The effect of causal diagrams on text learning

We examined the effect of studying a causal diagram on comprehension of causal relationships from an expository science text. A causal diagram is a type of visual display that explicitly represents cause-effect relationships. In Experiment 1, readers between conditions did not differ with respect to memory for main ideas, but the readers who studied the causal diagram while reading the text understood better the five causal sequences in the text even when study time was controlled. Participants in Experiment 2 studied only the causal diagram or only the text. There were no differences in memory for main ideas or the causal sequences between these groups. Results indicate that causal diagrams are not merely redundant with text and that causal diagrams affect understanding of causal relationships in the absence of a text. These findings supported the causal explication hypothesis, which states that causal diagrams improve comprehension by explicitly representing the implicit causal structure of the text in a visual format.     

The load-velocity profile differs more between men and women than between individuals with different strength levels

This study aimed to determine the suitability of the load-velocity relationship to prescribe the relative load (%1RM) in women, as well as to compare the load-velocity profile between sexes and participants with different strength levels. The load-velocity relationship of 14 men (1RM: 1.17 ± 0.19) and 14 women (1RM: 0.66 ± 0.13) were evaluated in the bench press exercise. The main findings revealed that: (I) the load-velocity relationship was always strong and linear (R² range: 0.987–0.993), (II) a steeper load-velocity profile was observed in men compared to women (Effect size [ES]: 1.09), with men showing higher velocities for light loads (ES: ? 0.81 and ? 0.40 for the y-intercept and 30%1RM, respectively), but women reporting higher velocities for the heavy loads (ES: 1.14 and 1.50 at 90%1RM and 100%1RM, respectively); and (III) while the slope of the load-velocity profile was moderately steeper for weak men compared to their strong counterpart (ES: 1.02), small differences were observed between strong and weak women (ES: ? 0.39). While these results support the use of the individual load-velocity relationship to prescribe the %1RM in the bench press exercise for women, they also highlight the large disparities in their load-velocity profile compared to men.     

The Art of the Impossible? A Case Study and Reflections on the Experience of Art in a Rural Kenyan Primary School

The arguments for, and justification of, the value of teaching art in school have been made previously, but contextually these are often situated in Western affluence. This article explores the issues with a strikingly contrasted setting. The rural school in the study is approximately 30 minutes' drive from the nearest town, and the pupils are drawn from the surrounding rural bush area which is itself developmentally and materially poor in comparison to the UK. In school, the poverty seemed initially to relate to a lack of educational resources, but the reality experienced in the classroom may have also been linked to other issues. These included the desperate preoccupation with survival in difficult climatic conditions, a postcolonial legacy and the delicate balance of utilising resources without waste. What conclusions might then be drawn about the teaching of art? Utilising the work of others who have considered the issues in Kenya, this small‐scale ethnographic case study is presented with personal reflection and observations. The author would be pleased to hear from others with similar experiences or who have recognised additional issues in seemingly challenging circumstances.     

All Things Out of Rule

Abstract

This article brings together and compares my own artistic practice of drawing/painting and the eighteenth-century novel Tristram Shandy. In both cases, there is a free play of lines, textual or graphic, which sets ‘all things out of rule’. A whole typology of lines is woven throughout Sterne’s text and reappears, alter-inscribed, in the artworks. The article presents an account of these lines: rectilinear, hylomorphic, fractal and nomadic, as well as the line of incision (or the cut). Each is explored as a specific mode of line with differing effects. To follow these lines is to enter a world of material expressivity, to be exposed to an ontology of becoming and change, of flows and transformations, that overturns the traditional ontology of being and stable identity. Sterne’s use of wild digression, doodles and graphisms, establishes certain proximity between writing and drawing. Both may be seen as types of ‘figured metaphysics’ and as ways of bringing something new into the world. The article concludes with some philosophical observations on the strange event of drawing a line, with reference to the work of Heidegger and Deleuze and Guattari.     

Reconsidering Standards and Criteria

An early debate about the nature of setting standards on educational achievement tests centered on the extent to which resulting standards were arbitrary. Subsequent research in the area has advanced solutions to many practical standard setting problems, but the more fundamental issue regarding the empirical grounding of judgmental standard setting procedures has remained unresolved and largely unaddressed. This article reviews some of the salient elements of the debate about the nature of standard setting on educational assessments and suggests that the dispute can never be satisfactorily resolved within the current paradigm. A reconcep-tualization of the nature of standard setting is proposed, and suggestions for future research are provided.     

Variance Estimation for Differential Test Functioning Based on Mantel-Haenszel Statistics

This article concerns the simultaneous assessment of DIF for a collection of test items. Rather than an average or sum in which positive and negative DIF may cancel, we propose an index that measures the variance of DIF on a test as an indicator of the degree to which different items show DIF in different directions. It is computed from standard Mantel-Haenszel statistics (the logodds ratio and its variance error) and may be conceptually classified as a variance component or variance effect size. Evaluated by simulation under three item response models (IPL, 2PL, and 3PL), the index is shown to be an accurate estimate of the DTF generating parameter in the case of the 1PL and 2PL models with groups of equal ability. For groups of unequal ability, the index is accurate under the I PL but not the 2PL condition; however, a weighted version of the index provides improved estimates. For the 3PL condition, the DTF generating parameter is underestimated. This latter result is due in part to a mismatch in the scales of the log-odds ratio and IRT difficulty.     

Nature, not books: scientists and the origins of the nature-study movement in the 1890s

Scientists played a key role in the first systematic introduction of nature study into North American public schools in the late nineteenth century. The initiatives of Wilbur Jackman and John Merle Coulter, affiliated with the young University of Chicago, and Liberty Hyde Bailey and Anna Botsford Comstock, at Cornell University, coincided with the "new education" reform movement that found object lessons and experience-based education superior to textbook teaching. Educational psychologists and philosophers of the 1890s, including G. Stanley Hall, related curriculum methods to perceived developmental stages in children, with a focus on immediate experience. Putting these pedagogical ideas--gained in summer institutes, normal schools, and programs at Chicago and Cornell--into practice were administrators and classroom teachers in both urban and rural classrooms. By 1900, a consensus about the value of nature study among scientists, community leaders, and teachers established it as the recognized general method of studying the natural world in public schools across much of the United States.     

Analysis of repeated high-intensity running performance in professional soccer

Abstract

The aims of this study were twofold: (1) to characterize repeated high-intensity movement activity profiles of a professional soccer team in official match-play; and (2) to inform and verify the construct validity of tests commonly used to determine repeated-sprint ability in soccer by investigating the relationship between the results from a test of repeated-sprint ability and repeated high-intensity performance in competition. High-intensity running performance (movement at velocities >19.8 km · h^?1 for a minimum of 1 s duration) was measured in 20 players using computerized time–motion analysis. Performance in 80 French League 1 matches was analysed. In addition, 12 of the 20 players performed a repeated-sprint test on a non-motorized treadmill consisting of six consecutive 6 s sprints separated by 20 s passive recovery intervals. In all players, most consecutive high-intensity actions in competition were performed after recovery durations ≥61 s, recovery activity separating these efforts was generally active in nature with the major part of this spent walking, and players performed 1.1 ± 1.1 repeated high-intensity bouts (a minimum of three consecutive high-intensity bouts with a mean recovery time ≤20 s separating efforts) per game. Players reporting lowest performance decrements in the repeated-sprint ability test performed more high-intensity actions interspersed by short recovery times (≤20 s, P < 0.01 and ≤30 s, P < 0.05) compared with those with higher decrements. Across positional roles, central-midfielders performed more high-intensity actions separated by short recovery times (≤20 s) and spent a larger proportion of time running at higher intensities during recovery periods, while fullbacks performed the most repeated high-intensity bouts (statistical differences across positional roles from P < 0.05 to P < 0.001). These findings have implications for repeated high-intensity testing and physical conditioning regimens.