Bilateral practice improves dominant leg performance in long jump

Benefits of bilateral practice both for the non-dominant and for the dominant body side have been shown in several studies. Thereby, most of the studies included movement tasks of the upper extremity or investigated sports games in which the ability of acting bilaterally is an essential basis for success and, thus, a bilateral practice is reasonable anyway. Individual unilaterally performed sports including movement tasks of the lower extremity are rarely investigated. Therefore, the aim of our study was to test if contralateral transfer due to bilateral practice can be found in an unilaterally performed sport including the lower extremity. We trained and tested 61 adolescent athletes in long jump to compare the jumping performance of the dominant leg after a 12-week practice period between two groups: a bilateral practice group that practiced specific long jump exercises with both the dominant and non-dominant leg and an unilateral practice group that practiced specific long jump exercises only with the dominant leg. Results showed a superior effect of bilateral practice compared to unilateral practice regarding the jumping performance of the dominant leg. The performance increase at post-test and retention-test for the dominant limb was significantly higher for the bilateral practice group (pre-to-post: 5.2%, pre-to-retention: 7.4%) compared to the unilateral practice group (pre-to-post: 3.4%, pre-to-retention: 4.5%). Thus, bilateral practice should be established in the early practice programmes of track and field athletes to improve the performance of the dominant take-off leg.     

Classroom observation systems in context: A case for the validation of observation systems

Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability - Researchers and practitioners sometimes presume that using a previously “validated” instrument will produce “valid”...     

A Self-Regulated Learning Approach to Teaching Educational Psychology

In this paper, we describe an undergraduate educational psychology course that utilizes self-regulated learning as the organizing principle. The course aims to facilitate students' development in self-regulated learning and to promote students' understanding of how to embed instruction for self-regulated learning strategies into classroom teaching. In the first section of the paper, we develop the rationale for this position and identify underlying assumptions we believe should guide the development and implementation of such a program. In the second section of the paper, we demonstrate how we have incorporated these assumptions in a basic educational psychology course.     

The Inclusion of Informal Environments in Science Teacher Preparation

Journal of Science Teacher Education -     

Improving content area reading comprehension of Spanish speaking English learners in Grades 4 and 5 using web-based text structure instruction

Reading and comprehending content area texts is important for academic and professional success as well as life skills necessary to maintain good health and quality lifestyle. Spanish speaking English language learners have shown poor performance on high-stakes assessments in reading comprehension. The number of Spanish speaking English learners (ELs) in our schools continues to increase at a fast pace, and therefore it is imperative that we address their reading comprehension needs swiftly and effectively. The text structure strategy has shown positive results on comprehension outcomes in many research studies with students at Grades 2, 4, 5, and 7. This study is the first implementation of instruction about the text structure strategy expressly designed to accommodate the linguistic and comprehension needs of Spanish speaking ELs in Grades 4 and 5. Strategy instruction on the web for English learners (SWELL) was designed to deliver instruction about the text structure strategy to Spanish speaker English learners. A randomized controlled study with pre and post-tests was conducted with 14 classrooms at fourth-grade and 17 classrooms at fifth-grade in high poverty schools where over 85% of students were Spanish speaking bilinguals or ELs. Analysis of data using multi-level models show moderate to large-effects favoring the students in the SWELL classrooms over the business as usual control classrooms on important measures such as a standardized reading comprehension test and main idea and cloze tasks. This research has practical implications for the use of web-based tools to provide high-quality and supportive instruction to improve Spanish speaking ELs reading comprehension skills.     

The emergence and institutional co-determination of sustainability as a teaching topic in interdisciplinary science teacher education

This paper takes an institutional perspective on the topic of sustainability in order to analyse how this ‘idea’ enters science teacher education through an interdisciplinary approach. It shows how the development and implementation of a course for Danish pre-service teachers was conditioned and constrained by a complex web of interactions in and among the teaching disciplines of biology, geography and physics/chemistry and among the institutions of school, teacher college and university. The data collected are used to identify influences among the disciplines as well as disciplinary differences, conceptualised through a new reference model that separates the analysis from the usual sustainability dimensions. The findings reveal how sustainability as a teaching topic can be a unifying idea in an interdisciplinary setting. Disciplinary differences evidently impact course planning and implementation significantly, but not exclusively. By elaborating on the interactions between these circumstances, the paper provides insight into the processes of developing interdisciplinary teacher education.