Motivational variables involved in commitment of female soccer players at different competitive levels

Today more and more women are playing sport and choosing activities previously considered the exclusive domain of men, such as soccer. The main purpose of this study was to analyse the role of motivational variables (individual and team) regarding the commitment to and future expectations of playing higher levels of competition in a sample of female association soccer players (N = 117) at different levels of competition (local, regional and national leagues). Results confirm that the highest league shows high values in perception of success (ego orientation and task orientation), transactional psychological contract and future expectations. On the other hand, the local league produces high values in relational contracts. A path analysis tests a theoretical model with all the motivational variables as predictors of sporting commitment and future expectations. It shows the power of individual and team motivational variables in terms of predicting the involvement of women in soccer.     

Some Learning Problems Concerning the Use of Symbolic Language in Physics

This paper aims to draw the attention of teachers of basic university physics courses towards students' problems concerning the interpretation of the symbolic language used in the discipline. Specific difficulties found in the first course of physics, related to different kinds of statements expressed in mathematical language, are pointed out and analysed, and some suggestions are made to cope with them during instruction. It could be concluded that teachers may need only to reflect and comment on the virtues of making explicit the semantic and syntactic aspects of formal languages as they teach physics.     

Reading prosody development in Spanish children

Reading prosody is considered one of the essential markers of reading fluency, alongside accuracy and speed. The aim of our study was to investigate how development of reading prosody in Spanish children varies with sentence type and length. We compared primary school children from the third and fifth grades with an adult sample. Participants were recorded reading aloud a narrative text including short and long declarative, exclamatory and interrogative sentences. Recordings were analysed using Praat software to measure several prosodic features (i.e., pauses, duration, pitch and intensity). We found that third-grade children had not yet developed an adult-like prosody: they made more pauses, had a flatter melodic contour and had difficulty anticipating sentence structure. Fifth-graders displayed some features of adult prosody. Both length and type of sentence influenced the expressiveness of reading in the three groups. We conclude that reading expressiveness is closely related to reading experience and develops in a similar way to decoding and reading speed.     

Group size regulates self-assertive versus self-deprecating responses to interpersonal competition

The current study examined the hypothesis that group size can influence whether children display self-assertive versus self-deprecating responses to interpersonal competition, especially under stress. Twenty same-sex play-groups (N = 120) of 9- to 10-year-old children played a competitive game in groups and in dyads. Stress was induced by causing some of the children to lose the game and watch as their opponents received psychological and material rewards. Results demonstrated that both the dynamics of the game and individual reactions to stress varied consistently as a function of the social context. Individuals displayed more assertive behaviors in groups than in dyads. In contrast, individuals exhibited more self-deprecating behaviors in dyads than in groups. Given that under naturalistic conditions males are more likely than are females to interact in groups and females are more likely than are males to interact in dyads, group size provides one possible mechanism for the development of sex differences in self-assertive versus self-deprecating behaviors.     

Social constructivist teaching methods in Australian universities – reported uptake and perceived learning effects: a survey of lecturers

Pragmatic social constructivist teaching methods require students to construct knowledge by engaging collaboratively with realistic problems, cases or projects. It is hypothesised that they are more effective than traditional didactic teaching methods in developing undergraduate students’: (1) theoretical knowledge; (2) profession‐specific skills; and (3) knowledge creation capacity. Results of a survey show the second and third learning effects to be salient among Australian university lecturers, but not the first. Lecturers report that these teaching methods have been adopted more widely in human service‐related faculties and design‐related faculties than in business‐related faculties, possibly owing to the lesser emphasis placed by business lecturers on developing students’ profession‐specific skills and knowledge creation capacity. A corresponding survey of business practitioners revealed a surprising gap between the value that business practitioners place on new graduates’ knowledge creation capacity and the rather limited emphasis that business lecturers place upon developing that capacity in their undergraduate students.