EDEN—A Growing Garden

The European Distance Education Network (EDEN) is a fairly new European network for open and distance learning, established after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In this paper, the President and Executive Secretary of EDEN summarizes its establishment, main achievements and areas of activities.     

Developing rigor in qualitative research: problems and opportunities within sport and exercise psychology

Qualitative research has grown within sport and exercise psychology and is now widely conducted. The purpose of this review is to discuss three commonly used ways to demonstrate rigor when conducting or judging qualitative research in sport and exercise psychology. These are the method of member checking, the method of inter-rater reliability, and the notion of universal criteria. Problems with each method are first highlighted. Member checking and inter-rater reliability are shown to be ineffective for verification, trustworthiness, or reliability purposes. Next, universal criteria within the context of Tracy’s, heavily drawn on paper within sport and exercise psychology is problematized. Throughout the discussion of each method and universal criteria more suitable possibilities for conducting rigorous qualitative research are offered. The paper concludes that to support high-quality qualitative research, scholars – including journal editors and reviewers – need to change how rigor is developed and judged, rather than perpetuate the problems with how it has been commonly evaluated in the past. Recommendations for developing rigor when conducting and/or judging qualitative research within sport and exercise psychology are also offered.     

Feed-forward assessment,exemplars and peer marking: evidence of efficacy

The paper reports the findings of evaluative research that attempted to rigorously assess the efficacy of a feed-forward, formative assessment intervention. The aim was to improve participants’ conceptions of quality, and hence improve the quality of a complex piece of summative assessment, by asking them to mark exemplars produced by former students. Feed-forward assessment has theoretical support in the literature, but empirical confirmation has been slight. Research findings were encouraging. A statistical model incorporating feed-forward was developed which accounted for a large effect in the improvement of results for the summative item. Importantly, there was improvement across student ability levels. Students, in the main, made accurate judgements about different levels of exemplar quality, although they had some difficulty discerning different pathways to high-quality products. Qualitative analysis indicated improved student conceptions of coherence and integration in the summative piece.     

Managing Relationships: Insights from a Student Gratitude Model

Research in Higher Education - This paper develops a student relationship model which highlights the role of gratitude in impacting students’ positive perceptions, attitudes, and behavioral...     

The association of objectively determined physical activity behavior among adolescent female friends

The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which physical activity among adolescent female friends is interdependent. The participants were 318 adolescent girls with a mean age of 16.0 years (range: 15-18 years). Pedometry was used to assess physical activity over 4 days. The relationship between an individual girl and her first-nominated reciprocal friend's physical activity level was moderate (r = 0.45, 90% confidence interval = 0.31, 0.56), when the friendship was nonreciprocal it was trivial (r = -.06, 90% confidence interval = -.36 .25). Friends'physical activity levels explained between 27% and 32% of an individual's pedometer-determined physical activity level. Reciprocity of friendship is an important variable to consider when understanding the relationship between adolescent female friends' physical activity. When friendships are reciprocal, there is a stronger relationship between friends' physical activity.     

The Effect of an Education Program for Mothers of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder in Jordan

There are few support services for parents of children with a disability in Jordan. The present exploratory study investigated whether the provision of an education program in Jordan for mothers of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder increased mothers’ understanding of their child’s behaviour, improved the mothers’ coping skills, and reduced their stress levels. Following the education program, the mothers reported a statistically significant reduction in stress levels, an increase in coping skills, and an improvement in mother-child interaction. Compared to fathers, mothers’ stress levels were significantly higher and their coping skills were significantly lower. The outcomes have valuable implications for interventions for families with a child with ASD living in Jordan or in other Arabic countries.     

Title IX and Retaliation: The Impact of Jackson v. Birmingham Board of Education on Higher Education

In 2005, the United States Supreme Court rendered a closely divided opinion that extends the protections against discrimination provided by Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 to include a private cause of action for retaliation in Jackson v. Birmingham Board of Education. Therefore, “whistleblowers,” or employees who report allegedly discriminatory practices, can file suit against employers who retaliate against them on the basis of their complaints under the auspices of Title IX, which prohibits discrimination “on the basis of sex” by recipients of federal education funds. Unlike other federal anti-discrimination laws such as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, retaliation is not expressly mentioned within the text of Title IX, and the Supreme Court reasoned that the broad language of the statute encompasses implied protections against retaliation, regardless of the gender of the employee who alleges retaliatory action. As a result of Jackson, the first generation of litigation against colleges and universities under this expanded standard has begun to navigate the federal courts. This article analyzes the Supreme Court’s opinion in Jackson and the related cases representing the first application of the retaliation standard articulated therein to colleges and universities. The article concludes with suggestions for insulation from liability associated with alleged retaliation claims against administrators and educational institutions.     

Managed moves: schools collaborating for collective gain

Government guidance in the United Kingdom encourages groups of schools to take collective responsibility for supporting and making provision for excluded pupils and those at risk of exclusion. Managed moves are one way that some schools and authorities are enacting such guidance. This article presents the results of an evaluation of one such scheme. The scheme, involving seven neighbouring secondary schools, was nearing its first year of completion. The article draws primarily on interview data with pupils, parents and school staff to describe a number of positive outcomes associated with the scheme and to explore how these were achieved. We found that while some of these could be attributed directly to the managed move, others arose from the more inclusive ethos and practices of particular schools. The concepts of tailored support, care and commitment emerged as strong themes that underpinned the various practical ways in which some schools in the cluster were able to re‐engage ‘at‐risk’ pupils. As managed moves become more widely practised it will be important to remember that it is how the move proceeds and develops rather than the move itself that will ultimately make the difference for troubled and troublesome pupils.