Reasons for the collaborative difficulties between psychoeducational consultants and teachers: an exploratory analysis / Análisis exploratorio de las variables relacionadas con las dificultades de los asesores psicopedagógicos para colaborar con los profesores

Abstract

This paper examines whether the difficulties in collaboration identified in the sessions of five consultants working with teachers and whether the consultants’ high participation (a type of hyper-responsibility) are related to the ongoing episode of the problem solving process, the origin of the request, and the topic of the session. Results show that collaboration difficulties tend to be more frequent when consultants and teachers discuss teaching-learning processes and that the consultants’ hyper-responsibility is more common: (a) when they are looking for solutions, (b) when they start some action with the support of the tradition of the educational setting or the support of the regulation, and (c) when they are discussing career guidance and mentoring.     

Imposing a pause between the eccentric and concentric phases increases the reliability of isoinertial strength assessments

Abstract

This study analysed the effect of imposing a pause between the eccentric and concentric phases on the biological within-subject variation of velocity- and power–load isoinertial assessments. Seventeen resistance-trained athletes undertook a progressive loading test in the bench press (BP) and squat (SQ) exercises. Two trials at each load up to the one-repetition maximum (1RM) were performed using 2 techniques executed in random order: with (stop) and without (standard) a 2-s pause between the eccentric and concentric phases of each repetition. The stop technique resulted in a significantly lower coefficient of variation for the whole load–velocity relationship compared to the standard one, in both BP (2.9% vs. 4.1%; P = 0.02) and SQ (2.9% vs. 3.9%; P = 0.01). Test–retest intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) were r = 0.61–0.98 for the standard and r = 0.76–0.98 for the stop technique. Bland–Altman analysis showed that the error associated with the standard technique was 37.9% (BP) and 57.5% higher (SQ) than that associated with the stop technique. The biological within-subject variation is significantly reduced when a pause is imposed between the eccentric and concentric phases. Other relevant variables associated to the load–velocity and load–power relationships such as the contribution of the propulsive phase and the load that maximises power output remained basically unchanged.     

A 3D kinematic analysis of breathing patterns in competitive swimmers

Abstract

The purpose of this paper was to understand which differences long-term swimming training can cause on trunk mechanics during breathing and how these differences are related to the years of swimming training. The variations and coordination among trunk compartments were considered as target movement patterns. Video-based plethysmography was utilised for data acquisition and pre-processing. A group of swimmers, who followed a long-term intensive swimming training previously to this study, was compared with a non-swimmer control group. The participants of both groups performed quiet breathing and vital capacity tests. From the compartmental volumes associated with each breathing curves, the relative amplitude and cross-correlation among these volumetric time-varying signals were calculated, in order to analyse the relative partial volume variation and the coordination among trunk compartments involved in respiration. The results of a Mixed-ANOVA test (P ≤ 0.05) revealed higher coefficient of variation (P < 0.001) and correlations among trunk compartments in the swimmers group when vital capacity was performed. Significant linear regression was found between the years of swim training and the coefficients of variation and correlation. The results suggest that after long periods of intensive swim training, athletes might develop specific breathing patterns featuring higher volume variations in the abdominal region and more coordination among compartments involved in forced respiratory tasks such as vital capacity.     

PART III: KINANTHROPOMETRY

Whole-body bone mineral density and bone mineral mass in young adult rugby union players.     

Double rank analysis for research assessment

Reliable methods for the assessment of research success are still in discussion. One method, which uses the likelihood of publishing very highly cited papers, has been validated in terms of Nobel prizes garnered. However, this method cannot be applied widely because it uses the fraction of publications in the upper tail of citation distribution that follows a power law, which includes a low number of publications in most countries and institutions. To achieve the same purpose without restrictions, we have developed the double rank analysis, in which publications that have a low number of citations are also included. By ranking publications by their number of citations from highest to lowest, publications from institutions or countries have two ranking numbers: one for their internal and another one for world positions; the internal ranking number can be expressed as a function of the world ranking number. In log–log double rank plots, a large number of publications fit a straight line; extrapolation allows estimating the likelihood of publishing the highest cited publication. The straight line derives from a power law behavior of the double rank that occurs because citations follow lognormal distributions with values of μ and σ that vary within narrow limits.     

The Future of Universities∗

The world is going through a major transitional crisis that is touching all facets of human existence including all human institutions. The roots of this crisis, so far as higher education is concerned, go back to the events of 1968, a year that also saw the birth of the Club of Rome, an organization that has made sustainable human development its goal. The university, although it must change to meet new circumstances, remains the institution that can contribute most, from a global perspective, to preserving and developing the quality of life, within the limits of sustainable human development, and of conserving and furthering the material and spiritual future of humanity.

     

A review of altmetrics as an emerging discipline for research evaluation

This article analyses the scientific production of publications on altmetrics as an emergent discipline for research evaluation. The research objective was to identify the investigative tendencies that characterize the subject. The analysis studied documents indexed by Web of Science and Scopus databases. About 253 documents were retrieved, showing a growth in articles 2005–2015. We discovered that the most productive authors, journals, institutions, and countries were from Europe and North America. The collaboration networks between authors and institutions reveal a homogenous community formed by the most prolific contributors. The most explored subjects deal with (1) social media and networking, (2) internet, (3) scholarly and scientific communication and publication, (4) open access and public libraries, (5) citation analysis, (6) impact factor measurements, (7) metric disciplines, (8) information analysis, retrieval, and processing, (9) search engines and data bases, and (10) evaluative bibliometrics. We discovered a nucleus of contributors who have attempted to solidify the knowledge area, with emerging principles of high theoretical consistency.     

Stories of impact: the role of narrative in understanding the value and impact of digital collections

Cultural heritage institutions leverage digitization to fulfill their mission to preserve, represent, and provide access to collections under their care. Despite their common interest in documenting the progress of digitization and online access, the library, archives, and museums (LAM) sector lacks a conceptual framework for assessing and demonstrating the impact of digitized ethnographic collections. Reporting the findings of a yearlong interdisciplinary study, this article underscores the importance of storytelling in articulating the value and impact of digitized ethnographic collections held in cultural heritage institutions. We begin with an overview of the literature on the assessment and describe the methods we employed in our study. Next, we identify and discuss the different ways that stories and storytelling are strategically mobilized in conversations about the impact of digitization. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our findings for cultural heritage practice and collection development.     

Connecting school and community with science learning: Real world problems and school–community partnerships as contextual scaffolds*

A challenge facing many schools, especially those in urban settings that serve culturally and linguistically diverse populations, is a disconnection between schools and students' home communities, which can have both cognitive and affective implications for students. In this article we explore a form of “connected science,” in which real‐world problems and school‐community partnerships are used as contextual scaffolds for bridging students' community‐based knowledge and school‐based knowledge, as a way to provide all students opportunities for meaningful and intellectually challenging science learning. The potential of these scaffolds for connected science is examined through a case study in which a team of fifth‐grade teachers used the student‐identified problem of pollution along a nearby river as an interdisciplinary anchor for teaching science, math, language arts, and civics. Our analysis makes visible how diverse forms of knowledge were able to support project activities, examines the consequences for student learning, and identifies the features of real‐world problems and school–community partnerships that created these bridging opportunities. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 38: 878–898, 2001