We need more than just male bodies in classrooms: Recruiting and retaining culturally relevant Black male teachers in early childhood education

Nationwide, school districts struggle to recruit and retain Black males to the teaching profession. As a result, the presence of Black male teachers is lacking in public schools, which impacts the overall student outcomes for all children, particularly Black boys. Such recruitment and retention becomes even worse at the early childhood level, which explains the paucity of Black male teachers who are early childhood educators. To date, only 2% of teachers are Black males, of which most are middle and high school teachers. Furthermore, the clarion call for Black males to become teachers does not often prioritize Black male teachers who are culturally relevant. In this article, we focus on educational research regarding the lack of diversity of teachers and among males in K-12 to provide recommendations to the field of early childhood education, with specific attention to recruiting and retaining culturally relevant Black male teachers in early childhood education.     

An economic perspective on rock concerts and climate change: Should carbon offsets compensating emissions be included in the ticket price?

Musicians, singers and bands can use their popularity to promote various causes and products, either through endorsements or more individual initiatives. Environmental activism is becoming more widespread as humans are trying to tackle and mitigate climate change. In this paper, we ask how best a band can compensate for the carbon emissions generated by fans travelling to its shows. We first report on the various “green” initiatives and practices of the music industry. We then focus on greenhouse gas emissions that result from tours and concerts since they are one of the largest environmental impacts generated by the music industry. We take the perspective of the artist or band wishing to internalize their carbon emissions and present a model of carbon offsets in the context of rock concerts, which amounts to the private provision of a public good. In our model, bands have the option to include offsets in the ticket price or to offer voluntary offsets. To illustrate our point, we present a field study conducted by a Quebec rock band at shows in Montreal and in Europe to show how the artists can reduce the environmental impact of their concert by buying carbon credits equivalent to their fans’ footprint. We show that at 1 % of the ticket price on average, the cost of carbon offsets is marginal and discuss the numerous challenges that arise for those artists wanting to engage in carbon offsetting.     

Peer effects on high school aspirations: Evidence from a sample of close and not-so-close friends

In this paper we investigate how schoolmates influence high school dropout intentions in Catalonia, Spain. Our analysis uses self-reported friends to identify possible peers by assuming that peer influence flows in one direction in cases where one student identifies another as a friend, but the other does not reciprocate. We first estimate the effects of education aspirations of non-reciprocating friends on students’ own education aspirations, with and without conditioning on a large set of personality and cognitive characteristics. We then investigate the extent to which the estimated effects are associated with friends’ height, weight, BMI, gender and cognitive ability. The estimated impact of non-reciprocating peers’ dropout intentions is small and generally not statistically significant: a 10 percentage point increase in the fraction of non-reciprocating peers that intend to drop out increases students’ chances of dropping out by about .2 percentage points.     

Timing of triggering in relation to the cardiac cycle in nonelite rifle shooters

This study investigated the timing of the trigger pull in relation to the cardiac cycle during air rifle shooting. Electrocardiogram) was recorded from 20 male nonelite rifle shooters in two separate testing sessions. The testing was conducted at an indoor shooting range using an optoelectronic shooting system. Each participant fired a shot in the standing position at a distance of 10 m from the target. The results showed that compared to random triggering, the shooters fired more often during the phase of 10-50% of the R wave-to-R wave (R-R) interval and less often during the phase of 50-90%. With regard to performance accuracy, the participants exhibited average or above average performance, when the shot occurred in the beginning (0-50%) and in the end (70-99%) of the R-R interval. The less optimal range for the triggering was located within the 50-70% phase of the R-R interval. The length of R-R interval (i.e., heart rate) did not affect the relation of shot placement within the cardiac cycle to the accuracy of shooting performance. The present results extend previous findings by showing that in air rile shooting the optimum firing time within the cardiac cycle may be located in the systolic phase. It is argued that the systole-diastole dichotomy is not a sufficiently accurate way to investigate the effects of shot placement in the cardiac cycle. Further research is needed to examine the extent to which the relationship between the timing of triggering within the cardiac cycle and shooting performance depends a shooter's skill level.     

Walking football as sustainable exercise for older adults – A pilot investigation

The health benefits of playing football and the importance of exercise and social contact for healthy ageing are well established, but few older adults in the UK take enough exercise. Football is popular, flexible in format and draws players into engrossing, effortful and social exercise, but the physical demands of play at full speed may make it unsustainable for some older adults. Restricted to walking pace, will play still be engaging? Will health benefits be retained? Will physical demands remain manageable? This pilot study aims to investigate: (1) the experience of older adults playing walking football every week, is it sustainable and rewarding, (2) the intensity and locomotor pattern of walking football, (3) the scale and nature of walking football health benefits and (4) possible cognitive benefits of playing walking football through measures of processing speed, selective and divided attention and updating and inhibition components of executive function. ‘Walking football’ and ‘waiting list’ groups were compared before and after 12 weeks of one-hour per week football. Walking football was found to be engaging, sustainable for older adults and moderately intensive; however, selective health and cognitive benefits were not found from this brief intervention.

Highlights

• Walking football is a lower impact but authentic form of football that enables older players to extend their active participation.

• Walking football is enjoyable and moderately demanding and may be a sustainable form of exercise for older adults.

• Health and cognitive benefits to playing walking football were not found.

     

Children's Participation in Evaluating the Role of New Information and Communication Technologies in Schools

The central thesis of the paper is that children should be accorded a greater role in the evaluation of the role of new information technologies in schools, that is, where possible they should be stakeholders who help shape the design, processes and interpretations of evaluation studies as well as informants who provide data for the study. Arguments for this position draw on children's special relationship with the new technologies as well as current movements in children's rights and the development of a new paradigm of childhood studies. The paper finishes with a discussion of some of the issues that might arise from involving children as stakeholders.