Changing Practice,Feeling Good: primary professional development explored

This article uses teachers’ accounts to explore two issues. The first is concerned with the extent to which key events impact on professional growth and practice enhancement. The second is concerned with how classrooms looked and felt to a sample of primary teachers when, in their view, there were optimum opportunities for learning to occur. Links between these two issues are considered. The research sample is too small for generalisations to be claimed. However, common ground across participating teachers is evident and interesting trends have emerged in relation to practice enhancement. Data reveals the teachers as prepared to take risks, indeed risks seemed inevitable if practice was to develop. How they calculated the risks and how they overcame associated uncertainties is revealed in their thoughts and actions and reported here     

Fate and Fortune in a Modern Fairy Tale: Louis Sachar's Holes

Louis Sachar's Holes, first published in 1998, is an impressive example of how the themes and motifs of one of the oldest genres, the fairy tale, live on in contemporary children's fiction, and thus provide authors with an alternative to gritty realism' as a means of presenting to young readers the harshest of topics and environments. This article shows how Sachar adapts some of the characteristics of fairy tale, such as magic objects and formulae, stereotypical roles and repeated motifs, within a story set in a desert penal establishment for young offenders. Because of this blend between fantasy and realism, the provision of the novel with a fairy tale ending by means of a number of otherwise unbelievable coincidences, does not overtax the reader's credulity, but rather endows the novel with a positive message about the qualities of the human spirit.     

Reading Groups as Psychological Groups

Six classes of first-grade children were given a sociometric question asking them with which classmates they would prefer to work. The children were classified by their reading groups, and their in-group and out-group choices were analyzed. Each class was naturally trichotomized into three reading groups; top, middle, and lower. The reading groups were the only enduring groups of the classes. It was found that the lower reading group members chose fewer than expected children from their own groups (p < . 025) and more than expected children from the top reading groups (p < . 001). Members of the middle reading groups made fewer than expected choices from the lower reading groups (p < . 01) and more than expected choices from the top reading groups (p < . 001). The top reading group members made fewer than expected choices from the lower reading groups (p < . 001), f ewer than expected choices from the middle reading groups (p < . 06), and chose within their own groups more than expected (p < . 001). The results were discussed in terms of group cohesiveness and possible group effects upon learning.     

Policy and Practice in the Professional Development of Teachers

ABSTRACT

This paper is intended as a contribution towards understanding recent developments in government policy for teacher education by providing an account of the dilemmas and issues the authors are encountering in the course of developing practice in three key areas in the education of teaching. These are: the implementation of school‐based forms of initial teacher education in partnership with schools; the development of higher education involvement in and responsibility for teachers’ professional development in their first year of teaching; the development of profiles of competence by which to evaluate and assess the progress of beginning teachers. Opportunities for the creation of coherent, principled progression in the early years of teaching are identified, as are sources of confusion and tension in current policy changes.     

Problems of accountability in reinvented government: a case study of the Teacher Training Agency

This paper has as its focus the Teacher Training Agency (TTA), its structure and working practices. The Agency will be placed in context of the policy of ‘reinvented government’ which has been emerging in the UK over the last decade. Restructuring the organisational and administrative framework of public policy has given rise to issues concerning principles of accountability and representation. Such concerns are reflected in commentaries and evaluation of the TTA. In this sense, a central aim of the paper is to articulate the specifics of the TTA with the wider social policy literature which addresses the effects and democratic implications of public sector restructuring and the consequences for policy analysis.     

Predicting VO2max in College-Aged Participants Using Cycle Ergometry and Perceived Functional Ability

The purpose of this study was to develop a multiple linear regression model to predict treadmill VO_2max scores using both exercise and non-exercise data. One hundred five college-aged participants (53 male, 52 female) successfully completed a submaximal cycle ergometer test and a maximal graded exercise test on a motorized treadmill. The submaximal cycle protocol required participants to achieve a steady-state heart rate equal to at least 70% of age-predicted maximum heart rate (220-age), while the maximal treadmill graded exercise test required participants to exercise to volitional fatigue. Relevant submaximal cycle ergometer test data included a mean (±SD) ending steady-state heart rate and ending workrate equal to 164.2 ± 13.0 bpm and 115.3 ± 27.0 watts, respectively. Relevant non-exercise data included a mean (±SD) body mass (kg), perceived functional ability score, and physical activity rating score of 74.2 ± 15.1, 15.7 ± 4.3, and 4.7 ± 2.1, respectively. Multiple linear regression was used to generate the following prediction of (R = .91, standard error of estimates (SEE) = 3.36 ml·kg^?1·min^?1): VO_2max = 54.513 + 9.752 (gender, 1 = male, 0 = female) – .297 (body mass, kg) + .739 (perceived functional ability, 2–26) + .077 (work rate, watts) – .072 (steady-state heart rate). Each predictor variable was statistically significant (p < .05) with beta weights for gender, body mass, perceived functional ability, exercise workrate, and steady-state heart rate equal to .594, –.544, .388, .305, and –.116, respectively. The predicted residual sums of squares (PRESS) statistics reflected minimal shrinkage (R_PRESS = .90, SEE_PRESS = 3.56 ml·kg^?1·min^?1) for the multiple linear regression model. In summary, the submaximal cycle ergometer protocol and accompanying prediction model yield relatively accurate VO_2max estimates in healthy college-aged participants using both exercise and non-exercise data.     

Index for Volume 54 (1983)

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to develop a regression equation to predict maximal oxygen uptake (VO₂max) based on nonexercise (N-EX) data. All participants (N= 100), ages 18–65 years, successfully completed a maximal graded exercise test (GXT) to assess VO₂max (M= 39.96 mL·kg ^-1· min ^-1 , SD = 9.54). The N-EX data collected just before the maximal GXT included the participant's age; gender; body mass index (BMI); perceived functional ability (PFA) to walk, jog, or run given distances; and current physical activity (PA-R) level. Multiple linear regression generated the following N-EX prediction equation (R = .93, SEE = 3.45 mL·kg ^-1· min ^-1 , %SEE= 8.62): VO₂max (mL·kg ^-1· min ^-1 ) = 48.0730 + (6.1779 x gender; women = 0, men = 1) – (0.2463 x age) – (0.6186 x BMI) + (0.7115 x PFA) + (0.6709 x PA-R). Cross validation using PRESS (predicted residual sum of squares) statistics revealed minimal shrinkage (R _p = .91 and SEE _p = 3.63 mL·kg ^-1· min ^-1 ); thus, this model should yield acceptable accuracy when applied to an independent sample of adults (ages 18–-65 years) with a similar cardiorespiratory fitness level. Based on standardized β-weights, the PFA variable (0.41) was the most effective at predicting VO₂max followed by age (-0.34), gender (0.33), BMI (-0.27), and PA-R (0.16). This study provides a N-EX regression model that yields relatively accurate results and is a convenient way to predict VO₂max in adult men and women.