Need supportive instructor training: perspectives from graduate teaching assistants in a college/university physical activity program

Background: In the U.S. college/university setting, physical activity courses are often offered as part of the general education program, where students earn college credits towards the completion of their degree program. These courses are typically taught by graduate teaching assistants (GTAs), who face several challenges in instructing undergraduate students. Often, GTAs are thrust into their roles without the preparation that traditional teachers receive as customary with education degrees. Literature on need supportive teacher training, as part of self-determination theory, indicates that teachers including GTAs, can be successfully trained to meet the needs of their students regardless of years of previous experience. Presently, there is little information on the impact of such a training program from the perspective of the GTAs participating in the program.

Purpose: The aim of this study is to provide in-depth perspectives on need supportive training through examination of GTAs reflections of the training process.

Participants and setting: Fourteen GTAs from a university physical activity and healthful living program were recruited for this study, but two dropped out. All participants taught one of the following courses: aerobics, basketball, body conditioning, bowling, flag football, golf, racquetball, soccer, tennis, ultimate frisbee, volleyball, or yoga.

Data collection: Teaching reflections were written by participants at the end of a year-long training program.

Data analyses: Written reflections completed by the GTAs were analyzed via content analysis. Data were organized by how strategies were implemented, most/least successful use of the strategies, and adherence to the training. Once organized, the data was examined by two different researchers independently and themes were shared with participants as part of the member checking process. Searches for negative cases were utilized during the analysis process as well.

Findings: Across the data, it was determined that the GTAs felt the training to be beneficial, influencing much of how they worked with students. Results suggested that GTAs found several ways to implement the reviewed need supportive teaching strategies, including giving students the choice of activities and group membership. They were also able to better respond to students’ negative affect and give explanatory rationales. Goal setting was a consistently used strategy by the GTAs; however, it was cited as one of the least successful strategies due to the inability to effectively follow-up on the goals made during classes with the students. Additionally, it was noted that the GTAs had difficulties with devising their own ways of implementing the strategies and relied heavily on the examples that were provided during their training sessions.

Conclusion: In better understanding, the perceptions of GTAs who engage in need supportive training programs, researchers can better gauge the effectiveness of such programs and how they can be improved. Future research should focus on how to help GTAs to engage in more creative ways of using need supportive teaching strategies in physical activity environments.     

Relative age and maturation selection biases in academy football

ABSTRACT

This study examined the simultaneous effects of relative age and biological maturity status upon player selection in an English professional soccer academy. A total of 202 players from the U9 to U16 age groups, over an eight-year period (total of 566 observations), had their relative age (birth quarter) and biological maturity (categorised as late, on-time or early maturing based upon the Khamis-Roche method of percentage of predicted adult height at time of observation) recorded. Players born in the first birth quarter of the year (54.8%) were over-represented across all age groups. A selection bias towards players advanced in maturity status for chronological age emerged in U12 players and increased with age; 0% of players in the U15 and U16 age group were categorised as late maturing. A clear maturity selection bias for early maturing players was, however, only apparent when the least conservative criterion for estimating maturity status was applied (53.8% early and 1.9% late maturing in the U16 age group). Professional football academies need to recognise relative age and maturation as independent constructs that exist and operate independently. Thus, separate strategies should perhaps be designed to address the respective selection biases, to better identify, retain and develop players.     

Beer,banquets and a Patiala Peg: food and drink on tour

Abstract

This article critiques photographs and material culture pertaining to the consumption of food and alcohol during the first Australian cricket tour of India in 1935/36. The artefacts—menus, seating plans and food advertisements—enable the present-day researcher to interpret the rapidly transforming political, cultural and sporting landscape as well as the internal dynamics of the tour. The archival objects function as links to the cricketers and are pivotal in interpreting the 1935/36 tour in light of the absence of living participants. Food and beverages represent a significant ethnographic difference and the cricketers’ response to the customs of culinary consumption in late-colonial India exposes broader societal sentiments and reflects imperial politicking. The Australian cricketers encountered bicultural culinary influences comprising the vestiges of British hegemony in combination with a new nationalistic indigenous influence.     

结识新朋友

如果你刚刚在远离家人和朋友的新地方开始你的大学生活,请不要恐惧!大学是结识新朋友、建立伟大友谊的极好场所.     

Creating an online information literacy course for concurrent enrollment students: A collaboration with a state-sponsored online school

This article discusses a collaborative project to create an online one-credit library research course for high school students in a dual credit program. The project included a team of reference and instruction librarians at a midsize public university, the university's concurrent enrollment program, and an online state-sponsored school that provided courses to high school students. Current literature related to the information literacy knowledge gap, outreach to secondary schools, dual credit or concurrent enrollment programs, and for-credit online information literacy courses is reviewed. The process of creating the course will be discussed along with the benefits and challenges of the project.     

Putting the U in carbon capture and storage: rhetorical boundary negotiation within the CCS/CCUS scientific community

This paper examines responses to a framing shift from carbon capture and storage (CCS) to carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) within science and engineering professionals’ communication. We argue that the framing shift is a breach in the rhetorical boundaries of the CCS professional community that calls forth negotiation through responses that proactively support, resist, or acquiesce. This study offers a heuristic for examining scientific framing in expert-to-expert internal scientific rhetoric. It also contributes to contemporary research on the intersection of rhetoric of science and science, technology, and society; the social dimensions of CCS; energy communication; and applied communicative practices in scientific communities.     

Partnering with the Public Library for Health Care Education: An Evaluation of Affordable Care Act Messages

Despite implementation of most of the provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) by 2014, the public still has questions about the health care law. To assess the potential of using the library as a hub for ACA education, we tested existing and new culturally relevant messages about the health care law with twenty-seven community members. Participants discussed the message prototypes, including the visual components and promotional content, and provided advice to modify content and design to best reach target audiences. Future research can follow this example to engage libraries and community members in developing and evaluating culturally relevant health messages.     

Scaling and Sustaining an Intervention: The Case of Reading Recovery

ABSTRACT

In every school district across the country, every year, initiatives are adopted with the goal of improving the literacy performance of young students, and, just as frequently, these initiatives fail or quickly become passing fads. In this article, Rodgers reviews literature related to scaling educational innovations and describes challenges and barriers to implementing and maintaining evidence-based reform. Using Reading Recovery as a case example, she describes features of the intervention that are thought to be linked to its longevity in terms of scalability and sustainability. She also shares lessons learned from the most recent period of its expansion with the 5-year grant to scale up Reading Recovery across the county. Implications from this article include the importance of adopting an initiative that has a well-articulated design, collecting data on the progress of the students served, and having a person in the district who acts as a redirecting agent, maintaining the design of the initiative and guarding it against tendencies to pare down the design.     

Human stones

Stones occur in several parts of the human body—kidneys, bladder, prostate gland, gallbladder, salivary glands, pancreas. Although not regarded as life-threatening, they can be a source of considerable pain and discomfort. The world-wide occurrence of the various types of stone is such that many people are likely to be affected at one time or another, either directly or indirectly.