Sports History: What Can Be Done?

Abstract

In the early 1980s, Redman (1984) reported that sports history is ‘alive and free and growing in academe’ (p. 38). A few years later Park warned that sports history was in a ‘descending spiral’. This article analyses the rapid turn around in the fortunes of sports history and its ongoing decline over the last decade in the curricula of university departments of physical education. While changes within physical education, including its scientisation, fragmentation and specialisation, partly account for the shift, sports historians too must take responsibility. In many instances they have failed to convince their colleagues that sports history is a scholarly pursuit; nor have they encouraged sufficient numbers of undergraduates. Three approaches are suggested here to help ‘rescue’ sports history. First, sports historians should pay greater attention to the intellectual history of sport and its interrelationships with physical education. Second, they should engage the intrinsic historicity of science and forge new relationships with those scientific subdisciplines which constitute physical education. Third, sports historians should oblige their students to see themselves as actors in the processes of intellectual and social change.     

Journals based on applications: An attempt to improve students' learning about composite materials

In a course on composite materials for fourth-year students at Chalmers University of Technology, students are required to write journals as a complement to the more traditional teaching approach. The journals comprise a series of reports relating the theory currently being treated to an application object, and are sent to the teacher by e-mail for comments. These give the students the opportunity to make use of the theoretical knowledge they meet in each section of the course by reflecting on how it is applicable to a real application. The goal is for better, more integrated understanding, in that, on the one hand, the students should understand the importance of each part of the course and, on the other hand, they should be able to relate the parts to one another, and to practical application. In this paper, we describe the goals and strategies of the change to teaching, we analyse the ways that students approach the journal writing task and we discuss ways in which the journals can improve the quality of student learning.     

Exploratory Talk and Task-based Learning: A Case Study of a Student’s Learning Journey on an MA (Education) English Language Teaching Course

This article records and evaluates a student’s learning journey in two modules on an MA (Education) English Language Teaching (ELT) programme: an Oracy and ELT Pedagogy module and an Educational Technologies module. The notions of ‘exploratory talk’ and ‘task-based learning’ are explored using a single case study with material drawn from the student’s autobiography and diary, the spoken and written assignments, and the student and lecturers’ reflections on completion of the modules. We show, through the use of autobiography and critical reflection, what the student brings to the course and how this reflection allows him to use and transfer knowledge from one module to another. We analyse the ways in which the modules complement each other and how this influences the student’s learning and teaching practice. We then identify the key features of his learning in relation to ELT pedagogy.     

Literature searching for social science systematic reviews: consideration of a range of search techniques

Background: Literature for a systematic review on the student experience of e‐learning is located across a range of subject areas including health, education, social science, library and information science. Objectives: To assess the merits and shortcomings of using different search techniques in retrieval of evidence in the social science literature. Methods: A conventional subject search was undertaken as the principal method of identifying the literature for the review. Four supplementary search methods were used including citation searching, reference list checking, contact with experts and pearl growing. Results: The conventional subject search identified 30 of 41 included references; retrieved from 10 different databases. References were missed by this method and a further 11 references were identified via citation searching, reference list checking and contact with experts. Pearl growing was suspended as the nominated pearls were dispersed across numerous databases, with no single database indexing more than four pearls. Conclusions: Searching within the social sciences literature requires careful consideration. Conventional subject searching identified the majority of references, but additional search techniques were essential and located further high quality references.     

The Development of Gendered Interests and Personality Qualities From Middle Childhood Through Adolescence: A Biosocial Analysis

This study charted the development of gendered personality qualities and activity interests from age 7 to age 19 in 364 first- and secondborn siblings from 185 White, middle/working-class families, assessed links between time in gendered social contexts (with mother, father, female peers, and male peers) and gender development, and tested whether changes in testosterone moderated links between time use and gender development. Multilevel models documented that patterns of change varied across dimensions of gender and by sex and birth order and that time in gendered social contexts was generally linked to development of more stereotypical qualities. Associations between time with mother and expressivity and time with father and instrumentality were stronger for youth with slower increases in testosterone.     

Ensuring the Provision of Accessible Digital Resources

A lack of awareness of disability issues in the provision of digital educational material is resulting in a situation where much of this material is, to some degree, inaccessible to people with certain disabilities. Current and proposed disability legislation in countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom means that any educational material produced by institutions, and which has accessibility barriers, may soon be illegal. This paper discusses the issues involved in the provision of accessible digital material, with a heavy emphasis on Web‐based resources, with a view to raising awareness and avoiding a potentially embarrassing situation for educational institutions. The various assistive technologies used by disabled people to access digital material are discussed, along with the problems by inaccessible material, illustrated by examples of inaccessible Web pages. Solutions for ensuring the accessibility of digital material are provided, including a discussion of open standards and guidelines and principles of accessible content design     

The communication anxiety inventory: Validation of state‐and context‐communication apprehension

Research reported in this paper investigates the reconceptualization (McCroskey, 1984) of communication apprehension (CA), focusing on the relationship between context‐CA and state‐CA. The validity of the reconceptualization can be enhanced by demonstrating that state‐CA (level of fear and anxiety) is systematically related to context‐CA (predisposition). Two research studies using a new operational measures of state‐CA and context‐CA, the Communication Anxiety Inventory, offer empirical support for the relationship between context‐CA and state‐CA. Results show that context‐CA explains a minimum of 50% of the state‐CA variance. Conclusions suggest that level of fear or anxiety varies closely with context‐CA and that the new scales have strong predictive validity.