Reasons for the collaborative difficulties between psychoeducational consultants and teachers: an exploratory analysis / Análisis exploratorio de las variables relacionadas con las dificultades de los asesores psicopedagógicos para colaborar con los profesores

Abstract

This paper examines whether the difficulties in collaboration identified in the sessions of five consultants working with teachers and whether the consultants’ high participation (a type of hyper-responsibility) are related to the ongoing episode of the problem solving process, the origin of the request, and the topic of the session. Results show that collaboration difficulties tend to be more frequent when consultants and teachers discuss teaching-learning processes and that the consultants’ hyper-responsibility is more common: (a) when they are looking for solutions, (b) when they start some action with the support of the tradition of the educational setting or the support of the regulation, and (c) when they are discussing career guidance and mentoring.     

PART III: KINANTHROPOMETRY

Whole-body bone mineral density and bone mineral mass in young adult rugby union players.     

A 3D kinematic analysis of breathing patterns in competitive swimmers

Abstract

The purpose of this paper was to understand which differences long-term swimming training can cause on trunk mechanics during breathing and how these differences are related to the years of swimming training. The variations and coordination among trunk compartments were considered as target movement patterns. Video-based plethysmography was utilised for data acquisition and pre-processing. A group of swimmers, who followed a long-term intensive swimming training previously to this study, was compared with a non-swimmer control group. The participants of both groups performed quiet breathing and vital capacity tests. From the compartmental volumes associated with each breathing curves, the relative amplitude and cross-correlation among these volumetric time-varying signals were calculated, in order to analyse the relative partial volume variation and the coordination among trunk compartments involved in respiration. The results of a Mixed-ANOVA test (P ≤ 0.05) revealed higher coefficient of variation (P < 0.001) and correlations among trunk compartments in the swimmers group when vital capacity was performed. Significant linear regression was found between the years of swim training and the coefficients of variation and correlation. The results suggest that after long periods of intensive swim training, athletes might develop specific breathing patterns featuring higher volume variations in the abdominal region and more coordination among compartments involved in forced respiratory tasks such as vital capacity.     

Imposing a pause between the eccentric and concentric phases increases the reliability of isoinertial strength assessments

Abstract

This study analysed the effect of imposing a pause between the eccentric and concentric phases on the biological within-subject variation of velocity- and power–load isoinertial assessments. Seventeen resistance-trained athletes undertook a progressive loading test in the bench press (BP) and squat (SQ) exercises. Two trials at each load up to the one-repetition maximum (1RM) were performed using 2 techniques executed in random order: with (stop) and without (standard) a 2-s pause between the eccentric and concentric phases of each repetition. The stop technique resulted in a significantly lower coefficient of variation for the whole load–velocity relationship compared to the standard one, in both BP (2.9% vs. 4.1%; P = 0.02) and SQ (2.9% vs. 3.9%; P = 0.01). Test–retest intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) were r = 0.61–0.98 for the standard and r = 0.76–0.98 for the stop technique. Bland–Altman analysis showed that the error associated with the standard technique was 37.9% (BP) and 57.5% higher (SQ) than that associated with the stop technique. The biological within-subject variation is significantly reduced when a pause is imposed between the eccentric and concentric phases. Other relevant variables associated to the load–velocity and load–power relationships such as the contribution of the propulsive phase and the load that maximises power output remained basically unchanged.     

Genome: twisting stories with DNA

In 1920, the German botanist Hans Winkler coined the concept of the ‘genome’. This paper explores the history of a concept that has developed in parallel with advances in biology and supports novel and powerful heuristic biological research in the 21st century. From a structural interpretation (the genome as the haploid number of chromosomes), it has changed to keep pace with technological progress and new interpretations of the material of heredity. In the first place, the ‘genome’ was extended to include all the material in the nucleus, then the sum of all genes, and (with the discovery of the structure of DNA) the sum of the nucleotide base sequences. In the early 21st century, it has become a much more complex and central concept that has spawned the growing field of studies referred to as the ‘omics’.     

How education background affects design outcome: teaching product development to mechanical engineers,industrial designers and managers

ABSTRACT

Product design and development (PDD) is a current topic of academic and industrial research. Emphasis on innovation and entrepreneurship, as well as design thinking and creativity has been recently pulled together into the teaching and research on PDD. This paper looks into a multidisciplinary setting made up of three similar but independent PDD masters courses taught at three higher education institutions, having the same assessment, syllabus, assignments and outcomes. As expected, students’ projects foci are different. The outcomes of this experience were confronted with an ex-post literature review, which generated thorough guidelines that supported an innovative proposal for PDD education, to be implemented into an interdisciplinary Summer School. Significant generalisable contributions for educating modern engineers, designers and business entrepreneurs are expected, instead of just teaching methods of engineering, design and entrepreneurship at the case universities. The limitation of the used inductive reasoning concerns ‘truth’ being suggested but not assured.     

Understanding the prospect of success in professional training: an ethnography into the assessment of problem-based learning

One of the most fundamental innovations in higher education is the introduction of the method known as problem-based learning (PBL). While literature has largely focused on its learning goals and the transition from lectures to tutorials, little research has problematised why this is a successful methodology and what we consider as students’ success. Drawing upon various ethnographic techniques, the authors analyse PBL as a field of expectations in light of Expectation-Value Theory. Beyond merely showing that PBL is a culturally constructed practice, the article elaborates on how students’ expectations inform practices, performance and evaluation, which is important for assessing the successfulness of the method. By discussing students’ expectations, dynamics and power relations, the present article is a contribution to the research addressing what has come to be known as the ‘black box’ of PBL.     

Developing understanding of mathematical modeling in secondary teacher preparation

This study examines the evolution of 11 prospective teachers’ understanding of mathematical modeling through the implementation of a modeling module within a curriculum course in a secondary teacher preparation program. While the prospective teachers had not previously taken a course on mathematical modeling, they will be expected to include modeling as part of the school curriculum under current state standards. The module consisted of readings, analysis of the Common Core State Standards, carefully designed modeling activities, individual and group work, discussion, presentations, and reflections. The results show that while most prospective teachers had misconceived definitions of mathematical modeling prior to the module, they developed the correct understanding of modeling as an iterative process involving making assumptions and validating conclusions connected to everyday situations. The study reveals how the prospective teachers translated the modeling cycle into practice in the context of a carefully designed open-ended problem and the strong connections between modeling activities and promoting mathematical practices.     

On the Concept of Energy: Eclecticism and Rationality

In the theory of heat of the first half of the nineteenth century, heat was a substance. Mayer and Joule contradicted this thesis but developed different concepts of heat. Heat was a force for Mayer and a motion for Joule. Both Mayer and Joule determined the mechanical equivalent of heat. This result was, however, justified in accordance with those concepts of heat. Mayer’s characterisation of force reappears in the very common textbook definition ‘energy cannot be created or destroyed but only transformed’ and his theory led to a phenomenological approach to energy. Joule and Thomson’s concept of heat led to a mechanistic approach to energy and to the common definition ‘energy is the capacity of doing work’. One and the same term ‘energy’ subsumed these two approaches. The problematic concept of energy, energy as a substance, appears then as a result of an eclectic development of the concept. Another approach, which appeared in the 1860s, is directly based on the mechanical equivalent of heat and can be characterized by the use of ‘principle of equivalence’ instead of ‘principle of energy conservation’. Unlike the others, this approach, which has been lost, poses no problems with the concept of energy. The problems with the energy concept as to the kind of phenomena dealt with in the present paper can, however, be overcome, as we shall see, in distinguishing between that which comes from experiments and that which is an interpretation of the experimental results within a conceptual framework.