RELIGIOUS EDUCATION AT THE EDGE OF HISTORY

This article suggests that religious education discourse in the future must be multilingual if it is to prepare people to participate in a postmodern world of religious diversity and secularism. Five “languages” are suggested, including those native to the religious education of particular religious communities, the language of interreligious education, the language of public religious education, a postreligion religious education language, and the language of academic religious education.     

Student-teachers’ perspectives on the purposes and characteristics of faith-based schools: an Australian view

At a time when the faith-based identity of schools is facing serious challenges, the researchers undertook a longitudinal study of the relevant opinions, beliefs and values of student-teachers at a Catholic university campus in Australia. The focus of the current paper is on the responses of first-year students to a survey regarding their choice of secondary school, the purposes of schooling and the characteristics of Catholic schools. Relevant context are addressed including global education trends, the values and characteristics of Catholic education and relevant aspects of Australian schooling and youth culture. Regardless of religious affiliation, self-reported religiosity or type of school attended, providing a ‘safe and caring school environment’ emerged as the most important purpose of schooling and as a key reason for choice of school, while faith-based purposes and reasons received particularly low ratings. ‘Caring community’ was regarded as by far the most important characteristic of the Catholic school, followed by engagement in social justice programmes. The findings are briefly compared with parallel findings for teachers in Queensland Catholic schools.     

Post-activation potentiation (PAP) in endurance sports: A review

While there is strong support of the usefulness of post-activation potentiation (PAP) phenomenon in power demanding sports, the role that PAP could play in endurance sports has received less attention. The aim of this review is to present evidence for a better understanding of PAP in endurance athletes; and to discuss the physiological basis and methodological aspects necessary for better practices and designing further studies. A search for relevant articles on PAP and endurance trained athletes was carried out using Medline and ISI Web of Knowledge databases. Twenty-two studies were included in the review. The current evidence suggests the possible influence of PAP for performance enhancement after appropriate conditioning activities during warm up. Evaluation of PAP responses during testing, training and competition may be also important for athletes monitoring. There are many unresolved questions about the optimum load parameters for benefiting from PAP in both training and competition; and the role that PAP may exert for optimal performance while interacting with central and peripheral factors associated with muscle fatigue. Further studies should elucidate the association between PAP responses and long-term adaptations in endurance athletes.     

A Continuing Dance

Religious educators who emphasize the public nature and mission of the religious congregation and advocates of national and community service have much in common. Both groups point to a need in the society of the United States to balance the language of individualism and individual rights with a renewed emphasis on communitarian social action. A constructive dialogue between community service‐oriented advocates of school reform and religious educators advocating the social and political nature of being religious addresses a crisis in American spirituality: how can we rouse citizens from our respective secular and religious confessional slumbers.     

Beyond relevance and recall: testing new user‐centred measures of database performance

Background: Measures of the effectiveness of databases have traditionally focused on recall, precision, with some debate on how relevance can be assessed, and by whom. New measures of database performance are required when users are familiar with search engines, and expect full text availability. Objectives: This research ascertained which of four bibliographic databases (bni, cinahl, medline and embase ) could be considered most useful to nursing and midwifery students searching for information for an undergraduate dissertation. Methods: Searches on title were performed for dissertation topics supplied by nursing students (n = 9), who made the relevance judgements. Measures of recall and precision were combined with additional factors to provide measures of effectiveness, while efficiency combined measures of novelty and originality and accessibility combined measures for availability and retrievability, based on obtainability. Results: There were significant differences among the databases in precision, originality and availability, but other differences were not significant (Friedman test). Odds ratio tests indicated that bni , followed by cinahl were the most effective, cinahl the most efficient, and bni the most accessible. Conclusions: The methodology could help library services in purchase decisions as the measure for accessibility, and odds ratio testing helped to differentiate database performance.     

Directors and Writers

Eric Sherman's Directing the Film: Film Directors on Their Art (Boston: Little, Brown, 1976---$15.00)

Donald Spoto's The Art of Alfred Hitchcock: Fifty Years of His Motion Pictures (New York: Hopkinson and Blake, 1976---$13.00/8.95)

Kemp R. Niver's D.W. Griffith: His Biograph Films in Perspective (Historical Films, P.O. Box 46505, Los Angeles, Calif. 90046---$12.00)

Stephen Pendo's Raymond Chandler on Screen: His Novels into Film (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1976---$10.00)

Ronald Lloyd's American Film Directors: The World as They See It (New York: New Viewpoints/Franklin Watts, 1976---price not given, paper)

Maureen Lambray's The American Film Directors (New York: Whirlwind/Pathe Press, 1976---$22.50)

Bob Thomas' Walt Disney: An American Original (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1976---$9.95)

Richard Koszarski's Hollywood Directors, 1914-1940 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976---$13.95/3.95)

Philip Cecchettini and Don Whittemore's Passport to Hollywood: Film Immigramts (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976---413.50)

Beatriz Reyes Nevares' The Mexican Cinema: Interviews with Thirteen Directors (Albuquerque, N.M.: University of New Mexico Press, 1976---$9.95/4.50)

Francisco Aranda's Luis Bunuel: A Critical Biography (New York: Da Capo Press, 1976---44.95, paper)

Glenn B. Infield's Leni Riefenstahl: The Fallen Film Goddess (New York: Crowell, 1976---$9.95)

Stuart Rosenthal's The Cinema of Federico Fellini (Cranbury, N.J.: A.S. Barnes, 1976---$9.95)

Edward Murray's Fellini the Artist (New York: Ungar, 1976---$10.00)