Pedagogical constraints of physical literacy based on cognitive load theory

PROSPECTS - While numerous studies have highlighted the benefits of physical activity on cognitive health, learning, and executive function, maintaining physical activity throughout one’s...     

Power and energy in linearized physical systems

Although no truly linear physical systems exist, linearized system models are very often used in practice to study the dynamics of real systems and components. Here, the relations between the power and energy in a non-linear physical system and the analogous quantities associated with variables representing small deviations from steady-state values are studied. Sometimes a linearized system is energetically similar to the non-linear system from which it was derived, and in other cases, new types of energy elements appear which were not present in the original system. In order to show the structure of the systems, the results are presented in both equation form and in the form of bond graphs which are unique in exhibiting the power and energy structure of system models.     

试论学习型学校

一定的学校管理模式总是与一定的学校发展水平相适应。当学校发展处于较高阶段的情况下,需要构建学习型学校管理模式,使之与较高层次的学校发展阶段相适应。一所学校的生存与发展并不仅仅是由物质条件和师资水平决定的,学校发展的关键指标--学校的核心精神,起着重要的作用。必须在组织结构和知识载体两方面构建平台,对学习型学校建设提供支持。     

Qualitative data analysis in cross‐cultural projects

Large‐scale research projects, conducted in a cross‐European context, are increasingly attractive to educational researchers and policy‐makers. However, this form of comparative research across cultures brings problems concerning the standardization of data collection and analysis, particularly where ethnographic research is concerned, as it prioritizes a full range of qualitative research strategies. This paper outlines the use of a universal model and the approaches recently taken by two research teams and contrasts these with another recent nine‐partner comparative European study that used ethnographic methods. We then describe the analytical procedures used in the project, which encouraged participant observation and individual researcher interpretation in order to generate grounded accounts and outline how they were culturally sensitive and meaningful to research teams who used varied analytical approaches. However, this raised difficult issues for the ‘final’ analysis and the production of a loosely coupled research report. Our pragmatic solution was a process of ‘qualitative synthesis’ whereby individual partner reports were collated by the Project Director and treated as data and a grounded theory approach was applied to generate tentative theory in respect of creative learning. The paper concludes by arguing that data generated by a loosely coupled approach to qualitative comparative research which uses a wide range of data collection methods can be effectively analysed with a qualitative synthesis.     

“人的全面发展”内涵新析

把握“人的全面发展”内涵的实质,应确立两个理论前提:第一,“人的全面发展”在很大程度上是一种理想、一种追求、一种社会和人生的信念;第二,“人的全面发展”是一个相对的概念,而不具有绝对的意义。同时,“人的全面发展”还应包含四个层面的内涵,即完整发展、和谐发展、多方面发展、自由发展。     

Coping Collectively: The formation of a teacher self-help group

Some social movements theorists argue that contemporary social movements such as pressure groups and support groups are increasingly fulfilling the protest function of political parties and trades unions in post-industrial societies. Furthermore, these social, cultural, emotional and economic developments are occurring on a global scale. This article is an ethnographic account of teachers in an English local education authority who formed a self-help group for what they perceived to be 'bullied' (i.e. abused in the workplace) local authority and private sector employees. This was a mode of collective rather than individual coping. The identity work involved in self-renewal for these workers was a collective, social and political process, involving networking with other similar individuals and groups nationally. I argue that, given the decline in trades union powers, the teachers can be considered to be reinventing collectivity and collective protest. And the self-help group studied is not fundamentally different in character to labour movements of the past.     

Education in England – a testbed for network governance?

Abstract

Since devolution in the late 1990s, education policy in England has diverged further from that in Scotland and also from policy in Wales and Northern Ireland. In this paper we review the roots and trajectory of the English education reforms over the past two decades. Our focus is the schools sector, though we also touch on adjoining reforms to early years and further and higher education. In so doing, we engage with various themes, including marketisation, institutional autonomy and accountability. Changes in governance arrangements for schools have been a defining feature of education reforms since devolution. This has been set against an evolution in national performance indicators that has put government priorities into ever sharper relief. In theorising the changes, we pay particular attention to the suggestion that the English education system now epitomises the concept of ‘network governance’, which has also been applied to education in a global context. We question the extent to which policies have in practice moved beyond the well-established mechanisms of ‘steering at a distance’ and undermined the very notion of an education system in England. We conclude by considering possible futures for education policy and how they may position England in relation to other parts of the UK and the wider world.     

Response bias in follow-up studies of college students

The problems of response bias in longitudinal studies of college students are examined. An extensive follow-up questionnaire was sent to 1,253 college seniors who had participated in a similar survey as freshman four years earlier. Careful measure of student responsiveness in relation to various techniques designed to increase the proportion of responders (e.g., postcard, telephone contact) were kept.The less responsive groups were significantly different from their more responsive counterparts on nearly a dozen variables representing a wide variety of content areas, including academic achievement, self-concept, alcohol consumption, social deviance, and major choice preferences. Controlling for sex and socioeconomic status served to reduce, but not eliminate, these biases. Overall, the results indicate that researchers cannot account for follow-up nonresponse bias by making statistical adjustments according to data available at initial testing. The results are discussed in light of identifying the reasons for nonresponse, and attempting to develop categories of nonresponders who may be motivated to cooperate by different types of follow-up techniques.