The mathematical textbook for young students

The mathematical textbook has always been an important influence in mathematics teaching. However, as more modern methods of teaching aim to engage the pupil in mathematical activity the textbook's role has become more problematical. In this paper the author analyses that problem and offers principles and examples from new Polish textbooks which illustrate some possible solutions.     

Formative Assessment in Higher Education:Its Significance for Employability,and Steps Towards Its Enhancement

Research shows that formative assessment can exert a powerful effect on student learning, yet the complexity of formative assessment is not well understood and some curricular structures and practices do not fully exploit its potential. This article outlines the background to the political promotion of employability and shows that institutional responses are influenced by multiple considerations. It discusses formative assessment and models it as a complex signalling system before considering the implications, for students’ employability, of accentuating the attention given to formative assessment. The potential for action is discussed with reference to three levels: those of the institution, the department, and the individual academic.     

Expert Judgment Versus Public Opinion – Evidence from the Eurovision Song Contest

For centuries, there have been discussions as to whether only experts can judge the quality of cultural output, or whether the taste of the public also has merit. This paper tries to answer that question empirically, using national finals of the Eurovision Song Contest. We show that experts are better judges of quality in the sense that the outcome of finals judged by experts is less sensitive to factors unrelated to quality than the outcome of finals judged by public opinion. Yet, experts are not perfect; their judgment does still depend on such factors. This is also the case in the European finals of the contest.     

Plasticity of human handedness: decreased one-hand bias and inter-manual performance asymmetry in expert basketball players

Athletes frequently have to adapt their skills to fast changes of play, often requiring the flexible execution of a particular movement skill with either hand. To assess the influence of sport-specific expertise and extensive sport training on human laterality, a video analysis of regular basketball games was performed for professional, semi-professional, and amateur players to investigate how non-dominant hand use and proficiency change with increasing expertise. Our results showed that the right-hand (i.e. dominant hand) bias in basketball players is reduced with increasing expertise (i.e., competitive level). Accordingly, we found that professional players use their non-dominant hand more often and with greater success than semi-professional and amateur players. This was true for most of the basketball-specific skills. Based on these results, we assume that increasing amounts of bilateral practice can lead to a shift in task-specific manual preference towards a higher use of both hands in competition, as well as to a higher proficiency for non-dominant hand actions in particular. From an applied perspective, the more frequent use and higher proficiency of the non-dominant hand in professional basketball players, compared with amateurs, suggests that the context-specific and skilled use of the non-dominant hand is crucial for successful play at higher competitive levels in the sport of basketball.     

Active relatives and health-related physical fitness in European adolescents: The HELENA Study

Abstract High physical fitness in childhood and adolescence is positively associated with favourable health-related outcomes. Our aim was to examine the relationship between relatives' (father, mother, brother, sister, and best friend) physical activity engagement and encouragement on adolescents' physical fitness. Adolescents were part of the HELENA study, a multi-centre study conducted in 10 cities from nine European countries in 2006-2008. Participants were 3288 adolescents (48% boys, 52% girls) aged 12.5-17.5 years with valid data on at least one of the three fitness variables studied: muscular strength (standing long jump), speed/agility (4×10 m shuttle run), and cardiorespiratory fitness (20 m shuttle run). The adolescents reported their relatives' physical activity engagement and encouragement. Analysis of covariance showed that relatives' physical activity engagement (father, mother, brother, and best friend) was positively related to cardiorespiratory fitness (P?相似文献