The two faces of political science studies—junior and senior students’ thoughts about their education and their future profession

The article reports on an empirical small scaled interview study among junior and senior students in the political science programme in a Swedish University. The aim is to describe how students at various stages of their studies conceive of their education as well as their future professional life. Questions about their identity as students have also been posed. The results indicate that a programme with a major emphasis on political science appears to have two different faces as experienced by the students. The first half of the programme is experienced as traditional liberal arts studies, i.e., the students enrol in a ‘personal bildung project’ and conceive of political scientists as a kind of watchdog for democracy. Students in the latter part of their studies report an emerging identity as investigators and civil servants and an appreciation of the parts of the studies that enhance their generic skills.     

Teaching and discussing about risk: seven elements of potential significance for science education

The present paper takes its point of departure in risk being a relevant content for science education, and that there are many different approaches to how to incorporate it. By reviewing the academic literature on the use and definitions of risk from fields such as engineering, linguistics and philosophy, we identified key elements of the risk concept relevant for science education. Risk is a phenomenon of the future that may be conveyed by our activity, it is something that may or may not take place. Hence, at the core of risk we find uncertainty and consequence. Furthermore, the elements of probability and severity are relevant modifiers of the consequence, as well as both subject to uncertainty. Additionally, in framing, understanding and decision-making on risk, as individuals or society, we need to acknowledge that risk has both objective and subjective components, lying in the interface between knowledge and values. In this paper, we describe how these key elements were derived from the literature and derive a schematic model of the risk concept for the purpose of science education. We further discuss how this model may assist in planning, execution and evaluation of teaching activities explicitly or implicitly involving risk issues.     

Demographic and psychological predictors of grade point average (GPA) in North-Norway: a particular analysis of cognitive/school-related and literacy problems

Approximately 30% of students drop out from Norwegian upper secondary schools. Academic achievement, as indexed by grade point average (GPA), is one of the strongest predictors of dropout. The present study aimed to examine the role of cognitive, school-related and affective/psychological predictors of GPA. In addition, we examined the psychometric properties of a new scale for literacy problems (LP), as well as its role for GPA. Analyses showed that the scale had favourable psychometric properties. Multivariable regression analyses showed that study track choice, task solving skills, gender, lack of educational plans and LP predicted GPA in descending order. The major implication of the study was that GPA is related to a multiple number of demographic, cognitive and psychosocial factors, and that any interventions addressing GPA will be less effective if not addressing psychosocial in addition to cognitive/school-related factors.     

Approximating Test Statistics Using Eigenvalue Block Averaging

We introduce and evaluate a new class of approximations to common test statistics in structural equation modeling. Such test statistics asymptotically follow the distribution of a weighted sum of i.i.d. chi-square variates, where the weights are eigenvalues of a certain matrix. The proposed eigenvalue block averaging (EBA) method involves creating blocks of these eigenvalues and replacing them within each block with the block average. The Satorra–Bentler scaling procedure is a special case of this framework, using one single block. The proposed procedure applies also to difference testing among nested models. We investigate the EBA procedure both theoretically in the asymptotic case, and with simulation studies for the finite-sample case, under both maximum likelihood and diagonally weighted least squares estimation. Comparison is made with 3 established approximations: Satorra–Bentler, the scaled and shifted, and the scaled F tests.     

Developmental dynamics of early reading skill,literacy interest and readers’ self-concept within the first year of formal schooling

Previous studies have documented robust relationships between emergent literacy and later reading performance. A growing body of research has also reported associations between motivational factors and reading in early phases of reading development. However, there is less research about cross-lagged relationships between motivational factors and reading skills in beginning readers. To examine relationships between early reading skills, literacy interest and reader self-concept, we tested 1141 children twice during their first year of formal reading instruction in school. Cross-lagged analysis showed strong stability in reading skills and medium stability in literacy interest and reader self-concept over the first school year. We also found bidirectional relationships between reading skills and self-concept and between the motivational components of literacy interest and reader self-concept. In the final part of the article, we address the potential theoretical progress attainable through the use of cross-lagged designs in this field.     

Technique analysis in elite athletes using principal component analysis

The aim of this study was to advance current movement analysis methodology to enable a technique analysis in sports facilitating (1) concurrent comparison of the techniques between several athletes; (2) identification of potentially beneficial technique modifications and (3) a visual representation of the findings for feedback to the athletes. Six elite cross-country skiers, three world cup winners and three national elite, roller ski skated using the V2 technique on a treadmill while their movement patterns were recorded using 41 reflective markers. A principal component analysis performed on the marker positions resulted in multi-segmental “principal” movement components (PMs). A novel normalisation facilitated comparability of the PMs between athletes. Additionally, centre of mass (COM) trajectories were modelled. We found correlations between the athletes’ performance levels (judged from race points) and specific features in the PMs and in the COM trajectories. Plausible links between COM trajectories and PMs were observed, suggesting that better performing skiers exhibited a different, possibly more efficient use of their body mass for propulsion. The analysis presented in the current study revealed specific technique features that appeared to relate to the skiers’ performance levels. How changing these features would affect an individual athlete’s technique was visualised with animated stick figures.     

‘The teacher sees my absence,not my participation’. Pupils’ experiences of being seen by their teacher in physical education class

Previous research shows that understanding pupils’ emotional affiliations with content in physical education (PE) is important. Findings point out the importance of the teacher signaling that the pupil is seen beyond the skill and knowledge aspects in class. However, the research literature does not offer very many detailed elaborations on the pupil’s own experiences of being seen. Contrasting interview data material from 26 pupils (age 17–18) in upper secondary school has been analysed to categorize the concept of ‘being seen’ by the PE teacher in class. In the analysis we found two main themes from the interviews that highlight a wide range of emotions the pupils might have. The first theme illuminates the positive experience of being seen, and such related aspects as learning-promoting feedback, respect and trust. The second theme demonstrates extremes when it comes to being seen: Not being seen at all or seen too much. Either way, PE classes will be experienced as demanding and in part difficult, albeit in different ways. We found that the feeling of being seen—or, for some pupils, ignored—appears to be a relatively stable feeling once it has taken root, eventually becoming an understanding. Moreover, being ignored means there will be low expectations of being seen in the future, unless the teaching practice is changed, and this emotion gives a poor foundation for well-being and learning. The analysis also shows that even if the sense of being seen is the pupil’s property and indisputable, teachers (and researchers) must have a critical attitude to the pupils’ narratives of being seen, as this feeling may be based on a skewed pre-understanding of the teacher.     

Pedagogization of elite sport in the school system: vested interests and dominant discourses

The Norwegian 2006 national curriculum reform introduced elite sport as an upper secondary school subject. The purpose of this innovation was twofold. Firstly, it was a political move to oppose the national growth of private elite sport schools. Secondly, the new elite sport curriculum formalizes opportunities for students taking academic programs in the school system to combine athletic ambitions and schooling. Acknowledging the multi-layered contexts of neoliberal education policy, the paper illuminates how vested interests in elite sport have strongly affected the elite sport pedagogic discourses in local comprehensive schools. The paper problematizes how the introduction of the elite sport national curriculum might have created some fundamental pedagogical and educational dilemmas rather than merely challenge the growth of private sports schools in the marketplace. The paper presents analyses of data collected from a purposeful sample of 3 local upper secondary schools’ website home pages. These schools are of particular interest as they have established partnerships with the national Olympic Committee’s High Performance Center (Olympiatoppen). By using the principle of decontextualization (Bernstein, 1990), my analyses reveal substantial transformations of the national curriculum texts. In contrast to the national curriculum with its emphasis on promoting knowledge, the schools discursively communicate how they provide elite sport opportunities that follow the national Olympic Committee High Performance Center’s philosophy for the development of young athletes.The paper problematizes how collaborations and partnerships with local schools have positioned the prestigious national Olympic Committee's High Performance Center as a recontextualizer of curricular knowledge (Bernstein, 1990. The structuring of pedagogic discourse. Volume IV. Class, codes and control. London: Routledge; 2000. Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity. Theory, research, critique (Rev. ed.). Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield), and thus, affects the schools’ pedagogization (Singh, 2002. Pedagogising knowledge: Bernstein’s theory and pedagogic device. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 23(4), 571–582) of elite sport. Underpinned by the principle of school choice in the neoliberal reform policy, the paper also highlights how vested national elite sport interests and discourses form part of current marketization processes in the school system.     

Initial psychometric testing of the coach-adapted version of the empowering and disempowering motivational climate questionnaire: A Bayesian approach

ABSTRACT

The present study examined the psychometric properties of the coach-adapted version of the Empowering and Disempowering Motivational Climate Questionnaire (EDMCQ) using Bayesian structural equation modelling (BSEM). The sample included 780 (M_age = 36.4; SD = 10.8; males n = 698; females n = 54; 28 participants did not report sex) youth sport coaches representing five European countries (i.e., England, France, Greece, Norway, and Spain). The results did not support a 34-item five-factor, hierarchical, a two-factor BSEM, or a bifactor BSEM model across the participating countries. However, the results supported a reduced 19-item first-order, two-factor BSEM model that largely showed approximate metric invariance, but not approximate scalar invariance across the five countries. The pool of items constituting empowering and disempowering motivational climates should be refined to further enhance the empirical operationalisation of the coach-adapted version of the EDMCQ. Advancing the quality of translation-back-translation procedures across cultures and conducting multi-national pilot testing seems warranted as well. These recommendations may help to identify the distinctive aspects of each underlying sub-dimension of the EDMCQ, where coaches are the respondents, and pave the way for further examination of the proposed hierarchical multidimensional factor structure and the cross-cultural equivalence of the EDMCQ for this population.     

Locality-adapted kernel densities of term co-occurrences for location prediction of tweets

While geographical metadata referring to the originating locations of tweets provides valuable information to perform effective spatial analysis in social networks, scarcity of such geotagged tweets imposes limitations on their usability. In this work, we propose a content-based location prediction method for tweets by analyzing the geographical distribution of tweet texts using Kernel Density Estimation (KDE). The primary novelty of our work is to determine different settings of kernel functions for every term in tweets based on the location indicativeness of these terms. Our proposed method, which we call locality-adapted KDE, uses information-theoretic metrics and does not require any parameter tuning for these settings. As a further enhancement on the term-level distribution model, we describe an analysis of spatial point patterns in tweet texts in order to identify bigrams that exhibit significant deviation from the underlying unigram patterns. We present an expansion of feature space using the selected bigrams and show that it eventually yields further improvement in prediction accuracy of our locality-adapted KDE. We demonstrate that our expansion results in a limited increase in the size of feature space and it does not hinder online localization of tweets. The methods we propose rely purely on statistical approaches without requiring any language-specific setting. Experiments conducted on three tweet sets from different countries show that our proposed solution outperforms existing state-of-the-art techniques, yielding significantly more accurate predictions.