Visual search,movement behaviour and boat control during the windward mark rounding in sailing

In search of key-performance predictors in sailing, we examined to what degree visual search, movement behaviour and boat control contribute to skilled performance while rounding the windward mark. To this end, we analysed 62 windward mark roundings sailed without opponents and 40 windward mark roundings sailed with opponents while competing in small regattas. Across conditions, results revealed that better performances were related to gazing more to the tangent point during the actual rounding. More specifically, in the condition without opponents, skilled performance was associated with gazing more outside the dinghy during the actual rounding, while in the condition with opponents, superior performance was related to gazing less outside the dinghy. With respect to movement behaviour, superior performance was associated with the release of the trimming lines close to rounding the mark. In addition, better performances were related to approaching the mark with little heel, yet heeling the boat more to the windward side when being close to the mark. Potential implications for practice are suggested for each phase of the windward mark rounding.     

Political Participation and Ideological News Online: “Differential Gains” and “Differential Losses” in a Presidential Election Cycle

Observations of the contemporary news media environment often revolve around the topics of ideological polarization and blurred boundaries between mass and interpersonal communication. This study explores these topics through a focus on the association between ideologically oriented online news use, commenting on online news, and political participation. We hypothesize that both ideological online news use generally and proattitudinal online news use are positively related to political participation and that online news commenting creates “differential gains” by augmenting these relationships. Yet we also hypothesize that counterattitudinal online news use is negatively related to political participation and that online news commenting creates “differential losses” by exacerbating this relationship. Analyses of two independently collected and nationally representative surveys found that frequent ideological online news use, proattitudinal online news use, and commenting are all positively related to political participation. We found no evidence for differential gains as a result of online commenting but only for differential losses—counterattitudinal online news use interacts with commenting to create a negative relationship with political participation.     

School Characteristics,Child Work,and Other Daily Activities as Sleep Deficit Predictors in Adolescents from Households with Unsatisfied Basic Needs

Sleep in adolescents has been shown to be an important factor when looking at physical, mental, and social well‐being. Little evidence is found regarding sleep patterns in adolescents from households facing extreme poverty, where conditions such as crowding, poor housing, sanitation or education, and precarious employment set an adverse environment for sleep. In this study, we sought to assess in a nationwide sample comprised of 1,682 adolescents from Argentina, how the presence of extreme poverty—as defined by the presence of unsatisfied basic needs (UBN)—affects the relationship of sleep duration with school, work, and other daily activities. A global high prevalence of short sleeping time, a slight increase of sleep time in adolescents with UBN, and different patterns of wake activities that predict sleep deficit, depending on the presence of UBN, were found. The poor academic achievement, increased risk of accidents, and adverse health outcomes associated with sleep deprivation support the view that sleep is an additional unsatisfied basic need that worsens living conditions at this age. The results may help to design public health policies that contribute to ameliorate this adverse situation.     

Democracy for Export: Museums Connect Program as a Vehicle of American Cultural Diplomacy

Sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and facilitated by the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) through the Museums Connect program, Identities: Understanding Islam in a Cross‐cultural Context is an exercise of community development and public inclusion from the perspective of cultural diplomacy. The 2009–10 project was a cooperative endeavor between the Museum of History and Holocaust Education (MHHE) at Kennesaw State University, Georgia, USA and the Ben M'sik Community Museum, Hassan II University, Casablanca, Morocco. Drawing on interviews conducted with the AAM managers and project participants, as well as relevant literature, the discussion considers the more important mechanisms of American museum missions and practices as means of achieving American foreign‐policy objectives.     

Improving Chilean In-service Elementary Teachers’ Understanding of Nature of Science Using Self-contained NOS and Content-Embedded Mini-Courses

Understanding nature of science (NOS) is considered critical to the development of students’ scientific literacy. However, various studies have shown that a large number of elementary and secondary science teachers do not possess an adequate understanding of NOS. This study investigated how elementary teachers’ understanding of NOS was impacted through a 1-year professional development program in Chile that included NOS instruction as a theme throughout two types of mini-courses in the program. Twelve teachers attended a 1-year development program focused on improving teacher content knowledge and included the instruction of NOS embedded in two self-contained NOS mini-courses (36 h) and two lessons (3 h each) within five science content mini-courses (30 h). The Views of NOS (version D+) questionnaire and interviews were used to assess teachers’ understanding of NOS at the beginning (January) and end of the program (December). Elementary teachers’ understanding of the creative, inferential, and tentative aspect of NOS showed improvement. According to the teachers’ perceptions, the most significant activities for improving their NOS understanding were decontextualized activities in both types of mini-courses (self-contained NOS and science content mini-courses). The implications for professional development programs are also discussed.     

Beyond the tools: analysing personal and group learning environments in a university course / Más allá de la tecnología: análisis de los entornos de aprendizaje personales y grupales de estudiantes en una asignatura universitaria

Abstract

In this paper we present the results of a naturalistic study carried out with higher education students which describes their learning environments when working on academic tasks in groups and individually. In this study we want to analyse how they organize their learning activities and knowledge processes (reading, reflecting and sharing) and how these learning processes are integrated into their Personal Learning Environments (PLE). In order to achieve that, students had to reflect about the basic ‘components’ that make up their learning process: reading (using not only by text but also multimedia), doing/reflecting (creating cognitive artefacts) and sharing (discussing, showing, and offering and receiving feedback from and to a community of reference). Students formed relationships between those components and any technological tools they used and created mind maps to represent their PLEs. The main objective is to try to understand how PLEs are organized and how they are perceived by learners, not from a technological perspective but from a learning perspective. The main results confirm the strong nature of PLEs as a pedagogical approach with a strong technological base. In addition, those results suggest a close relationship between students’ beliefs and expectations regarding academic tasks as well as the importance they give to each component in their learning process.     

A strategic approach of the crucial elements for the implementation of digital tools and processes in higher education

Implementation of digital tools and processes in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) as an emergent activity depends on the sociomaterial relationships between institutional factors that dynamically interact with each other. This article systematically explores through a literature review some of the most relevant and up-to-date published studies to identify the ‘important factors’ to consider for the implementation of digital tools and processes in HEI. The goal of the paper is to turn these factors, conceived initially as previous conditions or characteristics of the institutions or people, into a list of strategic elements to be fostered by HEI leadership teams to promote better implementation of digital tools and processes in their institutions. In the final part of this work, we propose a framework that reflects these elements in a visual approach that highlights the activity-centred character of the framework as well as the emergent character of the implementation process itself.     

Undergraduates' orientations towards student–university relationships: Measurement and associations with student characteristics and engagement

This study explored students' orientations towards student–university relationships and how they differ with regard to student characteristics and engagement. We developed an instrument measuring student orientations and utilised it in a survey of Russian undergraduates. Using latent class analysis, we identified the following types of Russian students' orientations: instructivists, consumerists, constructivists, and students with mixed orientations. As the results showed, the majority of our respondents have consumerist or mixed orientations that mostly mismatch with the actual models of student–university relationships at Russian universities. We also found that students with these orientations are less engaged than instructivists and constructivists. These findings demonstrate the importance of seeking an optimal match between diverse undergraduate orientations and the actual educational model, which fits national and institutional contexts.     

Young people’s expressed needs for Comprehensive Sexuality Education in Ecuadorian schools

This study analyses the expressed sexuality education needs of young people from Azuay, a region of Ecuador characterised by a large proportion of young people whose parents have migrated abroad, a group often considered at risk to developing of sexual health problems. Multi-stage stratified cluster sampling was used to recruit young people aged 11 and 19 years to the study. The expressed needs of participants were analysed in relation to gender, parents’ migratory status, age and geographical location. Survey findings revealed that young people expressed high needs with respect to the different components of Comprehensive Sexuality Education: gender roles, sexual and reproductive health, sexual citizenship, pleasure, violence, diversity and relationships. Ordinal regression analyses revealed few significant differences in relation to socio-demographic variables, which was surprising, in particular, with respect to the group of young people with migrating parents. Given the high levels of expressed needs, the findings carry important implications for the design and implementation of future sexuality education programmes.