The Importance of Quality for the Accommodation of Amateur Photographs in the Professional News Media

Amateur photographs must fulfill specific standards if they are to be used in professional news media. These standards include news value, credibility, ethics and taste, as well as the technical and aesthetic quality of images. The research presented in this article explores the value of poor-quality photographs for the news industry, and the view that they can be good enough for certain news content. At the same time, this article reveals strong reservations regarding the incorporation of amateur photographs. The article asks whether such findings manifest necessary quality standards, or whether they constitute claims to defend the position of the professional news media. The data for this article were collected in 2010/2011 using observation, interviews and textual analysis.     

Gender equality in German universities: vernacularising the battle for the best brains

We examine how global pressures for competitiveness and gender equality have merged into a discourse of ‘inclusive excellence’ in the twenty-first century and shaped three recent German higher education programmes. After placing these programmes in the larger discourse about gender inequalities, we focus on how they adapt current global concerns about both being ‘the best’ and increasing ‘gender equality’ in locally specific ways, a process called vernacularisation. German equality advocates used ‘meeting international standards’ as leverage, drew on self-governance norms among universities, used formal gender plans as mechanisms to direct change, and set up competition to legitimate intervention. This specific incremental policy path for increasing women's status in German universities also mobilised the national funding agency and local gender equality officers as key actors, and placed particular emphasis on family friendliness as the expression of organisational commitment to gender equality.     

School-based prevention: effects on obesity and physical performance after 4 years

Juvenile obesity is increasing worldwide. Preventive strategies are warranted. The school-based Children's Health Interventional Trial (the CHILT Project) combines health education and physical activity for children. The effect on obesity and physical performance was studied after four years in 12 primary schools compared with five control schools. Anthropometric data were recorded. Physical performance was measured by a coordination test for children (balancing backwards, one-legged obstacle jumping, lateral jumping, sideways movements) and a 6-min run (endurance). No difference in the prevalence and incidence of overweight and obesity was found between the intervention and control schools before and after the intervention. Remission of overweight was higher in the intervention schools (23.2 vs. 19.2%), but not significant. An increase in coordination related to lateral jumping and balancing backwards was apparent in the intervention schools (30.6, s = 10.8 vs. 26.1, s = 10.8, P = 0.005; 21.8, s = 11.8 vs. 19.4, s = 11.7, P = 0.007), and the increase in endurance performance tended to be higher in intervention schools (100.8, s = 122.7 vs. 92.8, s = 126.0, P = 0.055), adjusted for age, sex, baseline test result, and body mass index at final examination. Therefore, preventive intervention in primary school offers the possibility to improve physical performance in children. The prevalence and incidence of obesity were not affected.     

Vicarious Birth Experiences and Childbirth Fear: Does It Matter How Young Canadian Women Learn About Birth?

In our secondary analysis of a cross-sectional survey, we explored predictors of childbirth fear for young women (n = 2,676). Young women whose attitudes toward pregnancy and birth were shaped by the media were 1.5 times more likely to report childbirth fear. Three factors that were associated with reduced fear of birth were women’s confidence in reproductive knowledge, witnessing a birth, and learning about pregnancy and birth through friends. Offering age-appropriate birth education during primary and secondary education, as an alternative to mass-mediated information about birth, can be evaluated as an approach to reduce young women’s childbirth fear.     

Effekte eines Tanz- und eines Gesundheitssporttrainings auf die graue Hirnsubstanz gesunder Senioren

Due to the demographic change and an aging society more research is nowadays dedicated to geriatric problems and questions. Aging is associated with a loss of grey matter volume in the brain and often leads to neurodegenerative diseases. Physical and cognitive activities have been shown to improve brain plasticity whereby the combination of both seems to be most effective. We hypothesized that dancing could be an ideal intervention because it combines exercise, cognitive, coordination and emotional features. In this study 26 healthy senior citizens (63–80 years old) were randomized into a dancing group (n = 14) or a physical exercise group (n = 12). After 18 months the dancing group showed increased grey matter volumes, especially in the frontal and temporal regions including the gyrus parahippocampalis and the precentral gyrus. The physical exercise group showed grey matter volume increases only in subcortical regions. Our results suggest that dancing is more effective in inducing neuroplasticity in regions normally affected by aging than classical repetitive fitness training. We assume this to be related to the multimodal nature of dancing, which combines exercise, cognitive and coordination features. These findings demonstrate for the first time in a longitudinal study the positive effects of dancing programs for the prevention of volume loss of grey matter and neurodegenerative diseases in the elderly.     

English for Specific Purposes and Academic Literacies: eclecticism in academic writing pedagogy

Academic Literacies and English for Specific Purposes perspectives on the teaching of academic writing tend to be positioned as dichotomous and ideologically incompatible. Nonetheless, recent studies have called for the integration of these two perspectives in the design of writing programmes in order to meet the needs of students in the increasingly diverse and shifting landscape of academia. The aim of the present paper is to reflect on how this theoretical integration could be put into practice. Drawing on the design of a research-based writing workshop for postgraduate anthropology students, we argue that rather than a ‘hybrid’ model of writing pedagogy, a theoretically grounded but eclectic approach is needed in order to respond to students’ personal, local, and disciplinary contexts.     

Evaluating the effects of repeated reading and continuous reading using a standardized dosage of words read

Repeated reading (RR) is a common fluency intervention, but recent studies comparing RR to continuous reading (CR; i.e., wide reading) found no significant differences in effects. This prompts the question of whether the mechanism that improves skills is repeatedly reading portions of connected text, or simply reading connected text. The current study examined the differential effectiveness of RR and CR for increasing oral reading fluency rate (ORF) and comprehension of 40 students in second and third grades, randomly assigned to receive the RR or CR intervention. Students in both conditions received a standardized amount of practice (dosage) in the form of number of words read during each intervention session. All but two participants increased their ORF and there were no significant differences between groups on posttest ORF or broad comprehension. Moreover, students with the highest pretest scores made slightly more growth regardless of condition. Students in the RR group demonstrated significantly higher comprehension of practiced passages and students in the CR condition reported significantly higher levels of intervention acceptability. Implications for reading fluency intervention research and practice are discussed.     

Predicting Students’ Skills in the Context of Scientific Inquiry with Cognitive,Motivational, and Sociodemographic Variables

Research on predictors of achievement in science is often targeted on more traditional content-based assessments and single student characteristics. At the same time, the development of skills in the field of scientific inquiry constitutes a focal point of interest for science education. Against this background, the purpose of this study was to investigate to which extent multiple student characteristics contribute to skills of scientific inquiry. Based on a theoretical framework describing nine epistemological acts, we constructed and administered a multiple-choice test that assesses these skills in lower and upper secondary school level (n?=?780). The test items contained problem-solving situations that occur during chemical investigations in school and had to be solved by choosing an appropriate inquiry procedure. We collected further data on 12 cognitive, motivational, and sociodemographic variables such as conceptual knowledge, enjoyment of chemistry, or language spoken at home. Plausible values were drawn to quantify students’ inquiry skills. The results show that students’ characteristics predict their inquiry skills to a large extent (55%), whereas 9 out of 12 variables contribute significantly on a multivariate level. The influence of sociodemographic traits such as gender or the social background becomes non-significant after controlling for cognitive and motivational variables. Furthermore, the performance advance of students from upper secondary school level can be explained by controlling for cognitive covariates. We discuss our findings with regard to curricular aspects and raise the question whether the inquiry skills can be considered as an autonomous trait in science education research.