Seasonal progression and variability of repeat-effort line-drill performance in elite junior basketball players

To determine gender differences, positional differences, and patterns of change in the performance of the basketball line-drill test, 93 male (mean age 16.8 years, s = 1.1) and 95 female (mean age 16.5 years, s = 1.0) basketball players undertook 516 line-drill tests over a 5-year period. Log-transformed performance times were analysed using a mixed model that included quadratic within-participant fixed effects for time in the season and time in the programme. Changes and differences were standardized for interpretation of magnitudes. Mean performance times were 28.0 s (s = 1.3) for males and 30.4 s (s = 1.3) for females. The mean pattern of change in performance within a season differed substantially between the sexes and playing positions: male guards and female centres showed moderate to very large improvements mid-season of 1.1% and 3.5% respectively (90% confidence limits +/-2.1% and +/-3.0%), while female guards and male forwards showed large to very large decrements of -1.6% (+/-2.6%) and -2.4% (+/-2.0%). Over 3 years, males improved performance across all three playing positions by 1.4% (+/-1.3%) and females by 2.9% (+/-1.4%). Males improved performance by 0.2% (+/-0.5%) per year, whereas the performance of females deteriorated by 0.6% (+/-0.4%) per year. The differing patterns of performance change presumably reflect variations in training and competition loads, with short-term fluctuations in performance being managed to promote longer-term improvements.     

80 Jahre vollakademische Sportlehrerausbildung

On 1 August 1929 the Prussian Minister of Education enacted a regulation establishing“exercise and physical education” as an academic field of study to be offered at all universities and institutes of technology under his jurisdiction. This action served to successfully complete the process that had been evolving since the middle of the nineteenth century to recognize the discipline as a university level specialty in the face of considerable longstanding opposition. The gravest forms of opposition emanated from the universities themselves and starting in the middle of the 1920s were ultimately overcome by proceedings and argumentation. These circumstances are described in this contribution based on accessing and evaluating new sources. The central focus is on a memorandum written in February 1929 by the Göttingen University physical education lecturer Bernhard Zimmermann. The article concludes by classifying and assessing the act of 1929 with a view to the further development of the academic education of sports instructors in the ensuing era of National Socialism and the postwar period in West Germany and the Federal Republic of Germany.     

The Interplay of Psychology and Mathematics Education: From the Attraction of Psychology to the Discovery of the Social

It is a rather safe statement to claim that the social dimensions of the scientific process are accepted in a fair share of studies in the philosophy of science. It is a somewhat safe statement to claim that the social dimensions are now seen as an essential element in the understanding of what human cognition is and how it functions. But it would be a rather unsafe statement to claim that the social is fully accepted in the philosophy of mathematics. And we are not quite sure what kind of statement it is to claim that the social dimensions in theories of mathematics education are becoming more prominent, compared to the psychological dimensions. In our contribution we will focus, after a brief presentation of the above claims, on this particular domain to understand the successes and failures of the development of theories of mathematics education that focus on the social and not primarily on the psychological.