Finding Out How They Find It Out: An empirical analysis of inquiry learners’ need for support

Inquiry learning environments increasingly incorporate modelling facilities for students to articulate their research hypotheses and (acquired) domain knowledge. This study compared performance success and scientific reasoning of university students with high prior knowledge (n = 11), students from senior high‐school (n = 10), and junior high‐school (n = 10) with intermediate and low prior knowledge, respectively, in order to reveal domain novices’ need for support in such environments. Results indicated that the scientific reasoning of both groups of high‐school students was comparable to that of the experts. As high‐school students achieved significantly lower performance success scores, their expert‐like behaviour was rather ineffective; qualitative analyses substantiated this conclusion. Based on these findings, implications for supporting domain novices in inquiry learning environments are advanced.     

Promoting girls' participation in sports: discursive constructions of girls in a sports initiative

What does it mean to promote girls' participation in sports and which girls are seen as needing support? In this article we focus a government-financed sports venture and scrutinize the frames governing what is possible to say about girls and their participation in sports. By analyzing project applications from local sport clubs we investigate how the category of girls is discursively constructed in projects designed to promote girls' sports participation. The study employs the Foucauldian concepts of governmentality, power, biopower and normalization. The analyses show that teenage girls in particular are in focus and a number of ideas are presented about what becoming a teenage girl means. We consider the projects as part of governmentality. Framing girls as both ‘capable’ and ‘at risk’ is reasonable in liberal governing, where they become subjects of scrutiny, regulation and productivity.     

Analysis of performance in orienteering with treadmill tests and physiological field tests using a differential global positioning system

The aim of this study was to determine the physiological responses to orienteering by examining the interrelationships between the information provided by a differential global positioning system (dGPS) about an orienteer's route, speed and orienteering mistakes, portable metabolic gas analyser data during orienteering and data from incremental treadmill tests. Ten male orienteers completed a treadmill threshold test and a field test; the latter was performed on a 4.3 km course on mixed terrain with nine checkpoints. The anaerobic threshold, threshold of decompensate . dmetabolic acidosis, respiratory exchange ratio, onset of blood lactate accumulation and peak oxygen uptake (V O2peak ) were determined from the treadmill test. Time to complete the course, total distance covered, mean speed, distance and timing of orienteering mistakes, mean oxygen uptake, mean relative heart rate, mean respiratory exchange ratio and mean running economy were computed from the dGPS data and metabolic gas analyser data. Correlation analyses showed a relationship between a high anaerobic threshold a . nd few orienteering mistakes ( r = - 0.64, P ? 0.05). A high threshold of decompensated metabolic acidosis and V O2peak were related to a fast overall time ( r = - 0.70 to- 0.72, P ? 0.05) and high running speed ( r = 0.64 to 0.79, P ? 0.05 and P ? 0.01, respectively), and were thus the best predictors of performance.     

Intra-abdominal pressures during activity in women using an intra-vaginal pressure transducer

Abstract

Strenuous physical activity has been linked to pelvic floor disorders in women. Using a novel wireless intra-vaginal pressure transducer, intra-abdominal pressure was measured during diverse activities in a laboratory. Fifty-seven women performed a prescribed protocol using the intra-vaginal pressure transducer. We calculated maximal, area under the curve and first moment of the area intra-abdominal pressure for each activity. Planned comparisons of pressure were made between levels of walking and cycling and between activities with reported high pressure in the literature. Findings indicate variability in intra-abdominal pressure amongst individuals doing the same activity, especially in activities that required regulation of effort. There were statistically significant differences in maximal pressure between levels of walking, cycling and high pressure activities. Results for area under the curve and first moment of the area were not always consistent with maximal pressure. Coughing had the highest maximal pressure, but had lower area under the curve and first moment of the area compared to most activities. Our data reflect novel findings of maximal, area under the curve and first moment of the area measures of intra-abdominal pressure, which may have clinical relevance for how physical activity relates to pelvic floor dysfunction.     

How Do Children Socially Learn from Narrative Fiction: Getting the Lesson,Simulating Social Worlds,or Dialogic Inquiry?

Educational Psychology Review - Educators read narrative fiction with children not only to promote their literacy skills, but also to support their sociomoral development. However, different...     

Correction to: How Do Children Socially Learn from Narrative Fiction: Getting the Lesson,Simulating Social Worlds,or Dialogic Inquiry?

Educational Psychology Review -     

Design of mixed H2-dissipative observers with stochastic resilience for discrete-time nonlinear systems

A linear matrix inequality based mixed H₂-dissipative type state observer design approach is presented for smooth discrete time nonlinear systems with finite energy disturbances. This observer is designed to maintain H₂ type estimation error performance together with either H_∞ or a passivity type disturbance reduction performance in case of randomly varying perturbations in its gain. A linear matrix inequality is used at each time instant to find the time-varying gain of the observer. Simulation studies are included to explore the performance in comparison to the extended Kalman filter and a previously proposed constant gain observer counterpart.     

Parent involvement in early intervention: what role does setting play?

This study compared levels of parent involvement in early intervention services for children under three which were delivered in community settings (children’s homes and child care programs) and specialized settings (early intervention centers and provider offices) in the USA. Respondents reported the highest levels of parental involvement in the home. However, level of involvement in the home was not significantly higher than the provider’s office for parent attendance, quality and content of parent-provider communication, and effective instruction; level of provider communication and instruction to parents was not significantly higher in the home than in the early intervention center. Early intervention services in the child care setting were associated with the lowest levels of parent involvement. With the exception of child care, these results suggest that specialized and natural settings are associated with similar levels of parent involvement.     

Heterotopias in physical education: towards a queer pedagogy?

This article sets out to outline how prevailing gender structures can be challenged in physical education (PE) by exploring queer potentials in an event that took place during a dancing lesson in an upper secondary PE class. The event and its features were documented through video recording and post-lesson interviews with the teacher and some of the students. It is argued that the event can be seen as a heterotopia, according to Michel Foucault a ‘counter-site’ enabling the resistance to authority, where the production of normalcy was challenged. Furthermore, even though the event happened spontaneously, the authors suggest that it can show a way towards a queer pedagogy for PE through teaching paradoxically; it indicates a preferred ethos of the lesson and the use of conceptual tools by teachers and students that make them able to intervene in the production of normalcy.     

An Analysis of High School Students' Performance on Five Integrated Science Process Skills

This study determined Jamaican high school students' level of performance on five integrated science process skills and if there were statistically significant differences in their performance linked to their gender, grade level, school location, school type, student type and socio-economic background (SEB). The 305 subjects comprised 133 males, 172 females, 146 ninth graders, 159 10th graders, 150 traditional and 155 comprehensive high school students, 164 students from the Reform of Secondary Education (ROSE) project and 141 non-ROSE students, 166 urban and 139 rural students and 110 students from a high SEB and 195 from a low SEB. Data were collected with the authors' constructed integrated science process skills test the results indicated that the subjects' mean score was low and unsatisfactory; their performance in decreasing order was: interpreting data, recording data, generalising, formulating hypotheses and identifying variables; there were statistically significant differences in their performance based on their grade level, school type, student type, and SEB in favour of the 10th graders, traditional high school students, ROSE students and students from a high SEB. There was a positive, statistically significant and fairly strong relationship between their performance and school type, but weak relationships among their student type, grade level and SEB and performance.