Being a Man,Being a Member: Masculinity and Community in Britain’s Working Men’s Clubs, 1945–1960*

By 1960, there were more than 3,500 working men’s clubs in Britain, with a combined membership of more than two million people. This article explores their post-war transformation from small homosocial enclaves for drinking and bar-games to larger family-oriented entertainment venues, while they continued to provide social, welfare and educational activities for local communities. Operating on the boundaries of public and private life, they remained alternative sites of domesticity to the home, in which men nurtured relations with both friends and family. Nevertheless, though women and children came to represent a significant presence in the clubs, their cultures remained largely patriarchal and discriminatory. I argue that working men’s clubs provided important sources of agency, community and continuity for their members, during a period of rapid social and cultural change.     

Overshadowing not potentiation of illness-based contextual conditioning by a novel taste

In four experiments using rat subjects, we investigated the effects of presenting a novel flavor cue at the time of pairing an environmental context with illness. In each experiment, the subjects were allowed to spend time in a distinctive cage before receiving an injection of LiCl. For some, plain water was made available on these conditioning trials; for others, a novel taste (HCl) was presented. We measured the strength of the context aversion by assessing the ability of the contextual cues to block the acquisition of an aversion to sucrose in a further phase of training. We found that initial training with HCl present made the context less effective as a blocking cue and concluded that the HCl had overshadowed learning about the context. We suggest that this blocking procedure provides a more accurate assessment of contextual aversion than does the consumption test that has more usually been used and that taste-context overshadowing may be a more robust phenomenon than has thus far been thought.     

The Preference for and Tolerance of the Intensity of Exercise Questionnaire: a psychometric evaluation among college women

Individuals differ in the intensity of exercise that they prefer and the intensity that they can tolerate. We examined the psychometric properties of the Preference for and Tolerance of the Intensity of Exercise Questionnaire (PRETIE-Q; Ekkekakis, Hall, & Petruzzello, 2005: Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 27, 350 - 374). A sample of 601 college women (mean age 20 years) completed the PRETIE-Q and the Godin Leisure-Time Exercise Questionnaire. Both the Preference and the Tolerance scale were internally consistent (alpha coefficients of 0.89 and 0.86, respectively), with all items making positive contributions. A confirmatory factor analysis showed that model fit was reasonable. Both Preference and Tolerance were related to the frequency of participation in strenuous exercise and the total leisure-time exercise score. The PRETIE-Q appears to be an internally consistent and structurally valid measure, with a broad range of possible applications in exercise science.     

A social neuroscience perspective on physical activity

The objective of this investigation was to examine the cognitive characteristics of individuals who demonstrate successful and unsuccessful self-regulation of physical activity behavior. In Study 1, participants articulated 1-week intentions for physical activity and wore a triaxial accelerometer over the subsequent 7 days. Among those who were motivated to increase their physical activity, those who were most and least successful were administered an IQ test. In Study 2, a second sample of participants completed the same protocol and a smaller subset of matched participants attended a functional imaging (fMRI) session. In Study 1, successful self-regulators (SSRs) scored significantly higher than unsuccessful self-regulators (USRs) on a test of general cognitive ability, and this difference could not be accounted for by favorability of attitudes toward physical activity or conscientiousness. In Study 2, the IQ effect was replicated, with SSRs showing a full standard deviation advantage over USRs. In the imaging protocol, USRs showed heavier recruitment of cognitive resources relative to SSRs in the anterior cingulate and orbitofrontal cortex during performance of a Stroop task; SSRs showed heavier recruitment in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.     

Educators' Perceptions of NRT Misuse

What has been the impact of high stakes achievement testing on curriculum and testing practice? How serious is the problem of cheating on Standardized achievement tests? What steps can we take to improve the validity of test-based information for a variety of educational purposes?     

Current Developments in Patterns of Graduate Study

During recent years considerable attention has been given to an analysis of the changing patterns of graduate study in engineering. Reviews by the American Society for Engineering Education, the University of Chicago under a Carnegie Grant, and the Ford Foundation have been directed to the problem. A primary observation has indicated a trend towards greater diversity in patterns and a closer correlation with current requirements of research and development in industry and government. These patterns, including evening and various forms of off-campus training, are described and their effect on the nature of the graduate program is examined. The effect of direct and indirect industry support is analyzed, and the changing role of the faculty in cases where close coordination with industry exists is examined. Current trends are evidently enriching and strengthening the value of the graduate program, particularly through immediate contact by both student and faculty with research and development applications. There exist, however, a consequent overemphasis on immediate needs, and an ambiguity of long-range academic objectives. The critical financial needs of students, faculty, and engineering educational institutions are emphasized by the demands of new patterns and current high standards of academic endeavor.     

The faculty and the future

The history of higher education belies the common assumption that educational institutions are static and that faculty oppose change. Many faculty do, however, resist innovation, a resistance based not in reactionism but in a basic concern that innovators are losing sight of the centrality of the faculty role in education. That concern, although understandable, has no basis in fact, as a review of current alternative models makes clear. Indeed, one can postulate that no alternative model that avoids or minimizes the impress of the faculty can expect to meet the requirements for effective learning. Developments of the 1970s should be seen as attempts to restore earlier values of teaching and learning while responding in a new social context to a highly diverse, mass student body. The implications of this assumption bode extremely well for the future.This paper is adapted from a speech presented before the assembly of the Cooperative Assessment of Experiential Learning (CAEL), Denver, May 9, 1976.     

Inclusion through Distinction

The focus of this presentation will be on issues arising from a three year action research project, exploring young people's creative uses of digital technology, outside of formal education. The project, based at the University of Central England in Birmingham, and Jubilee Arts in Sandwell, has sought to both engage young people in a creative process, and provide access to digital technology. The research was formulated as a means of exploring the ways in which young people might utilise digital technology creatively, given access, outside of formal education.