Deep in the Weeds: Faculty Participation in a Large Scale Deselection Project

In 2014, the Pollak Library at California State University, Fullerton embarked on a project to simultaneously address an outdated collection and to provide more student oriented collaborative space by creating a large-scale deselection plan. The interim University Librarian believed it prudent to offer campus faculty the ability to provide input on the deselection plan and an online application was created to allow faculty to request retention of titles selected for weeding. Feedback from an initial weeding pilot program was instructive and the tool was updated for the following deselection rounds to compel faculty to justify reasons for retaining titles and deter arbitrary requests for retention. While ultimately successful in deselecting 95,074 titles, future weeding projects will focus on the most invested partners, rather than the entire campus community. This article describes Pollak Library’s weeding project and analyzes the results of three years of faculty feedback.     

Flexible Interventions to Increase Family Engagement at Natural History Museum Dioramas

A research/practice collaboration designed, implemented, and tested strategies to facilitate family engagement with natural history dioramas. Across a series of design studies, 295 family groups with at least one adult and one child aged 4–18 were observed at a wildlife diorama of deer in their natural habitat. Each mini‐study tested a different intervention intended to encourage families to engage more deeply with the diorama. Compared to a baseline condition where families used the original diorama with no intervention, findings suggested that all interventions supported increased engagement, but that some interventions were more successful at engaging younger children, increasing conversations about biodiversity and ecosystems issues, or in developing science skills such as observation and classification. We make recommendations for supporting family learning at dioramas and also reflect upon how our research/practice partnership was vital to the work.     

The Australian Education Union: A History of Opposing School Choice and School Autonomy Down-Under

In this article, I chronicle the recent history of efforts to broaden school choice in the Commonwealth of Australia and the opposition to these efforts put forth by Australia’s largest teacher union, the Australian Education Union (AEU). Evidence is presented on the positive effects that flow from the public funding of nongovernment schools and of the perception held by principals that less external regulation improves school functions. In spite of this, the Union continues to oppose choice efforts. I conclude that, at least in Australia, the influence of the AEU has placed impediments in the way of increased school choice and autonomy. Readers in other countries may draw their own conclusions from these observations in Australia.     

Kinematics of a striking task: accuracy and speed–accuracy considerations

Handballing in Australian football (AF) is the most efficient passing method, yet little research exists examining technical factors associated with accuracy. This study had three aims: (a) To explore the kinematic differences between accurate and inaccurate handballers, (b) to compare within-individual successful (hit target) and unsuccessful (missed target) handballs and (c) to assess handballing when both accuracy and speed of ball-travel were combined using a novel approach utilising canonical correlation analysis. Three-dimensional data were collected on 18 elite AF players who performed handballs towards a target. More accurate handballers exhibited a significantly straighter hand-path, slower elbow angular velocity and smaller elbow range of motion (ROM) compared to the inaccurate group. Successful handballs displayed significantly larger trunk ROM, maximum trunk rotation velocity and step-angle and smaller elbow ROM in comparison to the unsuccessful handballs. The canonical model explained 73% of variance shared between the variable sets, with a significant relationship found between hand-path, elbow ROM and maximum elbow angular velocity (predictors) and hand-speed and accuracy (dependant variables). Interestingly, not all parameters were the same across each of the analyses, with technical differences between inaccurate and accurate handballers different from those between successful and unsuccessful handballs in the within-individual analysis.     

Key parameters of the swimming start and their relationship to start performance

The swimming start is typically broken into three sub-phases; on-block, flight, and underwater phases. While overall start performance is highly important to elite swimming, the contribution of each phase and important technical components within each phase, particularly with the new kick-start technique, has not been established. The aim of this study was to identify technical factors associated with overall start performance, with a particular focus on the underwater phase. A number of parameters were calculated from 52 starts performed by elite freestyle and butterfly swimmers. These parameters were split into above-water and underwater groupings, before factor analysis was used to reduce parameter numbers for multiple regression. For the above-water phases, 81% of variance in start performance was accounted for by take-off horizontal velocity. For the underwater water phase, 96% of variance was accounted for with time underwater in descent, time underwater in ascent and time to 10 m. Therefore, developing greater take-off horizontal velocity and focussing on the underwater phase by finding the ideal trajectory will lead to improved start performance.     

Teachers learning to use the iPad in Scotland and Wales: a new model of professional development

In learning to use a new technology like the iPad, primary teachers adopt a diverse range of experiential, informal and playful strategies contrasting sharply with traditional models underpinning professional development which emphasise formal courses and events led by ‘experts’ conducted in formal settings such as the school. Since post-PC devices like the iPad have been linked with transformational educational learning, there is an imperative to better understand how teachers can be encouraged to use them more effectively. Despite their growing popularity in schools, there is little research to indicate how and under what circumstances teachers learn to integrate these technologies into their daily practices. This paper uses data collected from two national studies of iPad use in Scotland and Wales to propose a new model of professional development. This model reflects findings that the teachers reject traditional models of sequential, or staged, professional development (often led by external providers or ‘experts’), in favour of a more nuanced and fluid model where they learn at their own pace, in a largely experiential fashion, alongside their pupils in a relationship which reverses the traditional power nexus. The model has the potential to inform professional development for both trainee and serving teachers in learning to use the iPad in the primary classroom.     

Commerce and the Church

First published in January 1905, the Irish Independent is widely acknowledged as having been influenced by developments in journalism first associated, almost a decade earlier, with the Daily Mail in Britain. However, this article argues that while the Irish Independent adopted many elements of New Journalism its proprietor, William Martin Murphy was strategically selective in how elements were incorporated within his new venture. The success of the Irish Independent can be viewed as the outcome of two processes: the selection and adaption of some aspects of New Journalism to create a successful commercial newspaper and also the exclusion of what were considered the less desirable elements of New Journalism that may have damaged the title’s circulation in a country where the power of the Roman Catholic Church was strong. Murphy, in effect, ‘shopped’ for aspects of New Journalism as practiced elsewhere that he felt were most suitable to the local Irish market. In the latter respect, this article highlights the importance of considering the local context when discussing the universality of journalism practice.     

General studies in the pre‐employment course: The Ballymun experience, 1971–1981

Abstract

In this paper we use the lens of an emerging research method in education called “design research” to address questions raised by Sugrue and Uí Thuama (1994) about the lack of strong linkages between research and classroom practice in Irish education. We provide context for this question by contrasting it with similar discussions in the US and UK about research quality in education. Next we elaborate a framework from one member of the design research community in educational research (Bannan‐Ritland, 2003) to show why some varieties of educational research may have little to offer practice at least directly and in the short term. Finally, we offer insight from Lesson Study in Japan (Lewis, 2002) as one possible solution to the problem of research and practice alignment.