Social impact of participatory health research: collaborative non-linear processes of knowledge mobilization

Social impact, defined as an effect on society, culture, quality of life, community services, or public policy beyond academia, is widely considered as a relevant requirement for scientific research, especially in the field of health care. Traditionally, in health research, the process of knowledge transfer is rather linear and one-sided and has not recognized and integrated the expertise of practitioners and those who use services. This can lead to discrimination or disqualification of knowledge and epistemic injustice. Epistemic injustice is a situation wherein certain kinds of knowers and knowledge are not taken seriously into account to define a situation. The purpose of our article is to explore how health researchers can achieve social impact for a wide audience, involving them in a non-linear process of joint learning on urgent problems recognized by the various stakeholders in public health. In participatory health research impact is not preordained by one group of stakeholders, but the result of a process of reflection and dialog with multiple stakeholders on what counts as valuable outcomes. This knowledge mobilization and winding pathway embarked upon during such research have the potential for impact along the way as opposed to the expectation that impact will occur merely at the end of a research project. We will discuss and illustrate the merits of taking a negotiated, discursive and flexible pathway in the area of community-based health promotion.     

Agency and structure in academic development practices: are we liberating academic teachers or are we part of a machinery supressing them?

This text taps into an ongoing discussion about academic development. It challenges an image of academic development as precarious and liminal and explores academic development as powerful. Sources of power are described and put into the context of values, ideologies, and policies governing higher education of today. It is our hope that readers will be inspired to problematise their own academic development practices and to reclaim a phase in the history of the profession where members displayed more of a political awareness.     

Do students’ beliefs about knowledge and knowing predict their judgement of texts’ trustworthiness?

We examined whether epistemic beliefs predict students’ evaluation of documents. Undergraduates read two texts on climate change. Participants judged the trustworthiness of each text and then indicated the criteria for their rating. We found that readers who believe strongly in relying on personal interpretations rather than on authorities trusted both documents less and used the document’s content or their own opinion as criteria for judging trustworthiness. We also found that readers who believe that knowledge claims should be critically evaluated through logic and rules rated the science text as more trustworthy and used the criteria of their own opinion, author and content more than readers who believe in relying on their own experiences. These effects hold true while controlling for readers’ prior knowledge and text comprehensibility.     

‘It doesn't matter how they move really,as long as they move.’ Physical education teachers on developing their students’ movement capabilities

Background: Movement is key in physical education, but the educational value of moving is sometimes obscure. In Sweden, recent school reforms have endeavoured to introduce social constructionist concepts of knowledge and learning into physical education, where the movement capabilities of students are in focus. However, this means introducing a host of new and untested concepts to the physical education teacher community.

Purpose. The purpose of this article is to explore how Swedish physical education teachers reason about helping their students develop movement capability.

Participants, setting and research design. The data are taken from a research project conducted in eight Swedish secondary schools called ‘Physical education and health – a subject for learning?’ in which students and teachers were interviewed and physical education lessons were video-recorded. This article draws on data from interviews with the eight participating teachers, five men and three women. The teachers were interviewed partly using a stimulated recall technique where the teachers were asked to comment on video clips from physical education lessons where they themselves act as teachers.

Data analysis. A discourse analysis was conducted with a particular focus on the ensemble of more or less regulated, deliberate and finalised ways of doing things that characterise the eight teachers’ approach to helping the students develop their movement capabilities.

Findings. The interviews indicate that an activation discourse (‘trying out’ and ‘being active’) dominates the teachers’ ways of reasoning about their task (a focal discourse). When the teachers were specifically asked about how they can help the students improve their movement capacities, a sport discourse (a referential discourse) was expressed. This discourse, which is based on the standards of excellence of different sports, conditions what the teachers see as (im)possible to do due to time limitations and a wish not to criticise the students publicly. The mandated holistic social constructionist discourse about knowledge and learning becomes obscure (an intruder discourse) in the sense that the teachers interpret it from the point of view of a dualist discourse, where ‘knowledge’ (theory) and ‘skill’ (practice) are divided.

Conclusions. Physical education teachers recoil from the task of developing the students’ movement capabilities due to certain conditions of impossibility related to the discursive terrain they are moving in. The teachers see as their primary objective the promotion of physical activity – now and in the future; they conceptualise movement capability in such a way that emphasising the latter would jeopardise their possibilities of realising the primary objective. Should the aim be to reinforce the social constructionist national curriculum, where capability to move is suggested to be an attempt at formulating a concept of knowledge that includes both propositional and procedural aspects and which is not based on the standards of excellence of either sport techniques or motor ability, then teachers will need support to interpret the national curriculum from a social constructionist perspective. Further, alternative standards of excellence as well as a vocabulary for articulating these will have to be developed.     

Multiple-joint exercises using elastic resistance bands vs. conventional resistance-training equipment: A cross-over study

Previous studies indicate that elastic resistance bands (ERB) can be a viable option to conventional resistance-training equipment (CRE) during single-joint resistance exercises, but their efficacy has not been established for several commonly used multiple-joint resistance exercises. Thus, we compared muscular activation levels in four popular multiple-joint exercises performed with ERB (TheraBand^®) vs. CRE (Olympic barbell or cable pulley machines). In a cross-over design, men and women (n?=?29) performed squats, stiff-legged deadlifts, unilateral rows and lateral pulldown using both modalities. Multilevel mixed-effects linear regression analyses of main and interaction effects, and subsequent post hoc analyses were used to assess differences between the two resistance-training modalities. CRE induced higher levels of muscle activation in the prime movers during all exercises (p?<?.001 for all comparisons), compared to muscle activation levels induced by ERB. The magnitude of the differences was marginal in lateral pulldown and unilateral rows and for the erector spinae during stiff-legged deadlifts. In squats the quadriceps femoris activations were substantially lower for ERB. The differences between ERB and CRE were mostly observed during the parts of the contractions where the bands were relatively slack, whilst the differences were largely eliminated when the bands became elongated in the end ranges of the movements. We conclude that ERB can be a feasible training modality for lateral pulldowns, unilateral rows and to some extent stiff-legged deadlifts, but not for the squat exercise.     

Kinematical analysis of the V2 ski skating technique: A longitudinal study

To characterise timing of movements and evaluate performance effects of technique alterations in V2 ski skating, 13 elite male cross-country skiers (age, 23 ± 2 years; stature, 182 ± 6 cm; body mass, 76 ± 8 kg; V2 V?O_2max, 79.3 ± 4.4 mL · kg^?1 · min^?1) were tested four times during the preparation and competition phase on a roller ski treadmill. Each test consisted of submaximal intensities of exercise for determination of oxygen cost followed by one 1000-m performance test. Hip movement (from accelerometer data) and joint angles (2D video) were determined for high-intensity exercise (6° and 3.5 m · s^?1; ~ 97–100% of V?O_2peak). Each ski thrust consisted of three phases: gliding phase (18–50% of cycle time), poling phase (50–70% of cycle time), and kick phase (70–78% of cycle time). Flexion/extension of the hip initiated all phases, followed by the respective joints in legs and arms. Mixed-model analysis, adjusting for systematic time-point effects, identified that both reduced vertical hip acceleration and increased cycle time gave a small likely reduction in oxygen cost and 1000-m time. In conclusion, well-developed hip movement is a key characteristic of the V2 technique for elite-standard skiers’ long-term performance development.     

What static and dynamic properties should slalom skis possess? Judgements by advanced and expert skiers

Flexural and torsional rigidity are important properties of skis. However, the flexural and torsional rigidity that lead to optimal performance remain to be established. In the present study, four pairs of slalom skis that differed in flexural and torsional rigidity were tested by advanced and expert skiers. Using a 10-item questionnaire, different aspects of the skis' performance were rated on a 9-point scale. For each pair of skis, physical measurements were compared with the ratings of the two groups of skiers. Correlations (Spearman) were then determined between (i) different mechanical properties of the skis (static and dynamic), (ii) subjective assessments of the participants, and (iii) properties of the skis and the participants' assessments. The latter showed that expert skiers rate the aspects of the skis more accurately than advanced skiers. Most importantly, expert skiers are particularly sensitive to torsion of the skis. These results suggest that such highly rated elements should be addressed in future ski designs.     

In defence of writing: a social semiotic perspective on digital media,literacy and learning

From a learning perspective, social semiotics researchers tend to focus on the liberation latent in the multimedia options available through the new media. It is true that digital media democratise the possibilities open to the general public of a more varied and comprehensive text production than ever before, both in and outside school. Participating in this text production naturally implies a richer potential for learning. But digital technology also allows us to opt out of, and thus avoid, semiotic work. With this as the starting point, the present article sets out to highlight the pedagogical benefits associated with the written mode, precisely in an age when the digital media are making multimodal forms of expression increasingly available to us all.     

Monk,knight or artist? the archivist as a straddler of a paradigm

The contextual approach gives the impression that we are moving into the 21st century with three competing scientific traditions of interpretation. Another understanding is the systemic view, which indicates a paradigm with complementing traditions of interpretation, depending on ontological level. The paradigm of archival science is, like that of many other sciences, influenced by positivism, systems theory and hermeneutics. The relevance of the paradigm depends on personal beliefs. The hermeneutic understanding of archival science emphasizes the context and deconstructs central concepts. Hermeneutics emphasizes the influence of conceptual changes and technological advances on perception. Hermeneutics stresses the need for a socio-cultural and historical orientation of archival science. The positivistic tradition is coloured by the myths about an ideal science. This is reflected firstly in the analogy comparing archives with nature, and secondly in the deductive method. Positivism is instrumental in its demands for distinct definitions of concepts and its insistence on the record as the basis of archival science. The flexibility of systems theory highlights the complex relations between context and record. Systems theory can, at its best, serve as a meeting-place for researchers, archivists and users and accordingly form the basis for new knowledge and theory formation. Systems theory enables a materialistic/dialectic epistemology based in reality and inspired by other relevant sciences. The result may be the foundation of a systemic-functionalist archival science with activities, records creation and evidential values in focus.