95% CI ?32, 47], p = 0.71) or at 60 min following exercise (MD 0 mmHg [95% CI ?2, 1], p = 0.79). However, reductions in diastolic blood pressure and flow-mediated dilation with interval exercise were observed 10–15 min post-exercise. The available evidence indicates that interval exercise does not convey higher cardiovascular risk than continuous exercise. Further investigation is required to establish the safety of interval exercise for clinical populations.     

Reading Instruction for English Learners in the Middle Grades: a Meta-Analysis

This meta-analysis synthesizes the last two decades of experimental and quasi-experimental research on reading instruction across academic contexts (e.g., social studies, science, mathematics, English language arts) for English learners (ELs) in grades 4 through 8, to determine (a) the overall effectiveness of reading instruction for upper elementary and middle school students who are ELs and (b) how the magnitude of the effect varies based on student, instructional, and study characteristics. The analysis included a total of 11 studies with 46 individual effect sizes and yielded a mean effect size of g?=?0.35 across all (i.e., standardized and unstandardized) reading measures, g?=?0.01 across standardized reading measures, and g?=?0.43 across unstandardized reading measures. For all reading, unstandardized reading, all vocabulary, and unstandardized vocabulary measures, results suggest that higher quality studies tended to have smaller effects, and these effects were even more evident for unstandardized measures (i.e., one unit increase in study quality was associated with decreased effects: g?=?0.21, g?=?0.30, g?=?0.24, g?=?0.30, respectively). For all comprehension measures, effects were larger for instruction that included both vocabulary and comprehension (g?=?0.39) than for instruction that focused on vocabulary alone (g?=?0.08). Results suggest the benefit of developing and refining high-impact approaches to reading instruction for ELs that can be delivered across content areas and grades.     

Teaching,learning and ethical dilemmas: lessons from Albert Camus

Over the past half century, Albert Camus's story ‘The Guest’ has attracted a great deal of scholarly attention. ‘The Guest’ focuses on the ethical dilemmas faced by Daru, a school teacher in Algeria, and the two visitors he receives one day: Balducci, a gendarme, and an unnamed Arab prisoner. This paper addresses Camus's text from an educational point of view. The first section outlines the position taken by Daniel Muhlestein, who analyses ‘The Guest’ in the light of Louis Althusser's distinction between Repressive State Apparatuses (RSAs) and Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs). The second section provides an alternative educational reading of the text – one based on the moral complexity of the three principal characters. It is argued that the ethical questions raised by ‘The Guest’ are similar to those faced by many teachers, and that this is a story worthy of continuing educational engagement.     

The Roles of Privacy and Trust in Children's Evaluations and Explanations of Digital Tracking

A “digital revolution” has introduced new privacy violations concerning access to information stored on electronic devices. The present two studies assessed how U.S. children ages 5–17 and adults (N = 416; 55% female; 67% white) evaluated those accessing digital information belonging to someone else, either location data (Study 1) or digital photos (Study 2). The trustworthiness of the tracker (Studies 1 and 2) and the privacy of the information (Study 2) were manipulated. At all ages, evaluations were more negative when the tracker was less trustworthy, and when information was private. However, younger children were substantially more positive overall about digital tracking than older participants. These results, yielding primarily medium-to-large effect sizes, suggest that with age, children increasingly appreciate digital privacy considerations.     

Child abuse fatalities and cases of extreme concern: lessons from reviews

OBJECTIVE: The study was commissioned by the Welsh Office to pull together lessons from all reports on cases involving either a child abuse fatality or serious child protection concern ("Part 8 Reviews") since the introduction of the Children Act 1989. METHOD: Twenty-one such reports were identified and subjected to a content analysis to extract practice issues. RESULTS: From 19 reports (excluding Reviews concerning adult sexual abusers), the authors identify seven practice themes emerging from that analysis which are related to those identified in previous studies and to six previously undertaken British overviews of child abuse fatalities. The themes are assessment, interagency communications, responsibility, number of professionals involved, role of general practitioners, insufficient training for pediatricians/radiologists, and parental choice. CONCLUSIONS: British child protection agencies are attempting to address apparently conflicting policy objectives. On the one hand they are required to ensure the protection of the most vulnerable children within the child protection system. At the same time they are also being encouraged to adopt a "lighter touch" in child protection work. The authors conclude that the seven themes may provide some indicators as to how these conflicting objectives may be reconciled.     

Addressing 21st-century crises through children’s literature: picturebooks as partners for teacher educators

ABSTRACT

Teacher educators might consider using high-quality picturebooks as partners to help teacher candidates understand and navigate today’s painful world realities. From a critical perspective, these books also have the potential to reflect and shape empathy and action in regard to these difficult situations. This piece includes a rationale for using picturebooks to address human crises, findings related to a study of 21st-century representations of crises in picturebooks, and implications for sharing these books as pedagogical partners to engage with teacher candidates. To this end, we conducted a content analysis of recent 21st-century fictional picturebooks depicting human crises. Topics related to refugee status, poverty, homelessness, and hunger were analyzed to reveal common themes across these books related to persistence, courage, caring, and hope. Teacher educators who are eager to address 21st-century disasters, many of which are presented in sensitive and accessible ways in recent touchstone picturebooks, can find a ready and capable partner in these powerful picturebooks to help readers understand and navigate these human crises.     

Central-place foraging by rats on the radial maze: The effects of patch size,food distribution,and travel time

Rats foraged on a four-arm radial maze with one, two, three, and four food items (0.65.g pieces of cheese) placed on different arms (patches) of the maze. In two experiments, the hypothesis was tested that rats should carry food to the center of the maze more often when a patch contains one food item than when it contains multiple food items. Support for this prediction was found when the tendency to carry initial items encountered in patches was compared among the different sized patches. However, a further observation failed to support the hypothesis: Food carrying declined from first to last item encountered in multiple-item patches with clustered food items. Experiment 1 revealed that food carrying was reduced when travel time was increased by barriers placed at arm entrances. Both Experiments 1 and 2 indicated that the tendency for rats to carry food to the center of the radial maze increased as the distance of food encountered on an arm increased from the center. In both experiments, some rats dealt with the problem of multiple items by resorting to multiple-item loading, and some rats carried food items from the end of an arm to a point on the arm nearer the center for consumption.     

The use of morphological knowledge in spelling derived forms by learning-disabled and normal students

Currently popular systems for classification of spelling words or errors emphasize the learning of phoneme-grapheme correspondences and memorization of irregular words, but do not take into account the morphophonemic nature of the English language. This study is based on the premise that knowledge of the morphological rules of derivational morphology is acquired developmentally and is related to the spelling abilities of both normal and learning-disabled (LD) students. It addresses three issues: 1) how the learning of derivational morphology and the spelling of derived words by LD students compares to that of normal students; 2) whether LD students learn derived forms rulefully; and 3) the extent to which LD and normal students use knowledge of relationships between base and derived forms to spell derived words (e.g. “magic” and “magician”). The results showed that LD ninth graders’ knowledge of derivational morphology was equivalent to that of normal sixth graders, following similar patterns of mastery of orthographic and phonological rules, but that their spelling of derived forms was equivalent to that of the fourth graders. Thus, they know more about derivational morphology than they use in spelling. In addition, they were significantly more apt to spell derived words as whole words, without regard for morphemic structure, than even the fourth graders. Nonetheless, most of the LD spelling errors were phonetically acceptable, suggesting that their misspellings cannot be attributed primarily to poor knowledge of phoneme-grapheme correspondences. I am indebted to Laurel Fais and students in the Language Training program at the Forman School in Litchfield, Connecticut, for their participation in this study. The first phase of this research project was sponsored by NICHD grant HD-01994 to Haskins Laboratories and by a Dissertation Fellowship from the University of Connecticut. The final stages of work on this project were completed while I was at American International College.     

Examining the impact of prior academic achievement on moral reasoning development among college students: A growth curve analysis

Moral reasoning is concerned with making decisions regarding the appropriate course of action in particular situations and has been highlighted as a critical factor that may facilitate (or impede) the effectiveness of educational programs in promoting positive outcomes. This study examined the trajectories of moral reasoning as measured by the Defining Issues Test (DIT2) for college students and to what extent there are intra-individual (within student) and inter-individual (between student) changes in moral reasoning during this developmental period. The results suggest that moral reasoning was best represented by a linear increase on the mean level and non-signi?cant variability across students. The relationship between moral reasoning and students’ prior academic attainment was also examined.     

An examination of Chinese preservice and inservice early childhood teachers’ perspectives on the importance and feasibility of the implementation of key characteristics of quality inclusion

The Chinese Preschool Inclusion Survey, which is an adaptation of Odom et al. [2004. ‘Preschool inclusion in the United States: A review of research from an ecological systems perspective’. Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs 4 (1): 17–149] a list of the features of quality preschools, was given to 234 preservice teachers and 307 inservice teachers in a large Chinese province so as to examine whether early childhood education (ECE) teachers agree on the key characteristics of high quality inclusion in terms of importance and feasibility. One significant finding of the study is that both preservice and inservice teachers highly ranked the importance of the key characteristics of high quality inclusion in ECE settings, yet both ECE teachers ranked the feasibility of implementing the key characteristics lower. Additionally, two factors that influenced preservice teachers’ perceived importance and feasibility of inclusion were years of study and courses related to special education, and five factors that influenced inservice teachers’ perceived inclusion beliefs were bianzhi, certification, years of teaching, opportunities for professional development and degree. Teacher education reform is called upon to affect change in terms of creating positive beliefs regarding high quality inclusion services and implementation of effective practices in stronger, collaborative support systems for Chinese children with special needs and their families. Implications for policy, professional development, and teacher education reform are provided.