Book reviews

Richard Cox, Sport — A Guide to Historical Sources in the UK (London, Sports Council, 1983). Pp.vii + 61. £8.00 ISBN 0 906577 34 9.

P.B. Munsche, Gentlemen and Poachers: The English Game Laws 1671–1831 (Cambridge, CUP, 1983). Pp.x + 255. £18.50. ISBN 0 521 23284 8.

Garry Whannel, Blowing the Whistle: The Politics of Sport (London, Pluto Press, 1983). Pp. 117. £2.50. ISBN 0 86104 508 4.

David Smith and Gareth Williams, Fields of Praise: The Official History of the Welsh Rugby Union 1881–1981 (Cardiff, University of Wales Press, 1980). Pp.xii + 505. £12.95. ISBN 0 7083 07663.

John Arlott, Jack Hobbs — Profile of ‘The Master’ (London, John Murray and Davis‐Poynter, 1981). Pp. 144. £6.95. ISBN 07195 3886 6 (John Murray) and 0 7067 0214 X (Davis‐Poynter).

Richard S. Gruneau, Class, Sports and Social Development (Amherst, The University of Massachusetts Press, 1983). Pp.x + 213. $18.50 and $9.50. ISBN 0 87023 387 4 and 0 87023 388 2.

R. Roberts, Jack Dempsey: The Manassa Mauler (London, Louisiana State University Press 1984). Pp.314. £8.50. ISBN 8071 1161 9.

Richard Cashman and Michael McKernan (eds.), Sport: Money, Morality and the Media (Kensington, NSW, New South Wales University Press, 1981). Pp. 343. ISBN 0 86840 160 9.     

Philosophy as Literature

How best to introduce philosophical ideas? Is the best and only way by studying the history of philosophy and its rational arguments and discussions? But can literature, usually hived off from philosophy, be used instead and can this be as effective as rational argument? This paper explores these questions. First it considers a text which introduces philosophy through the analysis of literature, in particular James Joyce's 'Araby', arguing that the traditional analytic approach employed by the text, by concentrating on epistemology, obscures other philosophical insights offered by Joyce. It then turns to French philosophy and literature and suggests that Sartre, Beauvoir and Camus by 'blurring' the analytic distinction between philosophy and literature have much to offer to the grasping and understanding of philosophical ideas and principles.     

Assessing the impact of football-based health improvement programmes: stay onside,avoid own goals and score with the evaluation!

Health improvement is an important strand of the Premier League’s ‘Creating Chances’ strategy. Through community programmes, professional football clubs offer health-enhancing interventions for a number of different priority groups at risk from a range of lifestyle-related health conditions. However, while national guidance recommends evaluating health improvement interventions, concerns remain about how to do this most effectively. This study aims to investigate the popularity of football-based health improvement schemes and assess the challenges associated with their evaluation. Adapted from existing methodologies, a semi-structured questionnaire was administered to an ‘expert’ sample (n?=?3) of football-led health evaluators. The sample was selected because of their experience and knowledge of performing evaluations of football-led health improvement programmes. Our ‘experts’ offered reasons for the popularity of football settings as channels for health improvement (including the reach of the club badge and the popularity of football), the justification for evaluating such schemes (including confirming effectiveness and efficiency) and the challenges of implementing evaluations (capacity, commitment and capability). Finally, a selection of key considerations for the evaluation of the impact of football-led health improvement programmes (obtaining expert guidance, building capacity and planning for evaluations) are discussed.     

Solving arithmetic word problems: an analysis of classification as a function of difficulty in children with and without arithmetic LD

This study was designed to determine a word problem difficulty classification in children with arithmetic learning disabilities (ALD; n = 104) in comparison with typically achieving students (n = 44). We tested variables such as (a) semantic structure (Change, Combine, Compare, and Equalize), (b) operation (subtraction and addition), and (c) position of the unknown quantity in the problem. Facet theory with multidimensional scaling techniques (MINISSA) was used to analyze the underlying dimensions in the responses of each group of participants. Our results indicate that although the word problem difficulty classifications for the 2 groups of children were different, the position of the unknown quantity had a greater influence on the level of difficulty of story problems than other variables. The noncanonical problems--specifically, those with the unknown term in the first place--although difficult for both groups of children, were the most difficult problems for children with ALD.     

TEACHING RESEARCH IN GERONTOLOGY: TOWARD A CUMULATIVE MODEL

In this article, we consider different approaches to teaching research methods in gerontology across a continuum of educational program levels. Our goal is to offer a conceptual framework and stimulate productive discussion of key issues and challenges in teaching research in gerontology. It is our belief that education in gerontology should include some level of training in research methodologies across all levels of gerontology instruction. Therefore, we have sought to identify those components of research training most appropriate for each level of gerontological education. Thus, basic understanding of research methods is appropriate at the associate's degree level and introductory exposure to basic issues involved in conducting research with elders provides a necessary backdrop to undergraduate programs. More in-depth understanding of gerontological research methods, particularly those involved in applied research, is a component of quality master's level programs. Finally, in-depth knowledge and the ability to apply distinctively gerontological research methods are necessary for conducting advanced original research at the doctoral level.     

Adaptive control of bi-directionally coupled Lorenz systems with uncertainties

The bi-directionally coupled Lorenz systems are linked to the modeling of a coupled double loop thermosyphon system where the mass momentum and heat exchange are both considered. As the key parameters of the system, known as Rayleigh numbers, increase, the system of differential equations predicts typical flow dynamics in a thermosyphon from heat conduction to time-dependent chaos. In many applications including the thermosyphon systems, there are uncertainties associated with mathematical models such as unmodeled dynamics and parameter variations. Also, under the high heat environment for a thermosyphon, there exist external disturbances quantitatively linked to the Rayleigh numbers. All these sources constitute uncertainties to the dynamical system. Our objective is to design adaptive controllers to stabilize the chaotic flow in each thermosyphon loop with unknown system parameters and existence of uncertainties. The controllers consist of a proportional controller with an adaptive gain and a wavelet network that reconstructs the unknown functions representing the uncertainties. Explicit stability bounds and adaptive laws for the control parameters are obtained so that the coupled Lorenz systems are globally stabilized.     

Student-teachers’ perspectives on the purposes and characteristics of faith-based schools: an Australian view

At a time when the faith-based identity of schools is facing serious challenges, the researchers undertook a longitudinal study of the relevant opinions, beliefs and values of student-teachers at a Catholic university campus in Australia. The focus of the current paper is on the responses of first-year students to a survey regarding their choice of secondary school, the purposes of schooling and the characteristics of Catholic schools. Relevant context are addressed including global education trends, the values and characteristics of Catholic education and relevant aspects of Australian schooling and youth culture. Regardless of religious affiliation, self-reported religiosity or type of school attended, providing a ‘safe and caring school environment’ emerged as the most important purpose of schooling and as a key reason for choice of school, while faith-based purposes and reasons received particularly low ratings. ‘Caring community’ was regarded as by far the most important characteristic of the Catholic school, followed by engagement in social justice programmes. The findings are briefly compared with parallel findings for teachers in Queensland Catholic schools.