‘A Potent and Pervasive Ideology’: Athleticism and the English Elementary School

This article demonstrates that the ideology of athleticism was an important feature of life in elementary schools throughout the country in the late Victorian and Edwardian era. It argues that the ideology which originated in the Victorian public school spread firstly to ‘Oxbridge’ and then to grammar schools before being adopted increasingly by elementary schools after the Cross Commission of 1888. It offers a detailed consideration of the arguments put forward in Colm Kerrigan's article ‘“Missing Men” and missing evidence’ (Soccer and Society 10, no. 6 [2009]: 897–902) and demonstrates using a variety of primary and secondary sources that athleticism was widespread in elementary schools. It draws on the views expressed by Professor G.T.P. Finn (‘Athleticism, football and schooling: “missing men”, misunderstanding evidence and own goals’. Soccer and Society 11, no. 3 [2010]: 897–902) that Kerrigan has a limited understanding of athleticism. It concludes that athleticism in the elementary school was an even more widespread ideology than previously thought and points to the need for further research in this area.     

Evolving local and global weighting schemes in information retrieval

This paper describes a method, using Genetic Programming, to automatically determine term weighting schemes for the vector space model. Based on a set of queries and their human determined relevant documents, weighting schemes are evolved which achieve a high average precision. In Information Retrieval (IR) systems, useful information for term weighting schemes is available from the query, individual documents and the collection as a whole. We evolve term weighting schemes in both local (within-document) and global (collection-wide) domains which interact with each other correctly to achieve a high average precision. These weighting schemes are tested on well-known test collections and are compared to the traditional tf-idf weighting scheme and to the BM25 weighting scheme using standard IR performance metrics. Furthermore, we show that the global weighting schemes evolved on small collections also increase average precision on larger TREC data. These global weighting schemes are shown to adhere to Luhn’s resolving power as both high and low frequency terms are assigned low weights. However, the local weightings evolved on small collections do not perform as well on large collections. We conclude that in order to evolve improved local (within-document) weighting schemes it is necessary to evolve these on large collections.     

Educational Truth Telling in a More Reflexive Modernity

Postmodernist and poststructuralist discourses have, in the process of problematising what intellectual work looks like, opened up new spaces in which an examination of the processes of intellectual knowledge production can be located. Our intent in this article is to explore the problems and possibilities which emerge for particular forms of educational truth-telling under these conditions. While we examine these processes at a general level, our discussion is also grounded in an analysis of various attempts to tell particular truths about 'good' pedagogy in Physical Education (PE) in the transformed intellectual spaces of the contemporary university. There has been a long-running debate between various forms of expertise claiming to tell the truth about what constitutes good pedagogy in PE. This paper revisits this debate via a mobilisation of Hall's theorisation of articulation, and the reflexive modernisation thesis of Beck, Giddens and Lash. We argue that a more reflexive modernity profoundly problematises all forms of truth-telling in education.     

金缕梅科(广义)的叶结构及分类

金缕梅科(广义)Hamamelidaceae包括29属，约140种。  此科的化石出现得较早，是双子叶植物中的一个比较古老的科。 本文的目的是系统研究此科透明叶的各种性状特征，并检验它们是否具有分类学意义。 本文研究了金缕梅科29属、60余种的叶的各种性状在科内的分布及演化趋势，并根据这方面的证据对此科的分类提出一些修正意见，系统描述部分介绍了金缕梅科各属叶的形态特征。     

Exploring the role and influence of expectations in achieving VLE benefit success

The aim of this paper is to investigate the role and influence of expectations management in realising benefit success when adopting a virtual learning environment (VLE). Based on a discussion of findings from a further and higher education college in the UK, a conceptual expectations management model is developed that explores the factors influencing the formulation and realisation of expected benefits from a case study of VLE adoption over time (2003–2012). The importance of avoiding unrealistic expectations as well as proactive user involvement, change control, training and clearly defined pedagogical reasons for introducing a VLE are discussed. Finally, a number of key learning points, which managers and practitioners should address when adopting VLEs, are also considered, along with suggestions for future research.