Home advantage and the debate about competitive balance in professional sports leagues

A recurrent theme in sports economics is the extent to which overall league attendances will be raised by measures, such as revenue sharing, which aim to improve competitive balance. This debate has ignored the phenomenon of home advantage, which may, however, be important to the extent that, if all teams had equal talent, all matches may then be weighted heavily in favour of the home team. We present an analysis of the relationship between attendance and match-level uncertainty in the English Football League. A simulation from our model indicates that equality of playing talent would in fact lower aggregate attendance. This result is explained by the loss of prospectively the most uncertain games, where weak teams have home advantage over strong teams.     

The impact of cumulative change in early adolescence

This article examines the impact of experiencing several major life transitions simultaneously in early adolescence. For many children, entry into the new life period of adolescence is marked by the transition from a relatively intimate elementary school setting into a more complex, impersonal junior high school environment. This major shift in organizational context is often accompanied by dramatic changes in biology and social definition. We hypothesized that transitions will be easier for children to cope with if the various adolescent changes come into focus at different stages rather than simultaneously. In a longitudinal study conducted in a large Midwestern city, schoolchildren were followed from sixth into seventh grade in 2 different types of school systems. The effect of multiple life changes (school transition, pubertal development, early dating behavior, residential mobility, family disruption) on students' self-esteem, academic grade-point average, and participation in extracurricular activities was analyzed. The results identify children who are forced to cope with several life transitions concurrently as a group at risk. Theoretical implications are discussed, with development of the notion that individuals need an "arena of comfort" in at least some spheres of their lives.     

A Framework for the Analysis and Management of Library Security Issues Applied to Patron-property Theft

This paper adapts three conceptual frameworks from Environmental Criminology – Routine Activity Theory, Rational Choice Theory, and Situational Crime Prevention – to create a Crime Prevention Toolkit that helps librarians analyze and manage criminal activity in contemporary academic libraries. The toolkit is applied to a case study of patron-laptop theft at an urban academic library to demonstrate its use in analyzing criminal activity and creating a crime-problem intervention. The intervention was rapidly successful at eliminating patron-property theft. There were no patron-laptop thefts of any kind in the library after implementation of the intervention, in contrast to 12 recorded laptop thefts the previous academic year. This is the first time a research-based, conceptual framework of three theories from Environmental Criminology has been used to analyze and manage criminal activity in an academic library. It is also the first time a patron-property theft intervention in an academic library has been demonstrated effective in an empirical inquiry.     

Improving beginning reading instruction and intervention for students with LD: reconciling "all" with "each"

We begin with an examination of the tensions that exist between educational efforts that target the needs of all students and efforts that target the needs of individual students with disabilities. Next, we provide reasons why, in beginning reading, a schoolwide system designed to teach all students to read can also support individualized and flexible instruction designed to teach each student to read. Finally, we describe a schoolwide beginning reading model that includes a schoolwide framework or infrastructure that supports comprehensive and coordinated reading goals, assessment, and instruction for all students integrated with ongoing progress monitoring and instructional adjustments that allow for differentiated and individualized instruction for each student, including students with disabilities.     

人草大战

我突然怀念起曾经住过的在城市陋屋区的旧房子来,陋室在12层的公寓上,没有电梯,只有一间屋子,半个卫生间。事情是这样的:这一切发生得非常简单。我们搬到乡下后不久,我的妻子,詹妮弗,觉得后院需要一次彻底的整理。“后院怎么了?”我问道“,看看我们院子里的草长得多壮实,多招摇。我敢打赌,这一带可没有哪家能比得上我们。”这时候詹妮弗透露了一个小秘密,我们草坪上的根本就不是草,只有壮实、招摇的毒葛。我认为,毒葛长得欣欣向荣,可不像后院的其他植物,我们也许应该除掉其他东西,比如说那个看起来病怏怏的玫瑰。我据理力争“:为什么要把真…     

Assessing the influence of field- and GIS-based inquiry on student attitude and conceptual knowledge in an undergraduate ecology lab

Combining field experience with use of information technology has the potential to create a problem-based learning environment that engages learners in authentic scientific inquiry. This study, conducted over a 2-yr period, determined differences in attitudes and conceptual knowledge between students in a field lab and students with combined field and geographic information systems (GIS) experience. All students used radio-telemetry equipment to locate fox squirrels, while one group of students was provided an additional data set in a GIS to visualize and quantify squirrel locations. Pre/postsurveys and tests revealed that attitudes improved in year 1 for both groups of students, but differences were minimal between groups. Attitudes generally declined in year 2 due to a change in the authenticity of the field experience; however, attitudes for students that used GIS declined less than those with field experience only. Conceptual knowledge also increased for both groups in both years. The field-based nature of this lab likely had a greater influence on student attitude and conceptual knowledge than did the use of GIS. Although significant differences were limited, GIS did not negatively impact student attitude or conceptual knowledge but potentially provided other benefits to learners.     

Tensionalities in the collaborative instructional design process

This paper is a retrospective restorying of an instructional design project in which members of a large urban school board collaborated with faculty members of a large university to design and produce an interactive videodisc. This story has been told from a number of perspectives, but is reframed in this paper as a process of culture building in which the design family is the basis of meaning and action. Conversation-based design is suggested as the tool and the content of the family culture. In particular, conversation is a cultural artifact revealing stories of tensionalities in the design process that frame the theoretical constructs in this collaborative model.