Fundamental Movement Skill Proficiency and Health Among a Cohort of Irish Primary School Children

Purpose: This study aimed to investigate the relationship between fundamental movement skills (FMS) and markers of health among a cohort of Irish primary school children. Methods: Participants (N = 296, mean age: 7.99 ± 2.02 years) were senior infant (n = 149, mean age: 6.02 ± 0.39 years) and 4th class (n = 147, mean age: 9.97 ± 0.40 years) students from three primary schools in Cork, Ireland. FMS proficiency (TGMD-2) and markers of health (BMI percentile, waist circumference percentile, blood pressure percentiles, resting heart rate, cardiorespiratory fitness, objectively measured physical activity; PA) measurements were recorded. Correlation and hierarchical stepwise multiple linear regression analyses were conducted to investigate the relationship between FMS and markers of health. Results: A small, positive relationship was found between FMS (Gross Motor Quotient; GMQ) and cardiorespiratory fitness with small negative correlations between GMQ and 550 m time SDS among 6-year-olds (r(129) = ?.286, p < .05) and 10-year-olds (r(132) = ?.340, p < .05). A moderate, positive correlation was found between GMQ and light PA (r(71) = .400, p < .05). Small positive correlations were revealed between GMQ and moderate PA (r(71) = .259, p < .05) and between GMQ and total PA (r(71) = .355, p < .05). After adjusting for age, sex, the interaction effect of age and sex, and school attended, FMS explained 15.9% and 24.8% of the variance in 550 m time SDS among 6- and 10-year-olds, respectively, and 6% and 6.5% of the variance in light PA and moderate PA, respectively. After adjusting for age and sex, FMS explained 11.6% of the variance in total PA. Conclusion: A wide range of FMS is important for children’s cardiorespiratory fitness and PA.     

Same or different? The “cultural entrepreneurship” and “arts entrepreneurship” constructs in European and US higher education

“Arts entrepreneurship” is beginning to emerge from its infancy as a field of study in US higher education institutions. “Cultural Entrepreneurship”, especially as conceived of in European contexts, developed earlier and on a somewhat different but parallel track. As Kuhlke, Schramme, and Kooyman [(2015). Introduction. Creating cultural capital: Cultural entrepreneurship in theory, pedagogy and practice. Delft: Eburon] note, “In Europe, courses began to emerge in the late 1980s and early 1990s?…?primarily providing an established business school education with an industry-specific focus on the new and emerging creative economy.” Conversely, the development of “arts entrepreneurship” courses and programmes in the US have been driven as much or more from interest within arts disciplines or even from within the career services units of arts conservatories as a means toward supporting artist self-sufficiency and career self-management. This paper looks at the conceptual development of “arts entrepreneurship” in the US as differentiated from “cultural entrepreneurship” in Europe and elsewhere. Its intention is to uncover where the two strands of education (and research) are the same, and where they are different. In addition to a review of existing literature on European cultural entrepreneurship, US data is drawn from a new survey and inventory of US arts entrepreneurship programmes developed for the Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities (a2ru).     

Teaching for Social Justice: Resources,Relationships, and Anti-Racist Practice

Fear and bigotry have spread through schools on the heels of a presidential campaign that promoted divisiveness grounded in racism and discrimination. This article describes the need for and a path toward explicit anti-racist teaching and anti-racist action to counteract this surge of hate speech. In addition, to create a more equitable and just education system and society, the article outlines actions needed to change key aspects of institutionalized racism and intolerance that are embedded in our schools: a) Correcting the unequal resources leading to inequitable opportunities, programs, teacher and leader distribution; b) providing equal opportunity for the kind of deeper learning demanded in the 21st century: A curriculum that supports critical thinking, problem solving, communication, collaboration, and applications of knowledge to real-world problems; c) developing social/emotional as well as academic skills; and d) supporting personalization and relationships so that students feel cared about and cared for and experience culturally responsive, engaging, and empowering learning opportunities in contexts that provide supportive relationships and community.     

A predictive validity study of the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children with the California Achievement Test

The Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC) was administered to 44 4th-, 5th-, and 6th-grade students. Six months later, all students received the California Achievement Test (CAT). Significant positive correlations were obtained between K-ABC variables and CAT scores. CAT subtest scores and total score correlated higher with the K-ABC ACHV scale than with the K-ABC SEQ, SIM, or MPC scales on 8 of the 12 comparisons. The results support the predictive utility of the K-ABC, and also provide support for the differential validity of the K-ABC achievement vs. mental processing scales.     

Performance of bilingual and monolingual Hispanic children on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised and the McCarthy Perceptual Performance Scale

This study evaluated the receptive vocabulary ability and nonverbal cognitive ability of 20 monolingual (Spanish-speaking) and 11 bilingual (Spanish/English-speaking) Mexican-American preschool children, ages 45 to 65 months. The children obtained significantly lower scores on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised (PPVT-R) than on the Perceptual Performance Scale of the McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities. On both measures, the bilingual group obtained significantly higher scores than did the monolingual group. The results support prior recommendations that the PPVT-R not be used to estimate the intelligence level of Hispanic children.     

The mediating effect of task presentation on collaboration and children’s acquisition of scientific reasoning

There has been considerable research concerning peer interaction and the acquisition of children’s scientific reasoning. This study investigated differences in collaborative activity between pairs of children working around a computer with pairs of children working with physical apparatus and related any differences to the development of children’s scientific reasoning. Children aged between 9 and 10 years old (48 boys and 48 girls) were placed into either same ability or mixed ability pairs according to their individual, pre-test performance on a scientific reasoning task. These pairs then worked on either a computer version or a physical version of Inhelder and Piaget’s (1958) chemical combination task. Type of presentation was found to mediate the nature and type of collaborative activity. The mixed-ability pairs working around the computer talked proportionally more about the task and management of the task; had proportionally more transactive discussions and used the record more productively than children working with the physical apparatus. Type of presentation was also found to mediated children’s learning. Children in same ability pairs who worked with the physical apparatus improved significantly more than same ability pairs who worked around the computer. These findings were partially predicted from a socio-cultural theory and show the importance of tools for mediating collaborative activity and collaborative learning.     

SUCCESS IN COLLEGE MATHEMATICS: Comparisons Between Remedial and Nonremedial First-Year College Students

Recent international comparisons show that themathematics achievement of American students is belowthe international average. In response to thissituation, the present study compared first-year college students enrolled in remedial-type mathematicscourses with their counterparts enrolled in nonremedialcoursework. Findings include that students enrolled innonremedial mathematics courses enter the institution with many advantages over students enrolled inremedial mathematics. Tests of a path analytic modelconfirmed that background variables play a major role indetermining success in college mathematics.     

Patterns of word and nonword processing in skilled and less-skilled readers

Sixty-eight third graders who were less-skilled readers performed more poorly than younger reading-level control children on tests of pseudoword reading and phonological sensitivity. These findings add to the growing consensus that the proximal cause of reading difficulties are spelling-sound coding problems that result from deficient underlying phonological processes and structures. Analyses of their word and pseudoword reading performance provided some suggestive evidence that less-skilled readers are less sensitive than their younger reading-level matched counterparts to all subword-size orthographic units, perhaps especially to grapheme-sized units.