Patterns of accelerometer-derived sedentary time across the lifespan

ABSTRACT

We aimed to describe ST and its patterns on a national level. A hip-worn accelerometer (ActiGraph GT1M) was used to collect data during waking hours from 4575 Portuguese’ participants from 2007–2009 (2683 females) aged 10–102 years old. Data was presented by sex, in 5-years age intervals, and by adolescents (n=2833), adults (n=1122), and older adults (n=620). Lambda-mu-sigma (LMS) smoothed percentile curves were estimated. Girls, women, and older women spent 61, 57, and 64% of wear time in ST, respectively. In males, ST represented 57, 60, and 62% of wear time respectively for boys, men, and older men. Comparing to other age groups, older adults spent a larger amount of ST in bouts ≥30-min (women: 33%, men: 39% of total ST). The number of breaks/ST hour were: 10.6 in girls, 11.7 in women, and 9.6 in older women. In males, the number of breaks/ST hour were: 11.2, 10.5, and 8.5 for boys, men, and older men. In conclusion, ST was not consistently higher at older ages. Instead, we found that the potential critical moments in which ST may be higher are during adolescence and in the transition from adulthood into older adulthood, which represents critical periods for interventions.     

Technical and physical match performance of teams in the 2018 FIFA World Cup: Effects of two different playing styles

ABSTRACT

In order to investigate the effect of playing styles on the match performance of football teams, data were analysed on 18 technical performance-related variables and 8 physical performance-related variables from 59 matches in the 2018 FIFA World Cup. A k-means cluster analysis was conducted to classify all match observations into two clusters of tactical approach in order to identify the playing styles of teams (characterised as direct-play, possession-play and mixed-play). Separate Poisson regression models were run in the generalised mixed linear modelling to examine the differences in technical and physical performance between teams classified as using different playing styles when facing different opponents. Results showed that possession-play characterised teams achieved higher values in all the variables related to goal scoring, attacking and passing (ES: 0.32 ~ 1.27) and covered more distance in sprints and high-intensity running (ES: 0.33 ~ 0.47) than direct-play characterised teams. Both possession- and direct-play characterised teams achieved higher values in passing, pass accuracy and delivery into the attacking third playing against direct-play characterised teams than playing against possession-play characterised sides (ES: 0.22 ~ 0.98). These findings may provide insights into the establishment of performance profiles of teams with different tactical styles and the development of specific training drills to optimise playing style.     

The Distant Other

This study analyses the representation of immigrants in four Spanish national newspapers, El País, El Mundo, La Razón and ABC, between 1 June 2013 and 31 June 2014. Seven days per month were randomly selected, each corresponding to a different day of the week; 91 editions of each paper, 364 in total, were analysed. Of the 289 items relating to immigrants, 179 in which one or more photographs appeared in addition to text were chosen for analysis. Among the main results, two stand out: first, immigrants do not usually have an opportunity to communicate directly with readers and, secondly, the treatment of news items on immigration by the four Spanish newspapers is variable.     

Correcting for sample problems in PISA and the improvement in Portuguese students’ performance

The results of large-scale international assessments such as Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) have attracted a considerable attention worldwide and are often used by policy-makers to support educational policies. To ensure that the published results represent the actual population, these surveys go through a thorough scrutiny to ensure their validity. One important issue that may affect the results is the occurrence of different participation rates across groups with heterogeneous average student scores. In this study, we illustrate how problems of representativeness of the samples may be corrected by the use of post-stratified weights. We use the case of Portugal, a country where we uncover a meaningful difference between the actual population and the PISA samples in terms of the distribution of students per grade and track of studies. We show that after post-stratification, the temporal evolution of the PISA scores is quite different from the one reported.     

Learning to spell regular and irregular verbs

Several conventional spelling sequences for morphemes do not conform to letter-sound correspondence rules. One example is the -ed spelling for the inflectional morpheme at the end of English past verbs. Previous work has shown a close relationship between children's awareness of grammatical distinctions and their success in learning about this spelling sequence. However, this research was with real verbs and the children's spelling might have been influenced by familiarity with the words. To check this, we devised a task with pseudo-verbs. This is a novel use of pseudo-words, which hitherto have been a tool for testing letter-sound knowledge; here the spellings violated letter-sound relationships and followed a morphological pattern. The children heard passages with a pseudo-verb in the past tense and in other tenses and had to write the pseudo-verb in the past tense. The task contained both regular pseudo-verbs, whose stem was the same in the present and past tense, and irregular pseudo-verbs, which had different stems in the present and the past tense. The children's scores in a grammatical awareness task predicted their use of the -ed spelling sequence over a 21 month period. The children also used -ed endings significantly more often in regular than irregular pseudo-verbs. We conclude that the use of -ed endings for regular verbs reflects a morphological spelling strategy based on children's grammatical awareness.     

The effects of learning to spell on children’s awareness of morphology

Because the spelling of many words in the English language (and in many other languages as well) depends on their morphemic structure, children have to have some knowledge about morphemes in order to learn to read and write. This raises the possibility that children gain much of their explicit knowledge about morphemes as a direct result of learning to read and to spell. We report two large-scale longitudinal studies that support the idea of this kind of causal connection. In the first study children’s success in spelling the inflexion at the end of regular past verbs predicted their performance in two morphological awareness tasks a year later. In the second study the children’s consistency in spelling morphemes predicted their ability to define new words on the basis of their morphemic structure. We conclude that the experience of learning to read and write does affect people’s knowledge of morphemes, and we argue that the causal relationship between morphemic knowledge and reading and writing is probably a two-way one.     

Backward readers’ awareness of language: Strengths and weaknesses

An important, though somewhat neglected, aspect of learning to spell in English and in many other orthographies is that children have to learn about the conventional spellings for morphemes which often depart from strict letter-sound principles. There is some evidence that backward readers might have great difficulties with these spellings. We looked at a group of backward readers’ (BR) spelling of “ed” in regular past verbs and “wh” in interrogatives, and also at their grammatical awareness and we compared them to one control group matched on chronological age (CA) and to another matched on reading level (RL). The backward readers were considerably behind the CA controls in producing grammatically based spelling patterns correctly and also in the grammatical awareness tasks, but no worse than the RL controls in either of these domains: in fact they were better with the “wh” spellings. We conclude that learning the written language makes a significant contribution to the development of grammatical awareness and this interferes with BR progress in grammatical awareness when they are compared to their cohort. However, there is no evidence of an intrinsic difficulty with grammatical awareness among BR and perhaps this strength could be used to support their spelling.     

Influence of subject matter setting on comprehension monitoring

Research on the influence of subject matter setting on comprehension monitoring by secondary school students is reported in this article. Subjects were led to believe that they were reading passages from a science textbook in a science class or, alternatively, from a newspaper in a language class. Comprehension monitoring was expected to diminish in a situation in which information was acquired from a scientific source, in a science class, when compared to a situation in which information was acquired from a less authoritative source, like a newspaper, in a language class. Comprehension monitoring was measured by analyzing subjects' responses to a questionnaire and their written recall of several contradictory texts. Contrary to what was expected, evaluation and regulation of comprehension increased in the science setting. It was concluded that comprehension monitoring is dependent on subject matter setting, and that science education has a beneficial effect on this variable.     

Video for teaching: classroom use,instructor self-production and teachers’ preferences in presentation format

ABSTRACT

This study explores the use of digital videos in education, from the perspective of the teacher as an agent of technological integration. Secondary and university teachers were surveyed in a region-wide case study. Three topics were specifically surveyed: common uses of digital video in teaching, instructor self-production of educational videos, and preferences in common presentation formats (chalk-and-talk, screencast, PowerPoint, demonstration and whiteboard writing). Results show that secondary teachers make more use of digital video and are more innovative than university teachers. Video self-production is scarce, though respondents declare a positive attitude, with time constraints and technical qualification as main reported obstacles. Preferences in video presentation formats reveal notable differences between secondary and university teachers for some formats. Preferences are also moderately influenced by the teacher’s knowledge field, and by experience with ICT and video production.