The effects of anxiety and strategic planning on visual search behaviour

The past decade has witnessed increased interest in the visual search behaviour of athletes. Little is known, however, about the relationship between anxiety and eye movements in sport performers or about the extent to which athletes' planned and actual visual search strategies correspond. To address these issues, we conducted two studies. In Study 1, eight expert female gymnasts were presented with three digital slides of a model performing a skill that is known to be anxiety-provoking in this sport--namely, the 'back flip' on the beam. By varying the height of the beam and the presence or absence of safety mats, the slides differed in the amount of anxiety that they elicited vicariously in the viewer. In the study, the gymnasts were asked to imagine themselves in the position of the depicted model and to describe the anxiety that they felt. As they viewed the slides, their eye movements were recorded. As predicted, anxiety was associated with an increase in the number of fixations to peripheral areas. In addition, the more 'threatening' slides elicited significantly more fixations than the less feared images. In Study 2, the plans of 15 equestrian performers (5 expert, 5 intermediate and 5 novice) were elicited as they engaged in a virtual 'walk' around a computerized show-jumping course. Contrary to expectations, the congruence between intended and actual search behaviour was not significantly greater for expert riders than for the less skilled groups. Also, the fact that the top riders allocated more fixations to slides than the less skilled performers challenged the prediction that expertise would be associated with economy of visual search. Finally, as expected, the expert riders were significantly less dependent on the overall 'course plan' than the intermediate and novice equestrian performers when inspecting the fences.     

Education policy mobility: reimagining sustainability in neoliberal times

This paper is concerned with the twinning of sustainability with priorities of economic neoliberalization in education, and in particular via the mobility or diffusion of education policy. We discuss the literature on policy mobility as well as overview concerns regarding neoliberalism and education. The paper brings these analyses to bear in considering the uptake of sustainability in education policy. We ask to what extent sustainability as a vehicular idea may be twinning with processes of neoliberalization in education policy in ways that may undermine aspirations of, and action on, environmental sustainability. Toward the end of the paper, we draw on data from an empirical study to help elucidate how the analytic frames of policy mobility can inform our analyses of the potential concerns and possibilities of sustainability as a vehicular idea. In particular, we investigate how sustainability and related language have been adopted in the policies of Canadian post-secondary education institutions over time. The paper closes by suggesting the potential implications of the proceeding analyses for policymakers, practitioners, and researchers concerned with sustainability in education policy.     

The impact of the first COVID-19 lockdown in the UK for doctoral and early career researchers

Higher Education - Doctoral researchers and early career researchers (ECRs) are crucial to producing scientific advancements and represent the future of academic leadership. Their research...     

Development of letter position processing: effects of age and orthographic transparency

This study investigated the relative extent to which developing readers (6‐ and 9‐year‐olds) of English (deep) or Greek (transparent) orthography exhibit serial and exterior letter effects in letter position encoding. Participants were given a visual search task that required detection of a pre‐specified target letter within a random five‐letter string. Stimuli comprised letters either specific to English or Greek, or shared by both orthographies. For native letters, all readers showed significant initial‐letter facilitation. In contrast, final‐letter facilitation was shown only by English children. Furthermore, Greek 9‐year‐olds showed significantly more left‐to‐right facilitation than English 9‐year‐olds. These results suggest that letter position encoding is adaptive to the nature of the orthography acquired during reading development.     

Educational placements and National Curriculum Key Stage 2 test outcomes of children with a history of specific language impairment

As part of their longitudinal investigations of a large cohort with a history of specific language impairment (SLI), Professor Gina Conti-Ramsden and her research team based at the School of Education, University of Manchester, Dr Emma Knox, Dr Nicola Botting and Dr Zoë Simkin report on the changing educational placements and National Curriculum assessment outcomes of 200 children at 11 years. Teacher questionnaires reporting on the Year 6 primary education placements of the sample reveal details about the long-term educational needs of children with SLI.
Furthermore, in exploring the experiences of the sample in the National Curriculum Key Stage 2 tests the present study found that children with SLI perform poorly relative to national expectations of levels of achievement across all tests. At present there are no guidelines for supporting children with SLI in relation to National Curriculum tests and the present data suggests there is an obvious need for these to be developed.     

Gender,dialogue and discursive psychology: a pilot sexuality intervention with South African High-School learners

Good-quality sexuality education can be effective in reducing sexual health risks, but may also be disconnected from the lived realities of learners’ lives and reinforce gendered stereotypes. In line with the trend towards ‘empowerment’ in and through sexuality education, we implemented a pilot sexuality intervention with Grade 10 participants following a rigorous consultation process. Nine weekly group dialogues were held with 11 participants, with 2 follow-up sessions the next year. Freirian principles of critical consciousness and dialogical pedagogy, infused with discursive psychological understandings, were used to foreground gendered/sexual norms and to provide recognition for participants in a variety of gendered and sexual subject positions. Sessions were recorded, the facilitator kept a diary, and participants were asked to evaluate the intervention. The dialogical format of the group generated curiosity and engagement, and some participants took up a ‘responsible’ sexual subject position in a reflexive manner. A partial normalisation of some ‘hidden’ aspects of sex was enabled, and critical consciousness around some gendered inequities was promoted. We argue, first, that it is not so much sexuality education that young people need, but sexuality dialogues, and second, that a discursive psychology framework provides a nuanced and fruitful dimension to Freirean inspired ‘empowerment’ sexuality interventions.     

Epistemic beliefs in action: Spontaneous reflections about knowledge and knowing during online information searching and their influence on learning

In the present study it was investigated whether high school students are spontaneously able to reflect epistemologically during online searching for information about a controversial topic. In addition, we examined whether activating epistemic beliefs is related to individual characteristics, such as prior knowledge of the topic and argumentative reasoning skill; also whether learning from the Web is influenced by epistemic beliefs in action and the ability to detect fallacies in arguments. The participants (N = 64) were students of Grade 13, who were asked to think aloud during navigation. Qualitative and quantitative analyses were performed. Findings reveal that most participants spontaneously activated beliefs about all four dimensions identified in the literature, that is, about the simplicity/complexity, certainty/uncertainty, justification, and source of knowledge, at different levels of sophistication. Most epistemic reflections were about the source of knowledge. Two patterns of contextualized epistemic beliefs emerged and significantly influenced learning from the Web, which was also affected by participants' ability to identify argumentative fallacies.