When I Fell in Love with Sports History

Abstract

‘When I Fell in Love with Sports History’ is a story about mentorship, research, and a new direction for sports history. The story emphasizes the need to identify and then mentor students from underrepresented backgrounds to introduce them to sports history. Moreover, the piece examines the need for sports history scholars to use social media more to expand turn social media into an extended classroom to introduce people to sports history.     

Conceptual issues in organizational communication research: Elements of a model of conceptual authenticity

Because concepts are the building blocks of theory, concerns for theoretical adequacy in organizational communication research blur a more fundamental concern for the authenticity of the concepts upon which organizational communication theory is based. Organizational communication scholars must strive to achieve greater conceptual authenticity in their efforts to construct theory of high integrity. After a discussion of the role of concepts in theory construction, definitions for the notions of authenticity and integrity are provided. Next, six criteria that may be used to assess conceptual authenticity are proposed. These criteria: 1) communication relatedness; 2) rigor; 3) uniqueness; 4) impact; 5) depth; and 6) relevance, represent elements of a criterion model for assessing the authenticity of new and current concepts in organizational communication theory and research.     

Child Care Quality in The Netherlands Over the Years: A Closer Look

Research Findings: We assessed the quality of child care in a nationally representative sample of 200 Dutch child care centers using the Infant/Toddler Environment Rating Scale–Revised and/or Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale–Revised and compared it with a previous assessment in 2005. The Caregiver Interaction Profile (CIP) scales were used to rate the quality of caregiver–child interactions. Results showed a significant and substantial decline in quality compared to 2005, with 49% of the groups now scoring below the minimal level. The CIP scales showed relatively high scores for the basic caregiver interactive skills of sensitive responsiveness, respect for autonomy, and structuring and limit setting but much lower scores for the more educational skills of verbal communication, developmental stimulation, and fostering positive peer interactions. Caregiver sensitive responsiveness was significantly lower in infant groups (0–2 years) than in preschool groups (2–4 years); caregiver respect for autonomy, verbal communication, developmental stimulation, and fostering positive peer interactions were significantly lower in infant groups than in preschool groups and mixed-age groups (0–4 years). Practice or Policy: Quality of child care is not stable across the years, and regular quality assessments are therefore needed to monitor child care quality. The low scores on the more educational versus the more basic caregiver interactive skills indicate that these skills deserve more attention in caregiver education and training. Training programs should be attuned to the individual interaction skill profile of caregivers.     

AN INQUIRY INTO A UNIVERSITY'S “NOBLE SAVAGE” PROGRAM

You are a newly appointed teacher to 30 newly‐arrived Chinese fourth grade students and you speak no Chinese. You are to teach in English and you are to forbid the children to speak Chinese. This scenario was common in the mid‐60s. It raised many questions from parents and educators alike. If you can't communicate, can you educate? Are the children being treated fairly? How long before boredom sets in for children? How long before frustration overcomes the teacher?

The scene would be somewhat different if you spoke Chinese or if the children knew some English. Perhaps you could team up with a Chinese‐speaking co‐teacher: the co‐teacher could teach the standard fourth grade curriculum and its transferable concepts in Chinese while you worked with some of or all of the class, laying a foundation for English instruction. But obviously all‐day “English only” instruction is not enough to comply with the legal mandates and the students’ inalienable opportunity to be taught by teachers who are communicating intelligibly to them.

Kinney Kinmon Lau, his classmates, and their parents and guardians realized something was wrong with this education. They sued the San Francisco schools, relying on the 1964 civil rights equal education amendments. In 1974, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with them: “English is not enough” (Lau v. Nichols). The issues related to this decision continue to engage educators across the nation. Transitional Bilingual Education (TBE) has become a compromise for Maintenance Bilingual Education, which is what parents in the 60s were pursuing. Today, some have forgotten that the 1974 landmark decision had been preceded by a dozen years of activism across the country by Latino parents with similar concerns to those of the San Francisco Chinese parents.     

One versus two years: Does length of exposure to an enhanced preschool program impact the academic functioning of disadvantaged children in kindergarten?

Research on the effects of preschool dosage on children's early academic functioning has been limited despite the substantial policy implications of such work. The present study adds to a growing literature on this topic by examining how the number of years enrolled in an enhanced preschool program impacts the school readiness of primarily low-income children at kindergarten. Multi-level modeling was used to account for nesting of children within classrooms. To control for potential selection bias since children were not randomly assigned to receive one or two years of preschool, propensity score one-to-one matching was used to create the two participant groups. Receiving a second year of preschool led to significant improvements in children's early literacy and numeracy skills. Implications of these results for preschool interventions are discussed.     

Understanding Students' Motivation in Sport and Physical Education: From the Expectancy-Value Model and Self-Efficacy Theory Perspectives

In this article, the roles of individuals' expectancy beliefs and incentives (i.e., task value, outcome expectancy) in sport and physical education are examined from expectancy-value model and self-efficacy theory perspectives. Overviews of the two theoretical frameworks and the conceptual and measurement issues are provided, followed by a review of developmental and gender/racial differences and the influences of sport and physical education on children's motivational beliefs.     

Comparison of preservice elementary teachers anxiety about teaching students to identify minerals and rocks and students in geology courses anxiety about identification of minerals and rocks

Students were given clearly defined, characteristics for the identification of minerals and rocks. This system requires visual identification of decisive characteristics, not rote memorization. In addition, this classification system differs from the usual method of first grouping rocks into the igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic categories. In this study the initial grouping of rocks was crystalline or noncrystalline. Two groups of students (preservice elementary teachers & students in geology courses) were tested on their ability to identify, the characteristics listed in Figure 1. The preservice teachers were anxious about teaching students to identify minerals and rocks. This initial high anxiety was reduced by completion of the task of identification. Students in geology classes were given the same task as the preservice teachers. However, the students in geology courses were not anxious about identifying minerals and rocks. Further analysis of the geology students showed that students whose grades on the lab exam were above the mean had low initial anxiety and the level of anxiety was reduced after the exam. Geology students with grades below the mean had high initial anxiety and the anxiety level was elevated after the exam. This indicates an inverse relationship between anxiety and performance in these students, and supports the work of researchers in the field of psychology.