Fitness,fatness and healthism discourse: girls constructing ‘healthy’ identities in school

Drawing on longitudinal, qualitative research into girls’ participation in physical activity and sport in the UK, this article will explore girls’ embodied constructions of ‘healthy’ identities. My research with girls (aged 10–13) found that over the transition to secondary school, classed and gendered healthism discourses had come to powerfully frame girls’ sports participation by condoning the achievement of slender embodied femininities through physical activity. The findings suggest that while neoliberal indictments of self-care through physical activity can usefully frame girls’ individual ‘body projects’, these discourses also contribute to a hierarchisation of bodies within physical activity settings and to increasingly narrow standards of acceptable bodies able to take part in physical activity. Within the article, I consider how healthism discourses both regulate and are resisted by the girls as they work to construct physical identities within their school settings.     

The Spatial Coding Strategies of One-Year-Old Infants in a Locomotor Search Task

The ability of 1-year-old infants to remember the location of a nonvisible target was investigated in 3 experiments. Infants searched for a toy hidden in one of many possible locations within a circular bounded space. The presence, number, and spatial arrangement of local cues or "landmarks" within this space were varied. The results of Experiment 1 showed that search performance was highly successful when a landmark was coincident with the location of the toy ("direct"), but less successful when a landmark was adjacent to the target location ("indirect"). The results of Experiment 2 suggested that search with an indirect landmark may be more fragile than search with no landmarks at all. In Experiments 3a and 3b, 2 different configurations of indirect landmarks were employed; search performance was equally poor with both of these and was inferior to search with no landmarks. It is concluded that infants of this age are able to associate a nonvisible target with a direct landmark and are able to code the distance and direction of a target with respect to themselves or with respect to the larger framework. However, there was no evidence that they can code the distance and direction of a target relative to another object. The difficulty of coding with indirect landmarks is interpreted in terms of cognitive complexity and conflict between spatial strategies.     

Curriculum Alignment with a Mission of Social Change in Higher Education

Institutions of higher education frequently acknowledge their role in contributing to the common good through their mission statements. The current literature suggests that in order to be effective mission statements must be clearly articulated and reflected in all the activities of the institution including its curriculum. Faculty members at Walden University developed a Curriculum Guide for Social Change that could serve as a tool for reviewing current course offerings and developing new courses to reflect its mission of “creating positive social change.” Those involved in piloting the Guide report on the process in this article. The general consensus is that it was time-consuming and frequently subjective; but the Guide gave substance to the institution’s mission, opening the way for its fuller implementation.     

THE EMERGENCE OF PRAGMATIC PHILOSOPHY'S INFLUENCE ON LITERARY THEORY: MAKING MEANING WITH TEXTS FROM A TRANSACTIONAL PERSPECTIVE

A bstract .  In this review essay, Jeanne Connell examines the influence of pragmatic philosophy on the scholarly works of twentieth-century literary theorist and English educator Louise Rosenblatt through the lens of a recent collection of her essays originally published between 1936 and 1999. Rosenblatt grounded her transactional theory of literature in pragmatic philosophy, particularly the epistemological constructs of John Dewey. While influential as a pioneer in the early development of reader-response theory, Rosenblatt's theory has only recently been given attention by philosophers of education. Making Meaning with Texts: Selected Essays is an important collection of articles and book chapters that highlights the evolution of her thinking in literary theory, pedagogy, and literary criticism. Rosenblatt positioned the construction of meaning in the personal lived-through quality of the literary experience, making central the generative relation between the text and the reader. Connell argues that the educational relevance of Rosenblatt's theory for contemporary education is that it provides a powerful critique of classroom approaches that promote shallow readings with little opportunity for critical reflection.     

Educational Risk and Resilience in African-American Youth: Context, Self, Action, and Outcomes in School

This study examined the empirical validity of a model of human motivation as it applies to school success and failure in 3 independent samples of 10-to 16-year-old African-American youth. Specifically, we assessed how indicators of context, self , and action relate to measures of risk and resilient outcomes in school in 3 different samples, using 3 different measurement strategies. Correlational and path analyses on the 3 data sets supported the empirical validity of the model. African-American youth's experience of their parents' school involvement predicted a composite of self-system processes, which in turn predicted the subjects' reports of their engagement in school. Engagement then predicted school performance and adjustment. The data supported a reciprocal path from action to context, suggesting that youth who show more disaffected patterns of behavior and emotion in school experience less support from their families than those reporting more engaged patterns of action. Implications for program and policy decisions are discussed.     

Reflections on using journals in higher education: a focus group discussion with faculty

Reflective journals have become an increasingly popular tool used by numerous faculty across many disciplines in higher education. Previous research and narrative reports of journal writing have explored student perceptions of journal writing, but very little is understood about faculty perceptions. In this paper, we report on a study involving eight university faculty who teach courses with outdoor field components in the areas of outdoor recreation, experiential education, or outdoor education. We present the faculty member’s: (1) current practices of journal writing (types of journals, types of entries, process of journal writing), (2) perceptions of journal writing (rationale, quality, evaluation) and (3) recommendations to maximize the potential of journal writing. A mixed methods approach was used that included a 32‐item quantitative questionnaire and a focus group discussion. By and large, the faculty who participated in this study appreciated the pedagogical potential of journal writing. They were, however, cautious about certain aspects of the journaling process and offered numerous suggestions for improving the ‘journaling experience.’ This paper concludes with several recommendations for consideration by higher education faculty who use journal writing as an instructional technique.     

Effects of rhyming,vocabulary and phonemic awareness instruction on phoneme awareness

Sixteen Head Start classrooms, involving 128 children, were randomly assigned to three approaches for augmenting early literacy instruction: (a) instruction in phoneme segmentation, blending, and letter–sound relationships, (b) rhyming instruction and (c) vocabulary instruction. The phoneme segmentation approach was more effective in promoting phoneme segmentation skill. Existing research suggests that phoneme segmentation skill is a better predictor of early progress in learning to read than rhyming skill or vocabulary knowledge. Thus, the results suggest that instruction emphasising phoneme segmentation is not only more likely to promote phoneme segmentation skill, but also more likely to promote future reading ability than rhyming or vocabulary activities, even for highly disadvantaged children as young as 4 years old.     

Empowering students by enhancing their employability skills

Recognising the importance of graduates being equipped with appropriate employability skills alongside their subject-specific skills, we have had transferable skills training embedded throughout our degree programmes for 30 years. More recently, a specific employability skills module for final-year honours students has been created. This module consists of a programme of activities supporting employability skills, which was delivered to final-year undergraduate students from 2012 to 2015. A key feature in the development and delivery of these activities was the involvement of external experts. Detailed questionnaires have captured student perceptions and thematic analysis has revealed key themes. The module has been perceived to be highly useful, resulting in significant increases in students’ confidence across key areas of employability skills. Furthermore, students may hold skewed perceptions of the relevance of generic employability skills to their chosen career path. This fact should be considered when delivering employability skills programmes.     

Longitudinal study of the impact of requiring training for students with initially weak spatial skills

ABSTRACT

Three-dimensional spatial skills are a cognitive ability that have been shown to predict success in engineering. Michigan Tech has been offering a course to help students improve their 3-D spatial skills for more than two decades. In previous studies, students who failed a rotations test and enrolled in the course performed better on a number of measures when compared to those who failed the rotations test and did not enrol in the course. A valid criticism of these studies was that the two groups were self-selected. Beginning in 2009, the spatial skills course became a requirement for students who initially failed the rotations test. This paper reports on the results from a longitudinal study conducted to determine the impact of the spatial skills course when no self-selection is involved.