Sport to the Rescue of the Suburbs: Sport to Educate? Sport to Reassure? When Politicians Respond to the Signs of Disturbance of Law and Order

Since the beginning of the 1980s, sport has appeared to be the last recourse against the worsening of living conditions, lack of job security and the ghettoisation of certain boroughs that stand out mostly because of continuing urban riots and juvenile violence. All of this is continually exaggerated by the media and politicians in their continual desire to dramatise and exaggerate. Certain sub-issues immediately emerge: what are the theoretical or ideological foundations on which this concept of making sport a lever for preventive policies is based? And what sport are we talking about? Is it the physical activities and sport (PAS) practised in the schools and institutes, civil sport or sport in the streets? Why do young people increasingly abandon civil/federated sport to practise ‘adventure sports’ or self-organised sports? Can self-organised sports and, more precisely, sport played outside the tower blocks favour the ‘self-control of impulses’? And if they can, under what conditions can they favour socialisation and contribute to preventing vandalism or violent acts? If it must be admitted that the links between sport and education, sport and prevention, sport and insertion, etc., are considered to be self-evident, they are rarely analysed or questioned.     

Sport and Civilisation: Violence Mastered? From Civilising Functions to Pacifying Functions

Explaining that it is not possible to divide human activity (political, economic, social, sport, etc.) into different sectors, as they all originate from the same actors, Norbert Elias and Eric Dunning thus came to formulate the central hypothesis of a network which linked the process of pacification of customs, the development of a parliamentary system for society, the state monopoly of violence, the euphemisation of violence in the aristocracy, the genesis of sport and, by recursion, the roles and functions of modern sports in the state control of violence and the learning of self-control. Elias and Dunning contrast modern sports with the ancient games, euphemisation and the persistence of violence, ‘sport’ leisure characteristic of ‘modern’ societies and traditional games in the ‘ancient’ societies, which accompanied the religious calendars and rites of passage. But do they really question society? This paper shows how the problems posed by Elias' theory are, essentially, of three types: first, those linked to the methodology used; second, those related to the limits imposed by the notion of self-constraint; and, finally, those concerning the pacifying function attributed to sport.     

Low-dose exercise training does not influence cardiac autonomic control in healthy sedentary men aged 55 – 75 years

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of a realistic, feasible, and commonly used fitness training programme on cardiac autonomic control in 14 sedentary men aged 62.0 ± 6.1 years (mean ± s). All participants performed a one-year fitness training programme in which training intensity and frequency were specifically chosen to be compliant for the majority of the participants (2 – 3 sessions per week at moderate intensity). At the same time, a reference group consisting of 15 sedentary age-matched men (age 64.2 ± 6.5 years) did not change their habitual physical activity. Measurements were performed before and after the training intervention. Cardiac autonomic control was inferred from resting values (supine and standing) of heart rate variability (HRV) computed in the frequency domain over 10-min intervals. Endurance capacity was evaluated during a maximal incremental bicycle ergometer test. In spite of an increase in peak oxygen consumption ([Vdot]O_2peak) by 6.4% after training, heart rate in the training group remained unchanged at rest and at the same metabolic demand. No changes in resting parameters of HRV were shown for either groups or positions. Results from this study provide no evidence of a clinically meaningful increase in the vagal modulation to the sinus node at rest after one year of low-volume and moderate-intensity fitness training in men aged 55 – 75 years.     

Validation of the Child Sport Cohesion Questionnaire

This article challenges measurement specialists and other physical education and exercise science professionals to explore alternative models that are not based on classical test theory. Examples illustrate how the many-facet Rasch model has been used to solve measurement problems associated with performance assessments in the fields of medicine, business, and sport. A second challenge calls for more collaborative research efforts that address measurement problems in physical education and exercise science. The measurement subdiscipline will advance in the 21st century if these challenges are met.     

Human newborns prefer human milk: conspecific milk odor is attractive without postnatal exposure

Behavioral responses of 3- to 4-day-old newborns to the odors of various human milk (HM) and formula milk (FM) were examined in paired-choice tests. When both stimuli were nonfamiliar, breast-fed, as well as bottle-fed, infants oriented their head and mouthed more vigorously to HM than to FM. When breast-fed infants were exposed to nonfamiliar HM along with the familiar FM, their head-turning responses were undifferentiated although they mouthed more frequently to the human stimulus. When nonfamiliar HM and familiar FM were equalized in intensity, nonfamiliar HM again elicited more head orientation and mouthing responses. These results demonstrate that the odor of HM is more attractive to human newborns than FM and that this preference is independent of postnatal feeding experience.     

E-textbooks and Connectivity: Proposing an Analytical Framework

This paper is concerned with the development of e-textbooks. We claim that analysis (and design) of e-textbooks requires the development of a specific frame. Digital affordances provide particular opportunities (e.g. in terms of interactions between users) that require specific considerations for their analysis, as teachers and students use them for their individual and collective purposes. In this study, we develop a framework for mathematics e-textbook analysis, based on the notion of “connectivity.” We introduce criteria to assess the different aspects of connectivity and build an analysis grid for e-textbooks. We illustrate the framework proposed by analyzing 2 commonly used French grade 10 mathematics e-textbooks. The results of the analyses show that there are major differences between the 2 e-textbooks in terms of connectivity, which can be related to differences in their design. Beyond these 2 examples, we claim that focusing on connectivity is a useful and relevant way of analyzing e-textbooks, as it can provide a window into issues of interactivity, both practically and cognitively.     

Developing a deeper understanding of <Emphasis Type="Italic">mathematics teaching expertise</Emphasis>: an examination of three Chinese mathematics teachers’ resource systems as windows into their work and expertise

In order to develop a deeper understanding of mathematics teaching expertise, in this study we use the Documentational Approach to Didactics to explore the resource systems of three Chinese mathematics “expert” teachers. Exploiting the Western and Eastern literature we examine the notion of “mathematics teaching expertise”, as it is perceived in the East and the West. The data consist of two rounds of in-depth interviews, observations and teachers’ representations of their resource systems, where teachers describe their resources connected to their practice, their perceptions of mathematics teaching expertise, and how to develop it. Subsequently, the data are analyzed with respect to the different facets of the notion of teaching expertise and related to the teachers’ views and practices, in order to deepen our understandings of what proficiency in mathematics teaching might mean and how to develop it, seen through the lens of ‘resources’. The significance of the study relates to the enhancement of mathematics teachers’ expertise and capacity building when working in collectives (e.g., in teacher professional development), in order to develop a strong workforce for supporting and helping to improve pupil learning.     

Theft in a wireless world

I explore philosophically the phenomenon of home wireless networks as used to share broadband Internet connections. Because such networks are frequently unsecured, third parties can use them to access the Internet. Here I consider carefully whether this kind of behaviour should be properly called theft. I begin with a brief non-technical introduction to 802.11 wireless networks. Subsequently, I present a four part argument – appealing to the unsecured nature of the networks discussed, entrenched software and hardware behaviours, trespass law, and the openness of ‹public park’ spectrum – suggesting that this kind of behaviour is permissible and should not be construed as theft. Substantively, I conclude that, despite the quite compelling considerations that these arguments bring to bear, this behaviour is theft. Additionally, I draw attention to significant flaws in the design and implementation of wireless technology (specifically in the out-of-the-box configuration for wireless access points and in the wireless connectivity of early versions of Windows XP) that facilitate the intentional and unintentional theft of Internet bandwidth. I suggest some simple mechanisms that could be incorporated into the technology which would serve to remove the ethical ambiguity in its usage by third parties, including adding the ability for a network owner to explicitly mark her network as not for public use,␣and changes to default hardware and software behaviours. I conclude by encouraging increased use of value-sensitive design practices in the development of future wireless technologies.     

The influence of social identity on self-worth,commitment, and effort in school-based youth sport

???The current study examined the influence of social identity for individual perceptions of self-worth, commitment, and effort in school-based youth athletes. Using a prospective research design, 303 athletes (M_age = 14.89, SD = 1.77; 133 female) from 27 sport teams completed questionnaires at 2 time points (T1 – demographics, social identity; T2 – self-worth, commitment, effort) during an athletic season. Multilevel analyses indicated that at the individual level, the social identity dimension of in-group ties (IGT) predicted commitment (b = 0.12, P = .006) and perceived effort (b = 0.14, P = .008), whereas in-group affect (IGA) predicted commitment (b = 0.25, P = .001) and self-worth (b = 2.62, P = .006). At the team level, means for IGT predicted commitment (b = 0.31, P < .001) and self-worth (b = 4.76, P = .024). Overall, social identity accounted for variance at both levels, ranging from 4% (self-worth) to 15% (commitment). Identifying with a group to a greater extent was found to predict athlete perceptions of self-worth, commitment, and effort. More specifically, at the individual level, IGT predicted commitment and effort, and IGA predicted commitment and self-worth. At the team level, IGT predicted commitment and self-worth.