High-performance sport,learning and culture: new horizons for sport pedagogues?

Background: Research in sport coaching and sport pedagogy including studies published in this special issue bring to the fore the relationship between learning and culture in contexts of high-performance sport. This paper acknowledged that how learning, culture and their relationship are conceptualised is a crucial issue for researchers and professionals in high-performance sport.

Purpose and approach: This paper arises from a theoretical analysis of the research studies presented in this special issue. The analysis undertaken focused on the understanding and representation of the concepts of learning and culture and critically examined the methodological application of particular conceptualisations. The intention was to extend insight into both theoretical and methodological issues associated with understanding and researching athlete and coach learning, and high-performance sport settings.

Findings and discussion: This paper identifies tendencies for separatist and reductionist thinking about learning and culture in high-performance sport settings. A relational perspective is identified as critical to extending research and professional practice that is directed towards learning and/or culture. Researchers are urged to avoid identifying either athlete or coach learning (only) with specific events or experiences, and similarly avoid positioning culture as something that sits apart from athletes’ and coaches’ participation and learning in elite sport settings. The dual notions of ‘learning practices as cultural practice’ and ‘cultural practice as pedagogical practice’ are proposed as a basis for holistic thinking about learning and culture in high-performance sport settings. The extent to which such thinking is reflected in the various contributions to the special issue is considered. Attention is then directed to the methodological challenges that researchers face if they are to reflect a conceptualisation of learning as both embedded and embodied in cultural practices. Challenging and extending the underlying vision of learning that researchers, coaches and athletes have is revealed as a critical consideration in regard to research design, data collection and ways in which participants are variously positioned, represented and ‘involved’ in research. Embodied perspectives are identified as particularly worthy of greater attention in contemporary research that seeks to extend understanding of athlete and/or coaches’ learning and lived experiences within and amidst elite sporting cultures. Recent scholarship focusing on the body and lived experience is identified as providing theoretical and methodological insights that can extend future research and practice.

Conclusions: Foregrounding a relational perspective is fundamental to extending the understanding of learning and culture in high-performance sport. Future research also needs to clearly embrace the methodological challenges presented by new conceptualisations.     

The entrepreneurial researcher: Re-formations of identity in the research marketplace

This article seeks to consider the nature and impact of managerialism on Higher Education with particular reference to research. Managerialism will be addressed here primarily as a transmission system of economic rationalism into the body politic of the university, by that it is meant that competitiveness is assumed to improve performance and only the financial calculation of benefit is recognised. This agenda is developed through consideration of the changing management of research work and draws on the wider literature on work and organisations to look at the impact of changing material conditions and social relations on the identity formation of researchers. In general, the article seeks to promote reflexivity both in the style of presentation and in the focus on research and managerialism in Higher Education. The salience of Barry Troyna's strictures about reflexivity (Troyna, 1994) is acknowledged but it is suggested that if we seek to understand how the values and cultures of the public sector are being transformed, in particular through the formation of new subjectivities, then our own experience as workers within higher education offers a valuable and useful resource. It is also possible that subjecting this process to self-critical scrutiny may alert us to its invidiousness and so assist in the retrieval and re-formation of alternative formations of research work. For some of us, including the author, this may extend into consideration of the effects of managerialism on our own identities as managers and on our own management practice.     

Valued and performed or not? Teachers’ ratings of transition activities for young children with learning disability

Stakeholder collaboration has been identified as a facilitator for positive transition outcomes for all children, and especially for children in need of special support. However, the type and extent of stakeholder collaboration have shown to be related to teachers’ view of their transition practises. Thus, this study set out to examine the transition activities reported by 253 teachers in Compulsory School for Students with Learning Disabilities in Sweden. The purpose was to study the type of transition activities performed and how important teachers regarded these activities to be. The results show that overall teachers are engaged in transition activities that can be described as mainly traditional, as they do not differ from transition activities carried out in other educational settings. The results also show that untraditional transition activities, such as home visits and joint parent meetings with preschools, are viewed as important, but rarely executed. The results are discussed from an ecological systems perspective, emphasising the interconnectedness of individuals and their environment. Focus is given to individualised transition processes and developmentally appropriate transition activities for young children with learning disability.     

Maintaining Inequality Despite Expansion: Evidence of the Link between Parents' Education and Qualitative Differences in Educational Attainment

The restructuring of the Australian labour market decreased demand for low‐skilled workers and increased demand for highly skilled workers and professionals further strengthening the relationship between educational and occupational attainment. To satisfy the demand for highly educated workers, the government reorganised the higher education sector increasing the number of universities and trebling the number of places for domestic undergraduate students. Analysing data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey, this paper examines the association between parents' education and the likelihood of graduating from university for six birth cohorts of Australians. Overall, the findings suggest that although the expansion of the higher education sector in Australia provided alternative pathways into university, differences in educational attainment, on both quantitative and qualitative dimensions, persist.     

The identification and assessment of dyslexiaClass teachers' perceptions of the usefulness of the dyslexia screening test for seven to eight year-old pupils

Many teachers are concerned about the problems of identifying and assessing dyslexia in their own schools, but lack time during the school day to assess the accuracy of new tests. In the last ten years dyslexia has moved from being a hidden disability to one that is acknowledged in academic, intellectual and professional fields, through advances in genetics and psychological research. Non-recognition can lead to severe problems for a pupil in school and in later life, as well as for teachers, in particular, attempting to devise learning programmes and for schools, in general, facing litigation for not addressing a particular child's specific needs.     

QuickSmart: a basic academic skills intervention for middle school students with learning difficulties

QuickSmart is a basic academic skills intervention designed for persistently low-achieving students in the middle years of schooling that aims to improve the automaticity of basic skills to improve higher-order processes, such as problem solving and comprehension, as measured on standardized tests. The QuickSmart instructional program consists of three structured, teacher- or teacher aide-directed, 30-minute, small-group lessons each week for approximately 26 weeks. In this study, 42 middle school students experiencing learning difficulties (LD) completed the QuickSmart reading program, and a further 42 students with LD took part in the QuickSmart mathematics program. To investigate the effects of the intervention, comparisons were made between the reading and mathematics progress of the intervention group and a group of 10 high-achieving and 10 average-achieving peers. The results indicated that although the standardized reading comprehension and mathematics scores of QuickSmart students remained below those of comparison students, they improved significantly from pretest to posttest. In contrast, the standardized scores of comparison students were not significantly different from pretest to posttest. On measures of response speed and accuracy gathered using the Cognitive Aptitude Assessment System (CAAS), QuickSmart students were able to narrow the gap between their performance and that of their high- and average-achieving peers. Implications are drawn regarding the importance of interventions that emphasize the automaticity of basic academic skills for students with learning difficulties.