Improving Museum Docents' Communication Skills

This article presents the results of a study evaluating a program to help museum docents improve accessibility for visitors with communication challenges (such as hearing, language and/or speech disorders). This was done by adapting docent presentations. The docents' speech patterns were evaluated before and after a training program, and showed significant improvements in the rate, duration, and use of pauses in their speech. There also was significant improvement in ensuring that view of their faces remained unobstructed—important for people with communication disorders—in order to facilitate the consistent visibility of their facial expressions and visual cues. The training was found to be effective in adjusting the docents' presentations so that the museum experience would be improved for visitors with communication challenges.     

Is an intervention using computer software effective in literacy learning? A randomised controlled trial

Background: computer software is widely used to support literacy learning. There are few randomised trials to support its effectiveness. Therefore, there is an urgent need to rigorously evaluate computer software that supports literacy learning.

Methods: we undertook a pragmatic randomised controlled trial among pupils aged 11–12 within a single state comprehensive school in the North of England. The pupils were randomised to receive 10 hours of literacy learning delivered via laptop computers or to act as controls. Both groups received normal literacy learning. A pre‐test and two post‐tests were given in spelling and literacy. The main pre‐defined outcome was improvements in spelling scores.

Results: 155 pupils were randomly allocated, 77 to the ICT group and 78 to control. Four pupils left the school before post‐testing and 25 pupils did not have both pre‐ and post‐test data. Therefore, 63 and 67 pupils were included in the main analysis for the ICT and control groups respectively. After adjusting for pre‐test scores there was a slight increase in spelling scores, associated with the ICT intervention, but this was not statistically significant (0.954, 95% confidence interval (CI) – 1.83 to 3.74, p = 0.50). For reading scores there was a statistically significant decrease associated with the ICT intervention (?2.33, 95% CI ?0.96 to ?3.71, p = 0.001).

Conclusions: we found no evidence of a statistically significant benefit on spelling outcomes using a computer program for literacy learning. For reading there seemed to be a reduction in reading scores associated with the use of the program. All new literacy software needs to be tested in a rigorous trial before it is used routinely in schools.     

Competition,gender and the sport experience: an exploration among college athletes

Worldwide, sport and physical activity rates of women generally lag behind those of men. One reason for this could be the way that sport cultures typically frame and value competition. This study provides an examination of the meaning and impact of ‘competition’ on the sport participation experiences of men and women. Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, individual and group interviews were conducted with 76 current and former male and female collegiate athletes from both varsity and club sports regarding the impact of competition on their sport experiences. Results revealed that women and men tended to view and interpret competition differently, which strongly impacted their sport experiences. Sport programming that embraces a balance of cooperation and competition may be valuable for attracting and retaining both male and female participants.     

National Media Coverage and the Creation of a Canadian ‘Hockey World’: The Winnipeg-Montreal Stanley Cup Hockey Challenges, 1899–1903

This essay examines media coverage of five Stanley Cup hockey championship series played between hockey clubs based in Winnipeg and Montreal from 1899 to 1903. Coverage of the Winnipeg–Montreal challenges contributed significantly to the growth of a Canadian ‘hockey world’ – and a broader ‘world of sport’ – during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. First, press reports and telegraph re-enactments linked fans in Winnipeg and Montreal together. At the same time, newspapers in other Canadian centres provided coverage of Stanley Cup matches. As the media constructed a shared sports information system throughout Canada, people were drawn into a wide-ranging community of interest centred on sport. Telegraph bulletins, in particular, gave fans a strong sense of participation in games that were being played in other places. By 1903, Stanley Cup hockey challenges had become ‘national’ Canadian events, followed by audiences across the country through news stories and ‘live’ telegraph reconstructions.     

The [un]spoken challenges of administrator collaboration: An exploration of one district leadership team’s use of protocols to promote reflection and shared theories of action

This article explores the use of protocol-structured dialogue in promoting reflective practices and shared theories of action within a district leadership team. Protocols have been used to make individuals’ theories of action visible and subject to evaluation. This is important for leaders trying to establish coherence across a system; in order to establish coherence, individuals on leadership teams need to be able to surface, test, and sharpen and align their internal pictures of how change works. The author draws on qualitative data from a year-long study of one team as it prepared to implement a capacity-building initiative that would promote collaboration and reflection in schools across the district. Findings illustrate how, as administrators experimented with reflective practice using protocols, divergent theories of leadership’s role in setting a clear direction for school-based reflection emerged, with principals looking for district-wide goals to drive school-based reflection and the superintendent looking to leave decisions about goals to individual school leaders. Our findings suggest that the team’s capacity for aligning these theories was limited because protocol-structured dialogue was carried out as a generic problem-solving exercise. As such, it did not promote visible, productive reasoning in the system’s formal leader, the district superintendent. Moreover, protocol-structured discussion did not mediate the problematic effects of formal authority distinctions or longstanding relationships within the administrative leadership team.