How to win a bid for major sporting events? A stakeholder analysis of the 2018 Olympic Winter Games French bid

While understanding the planning and hosting of major sporting events is a popular research area, less is known about the bid process despite the potential economic and political spinoffs. Some studies offer criteria for successful bids and even consider the stakeholder network as a key factor. Considering the importance of the stakeholder network, we delve deeper into this area. Using the power, legitimacy and urgency framework by Mitchell et al. (1997), we examine the 2018 Olympic Winter Games’ French national bid competition (four candidacies) to analyse the stakeholder relationships, identify their salience and then determine stakeholder-based bid key success factors. Archival material and 28 interviews were analysed. We notably found that to increase the probability of winning, no actor alone should have a definitive status, the sport stakeholder group should have at least the expectant status, and no strategic stakeholder should have the latent status. We also find that a three-level analysis of the stakeholder network allows for a greater understanding of the bid governance and process dynamics at play, which help to elucidate a successful bid. We contribute to the literature by (a) showing how stakeholder salience analysis can assist in understanding the bid network governance structure; (b) demonstrating that stakeholder salience depends on the level which is analysed (local, between bids, and with the event owner), the stage (deciding to bid, national bid competition, national bid win/international competition), and the case/context; and (c) determining stakeholder-based key bid success factors such as who should and should not be more salient in the bid process.     

Outside the library: Early career researchers and use of alternative information sources in pandemic times

Presents findings from a study into the attitudes and practices of pandemic-era early career researchers (ECRs) in regard to obtaining access to the formally published scholarly literature, which focused on alternative providers, notably ResearchGate and Sci-Hub. The study is a part of the Harbingers project that has been exploring the work lives and scholarly communication practices of ECRs in pre-pandemic times and during the pandemic, and utilizes data from two rounds of interviews with around 170 ECRs from the sciences and social sciences in eight countries. Findings show that alternative providers, as represented by ResearchGate and Sci-Hub, have become established and appear to be gaining ground. However, there are considerable country- and discipline-associated differences. ECRs' country-specific level of usage of the alternative providers is partly traceable to the adequacy of library provisions, although there are other factors at play in shaping ECRs' attitudes and practices, most notably convenience and time saving, as well as the fact that these platforms have become embedded in the scholarly dashboard. There is a dearth of evidence of the impact of the pandemic on ECRs' ways of obtaining scholarly papers.     

Experiences Situating Mathematical Problem Solving at the Core of Early Childhood Classrooms

Our goal in this article is to discuss the importance of problems in early childhood education for the child’s development and engagement with the mathematics existing in childhood culture. Our assumption is that an important task for young children’s education is to create a democratic and critical environment, in which multiplicity of perspectives is celebrated, along with diversity of concepts and practices, with movement between imaginary and real worlds. In light of this, the goal of this article is to defend a perspective for curriculum and for the role of the mathematics educator, promoting the learning of mathematics through problem solving in early childhood years. In order to discuss and illustrate this perspective we describe the pedagogical practices of two teachers who teach 4- and 5-years-olds, who create for their students an environment rich in problem solving and investigations. In both classrooms, all children individually succeeded in sharing their unique solutions and new knowledge constructed as a result of their inquiries. The experience provides evidence that problem solving affords children the opportunity to raise conjectures, to discuss possibilities and to draw conclusions, even if partial ones, that are then vetted by the group as the authors share their solutions. In this way, the work with problem solving nurtures cooperative learning and promotes the exploration of a diversity of ideas.     

How can students’ academic performance in statistics be improved? Testing the influence of social and temporal-self comparison feedback in a web-based training environment

The aim of this study was to examine how social or temporal-self comparison feedback, delivered in real-time in a web-based training environment, could influence the academic performance of students in a statistics examination. First-year psychology students were given the opportunity to train for a statistics examination during a semester by doing online exercises in a web-based training environment. Once connected, students received in real-time either social comparison feedback (their score was compared to the mean score of all first-year students) or temporal-self comparison feedback (their score was compared, week by week, with their own previous score). The fact that students were free to connect to the web-based training environment heightened self-regulation differences such as academic procrastination, which was considered as a moderating variable in this study. Because academic performance was measured, the students’ background in mathematics and statistics was also controlled. Irrespective of the students’ background, the results reveal a positive influence of social comparison feedback on statistics exam performance, but only among students who did not delay doing exercises in the web-based training environment. By contrast, temporal-self comparison feedback did not have any effect on performance. Some recommendations for optimizing the efficacy of web-based training environments can be proposed, taking into account both social comparison feedback and academic procrastination.     

The Role of Auditory and Visual Speech in Word Learning at 18 Months and in Adulthood

Visual information influences speech perception in both infants and adults. It is still unknown whether lexical representations are multisensory. To address this question, we exposed 18‐month‐old infants (n = 32) and adults (n = 32) to new word–object pairings: Participants either heard the acoustic form of the words or saw the talking face in silence. They were then tested on recognition in the same or the other modality. Both 18‐month‐old infants and adults learned the lexical mappings when the words were presented auditorily and recognized the mapping at test when the word was presented in either modality, but only adults learned new words in a visual‐only presentation. These results suggest developmental changes in the sensory format of lexical representations.