The involvement of external agencies in extra-curricular physical education: reinforcing or challenging gender and ability inequities?

Within the UK and internationally, schools are increasingly being encouraged to call on external agencies and draw on the services of individuals, including sport coaches, to ‘help teach or lead sports within the school setting and out of school time’. This trend arises from and has contributed to a changing policy landscape and relations that characterise ‘physical education and school sport’ (PESS) and the growing use of the terminology of ‘PESS’. Previous research has highlighted that neither PESS considered broadly as a policy space, nor specific initiatives centring on ‘partnership-based’ development of physical education (PE) and/or sport in schools, can be assumed to facilitate greater equity in provision for young people. This study reports on research that has sought to build on past studies revealing gender and ability inequities amidst PESS developments. The research was designed as a small-scale case study investigation to critically explore the equity-related messages being conveyed in and through the hidden curriculum in a context of coaches’ involvement in extra-curricular provision. Utilising observations and interviews with coaches and PE teachers, data collection focused on ways in which ideas of ability, masculinity and femininity were being constructed and reproduced in and through coach's pedagogy, and sought insight into the prospective impact of the particular constructions on girls’ and boys’ involvement in extra-curricular PE. Analysis revealed that the hidden curriculum expressed in and through the organisation of extra-curricular PE and coaches’ pedagogical practices in this context can be seen as reaffirming limited conceptions of ability in PE and gender inequity in relation to girls’ and boys’ respective participation opportunities. Discussion critically addresses the relationship between policy and pedagogy in PESS in pursuing apparently ongoing tendencies for long-standing inequities to be reproduced in and through extra-curricular provision.     

Speech and Gesture Production Provide Unique Insights Into Young Children’s Spatial Reasoning

This study took a novel approach to understanding the role of language in spatial development by combining approaches from spatial language and gesture research. It analyzed forty-three 4.5- to 6-year-old’s speech and gesture production during explanations of reasoning behind performance on Spatial Analogies and Children’s Mental Transformation Tasks. Results showed that speech and gesture relevant for solving the trials (disambiguating correct choices) predicted spatial performance when controlling for age, gender, and spatial words and gestures produced. Children performed the spatial tasks well if they produced relevant information either verbally through speech or nonverbally through gesture. These results highlight the importance of not only focusing on concepts children can reference but also on how such concepts are used in spatial tasks.     

Early childhood educators’ experiences and perceptions of professionalism and professionalisation in the Asian context

Increasingly early childhood educators are referred to as “professionals,” but how do they view themselves in terms of professionalism? What does it mean to be an early childhood professional? This study explored the views of 78 Asian early childhood educators who were upgrading their qualifications to degree level. In groups of five to eight, participants visually created and explained metaphors of professionalism as a class activity. The visual metaphors were analysed using Gleeson’s polytextual thematic analysis with Rogoff’s personal, interpersonal and institutional planes as the theoretical framework. Findings revealed that the educators’ perspectives of professionalism and professionalisation related to their work–life roles, their cultural understandings and relationships, and how they believed they were viewed by others in relation to the status of early childhood education. This study provides an insight into perceptions and challenges related to the developing professionalism and professionalisation of early childhood educators in Asian contexts.     

Barriers,Successes and Enabling Practices of Education for Sustainability in Far North Queensland Schools: A Case Study

There are many documented barriers to implementing school-based sustainability. This article examines a) the barriers faced by principals and staff in two regional primary schools in Far North Queensland, Australia, well known for their exemplary practice, and b) ways the barriers were overcome. Through interviews conducted with principals and key staff, the authors found lack of time, direct funding for innovation, teacher conceptual understanding, resistance from some fellow staff to sustainability education, and being positioned as a “greenie” were presented as barriers to effective practice. The research reveals how innovation, determination, trust, and active principal support enabled the teachers to push ahead. Other educators experiencing difficulties with implementing sustainability education will likely find the discussion useful.     

Student failure: Disintegrated patterns of study strategies and perceptions of the learning environment

Data describing students' study orientations, in relation to their evaluations of courses and their preferences for different kinds of learning environment, are reanalysed in the light of recent suggestions that failing students perceive their learning context in atypical ways. Factor analysis and unfolding analysis demonstrate that failing students show inter-relationships between study orientations and preferences for learning environments which point to a disintegration of the coherent patterns previously reported in the full achievement range. The implications of such a disintegration of coherent patterns of perceptions are discussed in the light of case studies of individual students.     

Adolescent racial prejudice development: The role of friendship quality and interracial contact

There is a limited theoretical and empirical literature on the role of friendship quality and interracial contact on adolescent racial prejudice development. To address this gap, the present study examined the relationship between these factors amongst an Australian sample of 89 school-aged adolescent friendship dyads and 80 university-aged adolescent friendship dyads. All participants were administered questionnaires measuring prejudice towards Asian and Arab Australians, friendship quality and interracial contact. Overall, the results revealed that all adolescents reported significantly higher levels of subtle prejudice than blatant prejudice. As predicted, university-aged adolescents reported significantly lower levels of both subtle and blatant prejudice towards Asian and Arab Australians than school-aged adolescents. Importantly, adolescents who had contact with Asian (outgroup) friends reported significantly lower levels of subtle and blatant prejudice towards Asian Australians than adolescents with no Asian friends. Interestingly, friendship quality was not found to moderate the similarity of prejudice levels within friendship dyads. Together, these findings indicate that in developing subtle prejudice-reduction programs research should focus on increasing interracial cooperative contact, particularly amongst school-aged adolescents.     

A generic lexical URL segmentation framework for counting links,colinks or URLs

Large sets of Web page links, colinks, or URLs sometimes need to be counted or otherwise summarized by researchers to analyze Web growth or publishing. Computing professionals also use them to evaluate Web sites or optimize search engines. Despite the apparently simple nature of these types of data, many different summarization methods have been used in the past. Some of these methods may not have been optimal. This article proposes a generic lexical framework to unify and extend existing methods through abstract notions of link lists and URL lists. The approach is built upon decomposing URLs by lexical segments, such as domain names, and systematically characterizing the counting options available. In addition, counting method choice recommendations are inferred from a very general set of theoretical research assumptions. The article also offers practical advice for analyzing raw data from search engines.