Participation in organized sports,physical education,therapeutic exercises,and non-organized leisure-time physical activity: how does participation differ between childhood cancer outpatients and healthy peers?

Most childhood cancer survivors are insufficiently active. Researchers are focusing on strategies to increase physical activity (PA). However, a detailed understanding of participation in specific types of PA is missing, meaning current strategies may lack relevant information. Thus, our study sought to analyze participation in different types of PA commonly engaged in by children: organized sports, physical education in school (PES), therapeutic exercise, and non-organized leisure-time PA. Thirty-eight childhood cancer outpatients and 51 healthy children completed questionnaires. Compared to healthy children, childhood cancer outpatients, especially those who are shortly after cessation of inpatient treatment, participated significantly less often in organized sports and PES and significantly more often in therapeutic exercise compared to the healthy children. Considering organized sports and PES afford children unique social benefits and provide the potential to motivate lifelong activity, future efforts should be placed on ensuring children with cancer can access these types of PA. Educating parents, teachers, and coaches, exploring referral pathways to exercise professionals and providing individual support may enhance participation rates in organized PA and should be investigated.     

Effects of Aerobic Exercise on Cognitive Performance Among Young Adults in a Higher Education Setting

Purpose: Acute benefits of aerobic exercise on executive functioning have been reported frequently under laboratory conditions. However, to date, a beneficial effect on long-term memory has been less well supported and no data are available regarding nonlaboratory conditions in young adults. The aim of the current study was to investigate acute effects of aerobic exercise on cognitive functioning in a university classroom setting. Method: Using a cross-over design, 51 participants performed a bout of moderately intense running (RUN) and read an article while seated (CON). Afterwards, they completed free-recall tests, followed by a Flanker task and an n-back task. Results: Participants in the RUN condition compared with those in the CON condition showed shorter reaction time on the inhibition task, F(1, 50) = 5.59, p = .022, η² = .101, and recalled more words in the immediate- and delayed-recall tests, F(1, 50) = 8.40, p = .006, η² = .144. Conclusion: The present findings suggest that a moderately intense bout of aerobic exercise benefits verbal short-term and long-term memory as well as inhibitory control among students in a classroom setting.     

Educational career and substance use in adolescence

In modern, competitive societies the social organisation of «youth» implies both the chance and risk of (intergenerational) vertical social mobility. It is suggested that it is precisely this basic feature that to a considerable extent gives rise to substance use. In particular the paper aims at analysing the impact of the risk of educational downward mobility as well as some related characteristics. Using LISREL VI, it is shown that this type of educational career pattern, actual or anticipated, substantially contributes to the consumption of legal drugs. Weight is given to an extended analysis of the mode of action involved in the relationship between substance use and the career pattern as well as associated characteristics, respectively. As far as home is concerned, social conflict and associated feelings on the side of the adolescents turn out to be a major ‘mechanism’ through which the observable impact of educational downward mobility can be traced back. Integration into both the cultural system of «legalized» drug use and subcultural contexts as provided by social cliques is a further condition that strongly influences substance use among adolescents.     

Grundbildung,Allgemeinbildung und Fachunterricht

Zusammenfassung Der Beitrag thematisiert das nicht unproblematische Spannungsverh?ltnis von Grundbildung, Allgemeinbildung und Fachunterricht. Anspruchsvolle Fachinhalte, die über die in der internationalen PISA-Studie untersuchten Basiskompetenzen hinausgehen, lassen sich nicht mit einem normativen Verweis auf allgemeine Kompetenzen (wie Lernf?higkeit, Sozial-oder Probleml?sekompetenz) für alle Heranwachsenden rechtfertigen. Die Allgemeinheit der Bildung ist vielmehr im Faktum der Kontingenz und Differenz jeglicher Fachinhalte zu suchen. Bildung wird dabei als die F?higkeit zum Umgang mit Ungewissheit definiert. Anhand einer Fallstudie mit einer Hamburger Lehrerin wird gezeigt, dass diese Bestimmung für Lehrende pragmatisch auf die Realisation „guten“ Fachunterrichts hinauslaufen kann. Unter Bildungsaspekten zeigt sich das Handeln der Lehrerin dabei implizit an einer Als-ob-Didaktik orientiert, deren Grundzüge im Beitrag verallgemeinernd herausgearbeitet werden. Eine geeignete Rahmenkonzeption dafür steht mit der Bildungsgangdidaktik zur Verfügung, die die tats?chlichen Lern-und Bildungsprozesse der Schülerinnen und Schüler in das Zentrum ihrer Theoriebildung stellt.

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Summary Basic education, general education and subject-focused lessons This contribution focuses on the not unproblematic tensions between basic education, general education and subject-focused lessons. Demanding subject matter, which offers more than those basic competencies studied in the international PISA study, cannot be justified for all learners with a normative reference to the attainment of general competencies (i.e. learning, social and problem-solving skills). Generality is indeed to be found in the contingency and difference of subject matter. Bildung is defined as the ability to deal with uncertainty. On the basis of a case study of a teacher from Hamburg, it will be demonstrated that this concept can — in pragmatic terms — simply mean the realization of „good“ subject-focused teaching. According to the theory of Bildung, it can be shown that the teache’s work is implicitly based on a didactic with as-if-character, which will be further generalized in this paper. An appropriate framework for such concepts is offered by the Bildungsgangdidaktik, which places the realized learning and educational processes at the center of its theory.

     

Developing and evaluating a strategy for learning from animations

Based on current theories of multimedia learning, we propose a strategy for learning from animations. Two different experimental studies were conducted in order to evaluate the strategy. In the first study, 22 sixth graders learned from an animation without the strategy while 21 students were encouraged to make use of the proposed strategy during learning; use of the strategy was not monitored. The students who were encouraged to take advantage of the strategy learned significantly more than the students who were not asked to do so. In the second study, three groups of sixth graders were investigated. The first group consisted of 49 students who learned from an animation without the strategy. The second group consisted of 52 students who were encouraged to make use of the strategy during learning; but use of the strategy was not monitored. The third group consisted of 53 students who were also encouraged to make use of the strategy during learning and their use of the strategy was monitored. The results of the second study replicated the findings of the first study. Furthermore, learning was most successful when the students' use of the learning strategy was monitored.     

The impacts of new governance on teaching at German universities. Findings from a national survey

In this article we will present findings from a national survey questioning the actual impact of the new governance structures at German universities on academic teaching. To begin with, we give a theoretical underpinning to the economization of higher education institutions (HEIs) according to Principal-Agent Theory. This allows for the development of hypotheses about the influence of new selective incentives (merit pay, performance-related budgeting, Management by Objectives, teaching awards) on the professors’ academic teaching behavior. Instructed by critical considerations on Principal-Agent Theory we extended the axiomatics of this economic theory by incorporating concepts like work task motivation and academic socialization for a supposedly more comprehensive explanation. Data from a nationwide German survey allows us then to test our theory-driven assumptions. Our target population was the entire collectivity of all professors at German universities from which we could draft a sample 8,000 individuals. An estimation of four different OLS-regression models shows that the hypotheses derived from Principal-Agent Theory must be rejected whereas the hypotheses based on motivational aspects and socialization processes can be confirmed. Based on our analysis we can conclude that for the status quo of implementation there are no direct influences of new selective incentives on the actual teaching performance whereas we have strong indications for altered mechanisms of enculturation in the field of universities. New Public Management (NPM) seems to produce a new breed of professors whose preferences and practice are conditioned by the imperatives evoked by this new managerialism.