The green waves of environmental sustainability in sport

The purpose of this paper is to provide a conceptual framework surrounding the typology of environmental sustainability efforts made within the sport industry. We draw from multiple theoretical frameworks (i.e. institutional theory and diffusion of innovation) to understand the increased similarities of environmental sustainability efforts through organizational learning as environmental sustainability efforts become more purposeful and sophisticated across the sport industry. The paper uses examples from various sport organizations and leagues to classify the efforts of sport organizations into waves of sport environmental sustainability efforts and important implications arising from them.     

Parent empowerment for family literacy: a European initiative

The article describes the genesis of, rationale for and running of the Parent Empowerment for Family Literacy Project (PEFaL), a European‐Union funded six‐nation family literacy initiative that took place between 2001 and 2004. Whilst a number of features of the project are typical of family literacy programmes, some aspects of PEFaL are identifiably distinctive. These include the multicultural, trans‐cultural and linguistic dimensions, and an innovative attempt to encourage parent and child participants to communicate with each other across countries by email and the Internet. These features and some of the project outcomes are discussed and prospects for follow‐on activities are examined.     

Building learning communities with distance learning intruction

The results presented in this study represent only one of four assigned discussion board activities from only one course. However, these results are not atypical of the amount or nature of student engagement in successive discussion board assignments to these same 23 graduate students. By the final of the four on-line discussions, student engagement did decrease slightly, but still remained well above the assigned requirements. Also, similar patterns of high frequency of student involvement were found in other courses using the same type of on-line discussion board assignments. An additional anecdotal observation was completed by the course instructor; after the first on-line activity had been completed and the students re-convened on campus for class, class members appeared more comfortable and more engaged during in class discussions. In summary, the results of this study indicate that specific types of on-line instruction are capable of developing learning communities among on-line learners and creating a satisfying learning experience.     

Employability pathways for young adults: lived experiences of learners and practitioners in Youth Guarantee programmes

ABSTRACT

Until today, thousands of young adults still dropout of school with no or low qualifications and experience difficulties in entering the labour market. The European Commission offers funding and opportunities for young adults to enter employability enhancing training, often organised under its flagship initiative ‘The Youth Guarantee’. The aim of these programmes is to make young adults a work, training or educational offer within four months of their start into this initiative.

In this paper, we critically explore the concept of employability and focus on the roles of both the young adults undergoing training interventions, but also of practitioners whose work is ideally embedded within the local context of the labour market and the economy. We were interested in the participation experiences by both groups to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of these programmes. Evidence from interviews demonstrated that learners and practitioners were generally satisfied with the interventions, although individualised support was preferred over group-based activities. Working with stakeholders was strongly recommended for this target group who tends to experience cumulative disadvantages. Long-term follow-up of participants’ destinations will provide better evidence on the effectiveness of these programmes.     

Process-Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL) as a Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (CRP) in Qatar: a Perspective from Grade 10 Chemistry Classes

Research in Science Education - Educational reforms in Qatar have seen the implementation of inquiry-based learning and other student-centred pedagogies. However, there have been few efforts to...     

The fog of online learning

The authors recognized a close similarity between practices used in online genealogy research and those common in online education. Uses of a popular online database service were examined within a peer instruction community dedicated to researching a family history topic. Three community subgroups were divided into leaders, who base their work on external sources, and followers who copy the leaders’ conclusions. The accuracy and error levels of the 21 family trees produced by these researchers were calculated in relation to data obtained from offline archives. The trees created in the online process all contained flawed details and invalid conclusions due to practices similar to those of massive open online courses. The inconsistent reliability of the online approaches is discussed in terms of the ‘fog’ that descends upon knowledge when facts are distorted by academic jargon, disciplinary trends, and institutional priorities, and which increases with its transmission to others by non-experts.