Lacrosse History,a History of One Sport or Two? A Comparative Analysis of Men's Lacrosse and Women's Lacrosse in the United States

Men's lacrosse and women's lacrosse share a name, but their histories differ. Both sports developed and became organised in close concert with the race, class and gender expectations of the eras. As a result, the sports began with rules that reflected those norms. Over time, the sports developed separately and generated unique forms, even as they sustained moments of interaction. Therefore, men's lacrosse and women's lacrosse are different sports. Using comparisons as the mode through which to view the sports, this article explores the organised beginnings of men's lacrosse and women's lacrosse to establish that the sports began and continued within identity-based norms. Through the discussion of the practical distinctions and critical understandings of the differences between the games, the author poses that these dissimilarities are relevant in considerations of the separate sports as they continue to change in the larger US sporting context. As sports such as basketball demonstrate, these arguments matter because broad-scale comparisons of women's sports to men's frequently render women's sport participants, and the sports they play, inferior. Notably, women's lacrosse participants also employed comparisons to distinguish and claim their history as unique from that of men's lacrosse. A comparative analysis highlights points of disjuncture between the sports and contextualises the importance of gender in the articulations of difference.     

Imagining a future,living in the present and remembering the past

The remit for this short piece was to identify themes emerging from the articles in this edition by Julie McLeod, Duncan Waite and Eugenie Samier, to consider how these themes reflect on the current field, and to identify their ongoing relevance. Additionally, I was asked to consider the current challenges that the field is facing and what this means for research and journals such as this one. My short response is that our research has to matter. It has to matter to us as individuals so that what we do is worthwhile; it has to matter that we can provide rigorous research that is reliable so that it can inform policy makers and administrators; and it has to provide teachers and students with a greater understanding of why they are doing what they are being asked to do.     

Innovative Experiential Learning Activities in Aging: The Experiences of Four BEL Projects

The BSW Experiential Learning (BEL) Program aims to infuse intergenerational content into the curriculum and recruit students to the field of social work by implementing face-to-face learning opportunities with older adults. This article discusses and compares the experiences of 4 diverse BEL projects that implemented gero-experiential learning activities into 1 or more of the BSW curriculum areas: introduction/social work practice, social welfare policy, human behavior in the social environment, social work research, and field practicum. “Three keys to success” are offered as ways in which gero-experiential activities may be successfully implemented by other programs.     

Socio-Politically Relevant Pedagogy for Immigrant and Refugee Youth

In this article, the authors discuss how one public high school became a site for socio-politically relevant pedagogy for immigrant and refugee youth, building on the concept of culturally relevant pedagogy that has been discussed in educational scholarship (Howard, 2001, 2003; Ladson-Billings, 1994, 1995a, 1995b). By exploring newcomer youth's understandings of their experiences, self-conceptions, and positioning in the global economy, the authors draw on a three-year qualitative case study utilizing ethnographic methods to highlight the key tenets of a socio-politically relevant pedagogy for youth who lead transnational lives. The key tenets proposed include: (1) the cultivation of critical consciousness around global inequalities and transnational migration; (2) the creation of formal and informal avenues for reciprocal learning between families/communities and schools; and (3) support and care for the material conditions of students' and families' lives.     

The changing status of higher education in the ‘moronic inferno’

Getting a good and relevant education is difficult enough to achieve within a context where social and economic needs are constantly unsettled by political policy. The public funding of the education sector has become a contested arena irrespective of a government’s ideology. Recent graduates from various disciplines from Town Planning to Philosophy report in university destination surveys that they have only found employment in areas unrelated to their academic training – for instance, in supermarkets, restaurants and other low-level service industries. How has it happened that the universalisation of mass higher education has contributed to a disconnect between the individual’s social aspirations and their economic status? What happened to the tacit promise that an extended period of intellectual development would prepare the individual for a life of valuable social contribution and financial security? Part of the answer lies in the success of higher education itself. Its popularity has changed its transformative capacity and allowed operational efficiencies to overrule academic quality. The university, ideally seen as a repository of intellectual intuition, has been remade into yet another modern corporation concerned with the bottom line and financial security. Why has it been necessary to remake the university in the image of the department store, supermarket or bank, and how has it been achieved without more critique?     

Patterns of participation in year 9 academic testing and factors predicting absence on the day of test

Policies aiming to improve educational outcomes are typically based on academic testing data. However, such data only reflect the performance of students who completed the tests. It is possible that students who were absent have shared characteristics. The proportion of students absent out of all eligible school students and whether they have shared characteristics has not been investigated, as this is only possible through the use of linked administrative data. Participants were born in Western Australia in 1994 and 1995, and their birth records were linked to participation status in the Year 9 academic tests to determine the proportion of students who were absent. Logistic regression was conducted to investigate characteristics which predicted absence on test day. A proportion of non-Aboriginal (3.2 %) and Aboriginal students (21.9 %) were absent on test day. Risk factors which predicted the absence included contact with Child Protection and Family Services, history of maternal mental health problems, and fathers aged below 20 years at the time of their child’s birth. A significant proportion of students was absent and therefore not represented in academic achievement information. These students were more likely to have experienced adverse events and therefore are not randomly absent. As these data are typically used to inform policies which aim to improve educational outcomes, they may lack the necessary information to adequately address the complex needs of students who are absent on test day. However, findings suggest that service providers, as well as schools may play an important role in encouraging participation in school.     

Coaching competency and satisfaction with the coach: a multi-level structural equation model

The purpose of this initial predictive validity study was to determine the ability of measures derived from the Athletes' Perceptions of Coaching Competency Scale II?-?High School Teams (APCCS II-HST) to predict satisfaction with the head coach. Specification of the statistical model was informed by the mediational model of coach-athlete interactions. The technical quality of the satisfaction measure was evaluated before testing the predictive validity of the coaching competency measures. Data were collected from athletes of seven sports. Athlete observations (N?=?748) were clustered within teams (G?=?74). Multi-group confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) provided evidence for factorial invariance of a reduced version of the satisfaction measure by athlete gender. Multi-level CFA provided evidence of model-data consistency for a reduced version of the satisfaction measure. Multi-level structural equation modelling provided evidence for the ability of latent coaching competency to positively predict latent satisfaction at both the athlete level (technique competency and motivation competency) and the team level (coaching competency) and for close model-data fit. Implications of this study include: that the APCCS II-HST should be viewed as a replacement for the Coaching Competency Scale when the intended population is appropriate; a preliminary multi-level measurement model for satisfaction with one's coach that should be considered as a potential starting point in subsequent studies; and empirical support for a key relationship proposed in the mediational model of coach-athlete interactions.     

A process for the critical analysis of instructional theory

Some have argued for a common language in the field of instructional design in an effort to reduce misunderstandings and simplify a multitude of synonymous terms and concepts. Others feel that this goal is undesirable in that it precludes development and flexibility. In this article we propose an ontology-building process as a way for readers to compare and analyze terms and concepts across theories. This process entails the development of categories that emerge from the literature, and the comparison of theories across categories. Such a process can reveal broader concepts that exist beyond specific theoretical terminology, differences in meanings behind common terms used by theorists, a greater understanding of the theorists’ intent, and discontinuities and gaps within the theoretical literature.     

Note-taking within MetaTutor: interactions between an intelligent tutoring system and prior knowledge on note-taking and learning

Hypermedia learning environments (HLE) unevenly present new challenges and opportunities to learning processes and outcomes depending on learner characteristics and instructional supports. In this experimental study, we examined how one such HLE—MetaTutor, an intelligent, multi-agent tutoring system designed to scaffold cognitive and metacognitive self-regulated learning (SRL) processes—interacts with learner’s prior domain knowledge to affect their note-taking activities and subsequent learning outcomes. Sixty (N = 60) college students studied with MetaTutor for 120 min and took notes on hypermedia content of the human circulatory system. Log-files and screen recordings of learner-system interactions were used to analyze notes for several quantitative and qualitative variables. Results show that most note-taking was a verbatim copy of instructional content, which negatively related to the post-test measure of learning. There was an interaction between prior knowledge and pedagogical agent scaffolding, such that low prior knowledge students took a greater quantity of notes compared to their high prior knowledge counterparts, but only in the absence of MetaTutor SRL scaffolding; when agent SRL scaffolding was present, the note-taking activities of low prior knowledge students were statistically equivalent to the number of notes taken by their high prior knowledge counterparts. Theoretical and instructional design implications are discussed.