Escape boxes: Bringing escape room experience into the classroom

In this paper, we present an escape box as a means to introduce the escape room concept into classrooms. Recreational escape rooms have inspired teachers all over the world to adapt the popular entertainment activity for education. Escape rooms are problem-based and time-constrained, requiring active and collaborative participants, a setting that teachers want to achieve in their classroom to promote learning. This paper explores the adaptation of the escape room concept into educational escape game boxes. These technology-enhanced escape boxes have become hybrid learning spaces, merging individual and collaborative learning, as well as physical and digital spaces. The design of the box with assignments on each side puts users face to face with each other and requires them to collaborate in the physical world, instead of being individually absorbed in a digital world. The developed box is a unique concept in the field of escape rooms; the content is adaptable. This paper describes the process leading to the design criteria, the design process, test results and evaluation, and provides recommendations for designing educational escape rooms.     

Exploring the unknown: the language use of German RE-students writing texts about God

Language does not only play an active part in all processes of comprehension, recognition and learning, it is also essential for specific religious learning processes. Religious experiences and traditions have their own characteristic linguistic forms, and religious education has come to realise the necessity for an appropriate sensibility in religious language. Yet while linguistic features of religion or tradition have been widely discussed and developed, the use of religious language with regard to the learning subjects remains a significant, if not unknown, variable. What do we actually know about the religious language of students? How do we systematically assess their linguistic competence? By presenting selected results regarding the God-talk of German secondary school students, this paper shows how empirical research based on a corpus linguistic approach can provide access to the use of religious language. As such, the paper first aims to initiate a paradigm shift from looking at the linguistic features of content to exploring the language use of learners. Second, it aims to present a research framework that offers possibilities for further comparable and comparative research well beyond the original German speaking context.     

Pre-service teachers’ meaning-making when collaboratively analysing video from school practice for the bachelor project at college

The study follows a group of student teachers (STs) facilitated in collaboratively analysing video recordings of their school practice experiences, required for their bachelor projects. Their meaning-making is examined in terms of what they experienced as outcomes, how they constructed understanding and how their interpretation of classroom experiences developed. The findings reveal that the structured collaborative analysis supported the STs in a more nuanced consideration of concrete incidents and in reconstructing their experiences with a focus on student learning. They noted the benefit of the peer support and had a positive view of the structured approach. Additionally, they emphasised insights gained by starting from a fine-grained analysis of concrete problems encountered in their school practice before applying theory. They did, however, resort to more general abstractions in their reports.     

Tools for assessing needs and impacts

The results of the ICCROM Forum 2013 on Conservation Science working group on Tools for assessing needs and impacts is presented. It is used as a starting point for a fundamental study of tools in general, tangible and intangible. The phenomenon of scientists and their organizations becoming defined by their tools, and unable to change when the needs of those they serve change, was noted by Kaplan in 1964. Part of the mechanism is the human tendency to solve any disagreement between new facts (like client needs) and old beliefs (such as the importance of one's toolset) by twisting the facts rather than the beliefs. Collins' proposal of three kinds of tacit knowledge, with collective tacit knowledge as the most difficult to make explicit, can explain common problems of interpretation and communication of assessments, and guide strategies for reliable tools. Kaufmann's ideas on the structuring of needs assessment by levels, and the distinction between macro outputs and mega outcomes, is combined with Maslow's five basic human needs, as well as the three pillars of sustainability, to produce an overall map of where needs assessment tools operate, and where conservation science organizations fit into this structure.     

Economics and (Modern) Sports History

Economics is an integral part of history and economic methods can be useful to historians, in just the same way as the perspective of the historian is often vital to understanding the economics of a problem. This paper argues that while there exist tensions, economists and historians should see their work as complementary.     

Value orientations and motivational interference in school-leisure conflict: The case of Vietnam

The experience of motivational interference during studying and leisure in a school-leisure conflict and its relationship to pupils' value orientations were investigated in a self-report study of Vietnamese pupils (N = 346, mean age = 15 years). The results were compared with a combined sample consisting of pupils from nine other countries (N = 2155). From a cross-cultural perspective, the mean values of the variables show that Vietnamese pupils differ with regard to their values and motivational interference from pupils in other countries. Within the Vietnamese sample, modern value orientation was positively related to decision for a studying activity in a school-leisure conflict and to experience of motivational interference during a leisure activity and negatively related to interference during studying. For post-modern value orientation, the relationships were mostly reversed. Despite differences between sample means, the consistency in the relationships between the variables across the samples indicates that the pattern of relationships can be generalized.     

Cognitive ability and personality variables as predictors of school grades and test scores in adolescents

The predictive power of cognitive ability and self-control strength for self-reported grades and an achievement test were studied. It was expected that the variables use of time structure, academic procrastination, and motivational interference during learning further aid in predicting students’ achievement because they are operative in situations of school-leisure conflict. A sample of 697 eighth-graders was tested twice within the interval of a single school year (about eight months). Cognitive ability and self-control explained substantial variance of grade changes. Procrastination displayed a further portion of the variance. Personality variables were better predictors of grades, while cognitive ability showed higher variance with the achievement test. Variables tapping aspects of self-control strength have been interpreted as key determinants of learning outcomes. The findings suggest that it might be useful to identify students who are at risk, allowing these students to train their ability to shield studying from leisure distractions.     

Cycling power output produced during flat and mountain stages in the Giro d'Italia: a case study

Until recently, the physiological demands of cycling competitions were mostly reflected by the measurement of heart rate and the indirect estimation of exercise intensity. The purpose of this case study was to illustrate the varying power output of a professional cyclist during flat and mountain stages of a Grand Tour (Giro d'Italia). Nine stage recordings of a cyclist of the 2005 Giro d'Italia were monitored using a mobile power measurement device (SRM Trainingssystem, Julich, Germany), which recorded direct power output and heart rate. Stages were categorized into flat (n = 5) and mountain stages (n = 4). Data were processed electronically, and the overall mean power in flat and mountain stages and maximal mean power for various durations were calculated. Mean power output was 132 W +/- 26 (2.0 W x kg(-1) +/- 0.4) for the flat and 235 W +/- 10 (3.5 W x kg(-1) +/- 0.1) for the mountain stages. Mountain stages showed higher maximal mean power (367 W) for longer durations (1800 s) than flat stages (239 W). Flat stages are characterized by a large variability of power output with short bursts of high power and long periods with reduced intensity of exercise, whereas mountain stages mostly require submaximal, constant power output over longer periods.