Symptoms of common mental disorders and related stressors in Danish professional football and handball

The aim of the study was twofold, namely (i) to determine the prevalence of symptoms of common mental disorders (CMDs) among current and retired professional football and handball players and (ii) to explore the relationship of psychosocial stressors with the outcome measures under study. A total of 1155 players were enrolled in an observational study based on a cross-sectional design. Questionnaires based on validated scales were set up and distributed among current and retired professional football and handball players by the Danish football and handball players’ union. In professional football, the highest prevalence (4 weeks) of symptoms of CMDs was 18% and 19% for anxiety/depression among current and retired players, respectively. In professional handball, the highest prevalence (4 weeks) of symptoms of CMDs was 26% and 16% for anxiety/depression among current and retired players, respectively. For both the current and retired professional football and handball players, a higher number of severe injuries and recent adverse life events (LE) were related to the presence of symptoms of CMD. Players exposed to severe injuries and/or recent adverse LE were 20–50% times more likely to report symptoms of CMD. The results suggest that it is possible to recognize the population of professional athletes that are more likely to develop symptoms of CMD. This could create the opportunity to intervene preventively on athletes that suffered from severe injury and/or recent adverse LE that could lead to a faster and safer recovery and psychological readiness to return to play.     

I am sailing—towards a transactional analysis of ‘body techniques’

In recent years there has been a growing interest in questions related to embodiment and learning. Within the field of ‘body pedagogics’ great efforts have been made to develop theory and methodology that can deal with the corporeal aspects of experience and knowledge without adopting any form of dualistic conceptions of body/mind and organism/environment. This article connects to this body of research. The purpose is to first present a synthesis of James' radical empiricism, Dewey's transactional understanding of experience and learning and Marcel Mauss' concept of ‘body techniques’ and the notion of education embedded in it. Against the background of this theoretical development, and with a Transactional Model of Analyzing Bodying (TMAB), we then show how we can analytically come to terms with different dualistic problems that research into ‘body pedagogics’ has to deal with. We use an empirical example of dinghy sailing to create knowledge about what we learn when learning embodied knowledge, and how this learning takes place. We argue that experience is an important concept for understanding the acting knowing human being, describing how experience is organized and developed and outlining how this organization can be understood as learning. We hold that situations where someone learns to embody certain knowledge are cases of overt actions, in which we can see what kinds of relations are created and how these relations become meaningful for further action.     

The complexity of the learning and teaching of EFL among Swedish‐minority students in bilingual Finland

In Finland, English is widely visible outside the school context, above all in the area of entertainment and mass media, and is no longer regarded as a foreign language in the old sense of the word. Among Swedish‐minority students in Finland, the dominant status of English in various mass media leads to positive attitudes towards English among students and provides strong motivation to acquire the language. This paper considers whether the incidental learning of English taking place outside the classroom results in the same kind of proficiency as that resulting from formal classroom learning.     

Accreditation in Turkish universities

In Turkey, students are more and more willing to participate in the global free movement of students and of high-skilled labour after their graduation. This is why they request international accreditation from universities. Therefore, accreditation is one of the parameters that play an important role in students' university selection. On the other hand, Turkey is aiming to be a European Union member. This imposes institutional legal and civil arrangements and harmonization. Also, the general trend of globalization dictates requirements from university graduates that are answered in best business practice in which accreditation is a major component. In this paper, accreditation efforts to achieve international recognition for Turkish universities are discussed. For this purpose information on higher education is given. Attempts for accreditation on licensure through FEANI is explained. Accreditation on department programmes by ABET (USA) and by an engineering institution (UK) are discussed and their similarities are pinpointed. Also, a Turkish, British and World Bank quality assessment pilot project for education and research is discussed.