Music Therapy in Action: A Case Study of a Brain-Damaged Teenager

The founder of Music Therapy, Dr. E. Thayer Gaston, was originally set for a career in medicine. The Depression Years changed those plans and though he became Professor of Music Education, medicine and psychiatry continued to intrigue him. With close medical friends like Menninger, Maslow and Masserman, he had the advice and support of his medical colleagues to initiate the first Music Therapy programme at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas. There he was Director of Music Therapy and the research, conducted by his doctoral students in the fifties, soon took a foot hold in the professional fields at psychiatric settings and in Special Schools for Handicapped Children.     

Junior researchers’ experience of innovation in a multidisciplinary team environment

This paper describes junior researchers’ experience of innovative research, with the aim of encouraging fellow junior academics. Through the experience, the team recognised that context and flexibility are key factors in the research process. These factors are discussed in the light of three specific features of this project. First is the type of research the team engages in: meta-research, which includes looking at how research is managed. Second, the team is embedded in a larger organisation that holds a broad range of perspectives, from molecular scientists to sociologists. Third, the organisation offers unique opportunities not available through the traditional academic paradigm. Identification of these factors influenced the learning associated with engaging in innovative research, not in the least was the lesson that research does not follow a linear path. These concepts are framed by Blumer's theory of Symbolic Interactionism.     

Nutrition for power sports: middle-distance running, track cycling, rowing, canoeing/kayaking, and swimming

Contemporary training for power sports involves diverse routines that place a wide array of physiological demands on the athlete. This requires a multi-faceted nutritional strategy to support both general training needs--tailored to specific training phases--as well as the acute demands of competition. Elite power sport athletes have high training intensities and volumes for most of the training season, so energy intake must be sufficient to support recovery and adaptation. Low pre-exercise muscle glycogen reduces high-intensity performance, so daily carbohydrate intake must be emphasized throughout training and competition phases. There is strong evidence to suggest that the timing, type, and amount of protein intake influence post-exercise recovery and adaptation. Most power sports feature demanding competition schedules, which require aggressive nutritional recovery strategies to optimize muscle glycogen resynthesis. Various power sports have different optimum body compositions and body weight requirements, but increasing the power-to-weight ratio during the championship season can lead to significant performance benefits for most athletes. Both intra- and extracellular buffering agents may enhance performance, but more research is needed to examine the potential long-term impact of buffering agents on training adaptation. Interactions between training, desired physiological adaptations, competition, and nutrition require an individual approach and should be continuously adjusted and adapted.     

Synchronized metronome training induces changes in the kinematic properties of the golf swing

The purpose of this study was to evaluate possible effects of synchronized metronome training (SMT) on movement dynamics during golf-swing performance, as captured by kinematic analysis. A one-group, between-test design was applied on 13 male golfers (27.5 ± 4.6 years old, 12.7 ± 4.9 handicap) who completed 12 sessions of SMT over a four-week period. Pre- and post-assessments of golf swings with three different clubs (4-iron, 7-iron, and pitching wedge) were performed using a three-dimensional motion capture system. Club velocity at three different swing phases (backswing, downswing, and follow-through) was measured and cross-correlation analysis of time-series signals were made on joint couplings (wrist–elbow–shoulder) of both arms, and between joints and the club, during the full golf swing. There were significantly higher cross-correlations between joint-couplings and concomitant changes of the associated phase-shift differences, as well as reduced phase-shift variability at post-test. No significant effect of SMT was found for the club velocities. We suggest that domain-general influences of SMT on the underlying brain-based motor control strategies lead to a more coordinated movement pattern of the golf-swing performance, which may explain previous observations of significantly improved golf-shot accuracy and decreased variability after SMT.     

Fragments of your communication: Email,vmail, and fax

Abstract

How are new media, such as electronic mail, voice mail, and fax, used when people have access to several of them simultaneously? This paper reports findings from a field study of media use in four sizable subunits within two large organizations where most employees had access to email, vmail, and fax. Respondents tended to use multiple electronic media rather than relying on one. However, they also showed a tendency to prefer one medium for asynchronous communication and to use the others for occasional, specialized purposes. Further, there were considerable differences across subunits in typical media use patterns. Although respondents expressed strong desires for multimedia integration, this study suggests that technological integration may not necessarily result in seamless, collaborative work.     

Letter from Rob Kling-Editor-in-Chief

Abstract

Individuals who have ready access to three new communication media— email, vmail, and fax—may elect to use only one medium, or two or more in combination. Users make choices based on evaluations of the utility of each medium for their communication tasks (a function of the types of work they perform). Individuals may assess technological characteristics to evaluate the technological utility of each medium. However, since communication media require multiple users, individuals also may be expected to assess characteristics of the user community to evaluate the social utility of each medium. Social utility may be influenced by people's perceptions of the existence of a critical mass of media users, and by the social influence of their peers and superiors. This study finds that perceptions of the technological and social utility of email, vmail, and fax are relatively independent of the types of work people perform. Social utility explains media usage somewhat better than technological utility, except in the case of email. Thus, the concept of social utility should be given more attention in future investigations of media choice.     

Teachers’ knowledge base for implementing response-to-intervention models in reading

This study examined the knowledge base of 142 elementary-level educators for implementing response-to-intervention (RTI) models in reading. A questionnaire assessed participants?? professional background for teaching reading, as well as their familiarity with specific assessments, research-based instructional models, and interventions potentially useful in RTI approaches. A multiple-choice knowledge survey patterned after a teacher licensure exam, including items situated in classroom contexts, assessed participants?? knowledge about different components of reading, assessment, and RTI practices. Overall, participants obtained the highest scores on a knowledge survey subscale involving fluency/vocabulary/comprehension and the lowest on a subscale involving assessment/RTI practices, with a subscale involving phonemic awareness/phonics in the middle. Mean percentages correct on the subscales ranged from about 58?C65% correct. However, participants who said they had prior code-focused professional development outperformed other participants on all survey subscales. General elementary certified teachers performed comparably to special education certified teachers on two out of three subscales, with both groups outperforming unlicensed participants; on the assessment/RTI subscale, only the special educators outperformed unlicensed participants. Most participants were familiar with basic features of RTI such as the three tiered model but were unfamiliar with the research-based instructional approaches and interventions named in the study questionnaire, although participants who had experienced code-focused PD were significantly more likely to be familiar with certain interventions. The study suggests that professional development will be important to enable many educators to implement RTI effectively in reading.     

‘Boys don’t rule us’: exploring Rwandan girls with disabilities’ resistance to masculine dominance in school

Although a great deal of previous literature has explored the ways in which social class affects parental engagement in educational processes, there has been surprisingly little discussion of the way in which social class shapes the parent–professional interaction that occurs in school exclusion processes specifically. School exclusion processes are complex and those parents who become involved in them have to negotiate not only the formal processes that surround the use of permanent and fixed-term exclusion but also the less well-regulated and increasingly favoured processes that are associated with the use of alternatives to exclusion from school. This paper draws on the perspectives of professionals working in a wide variety of roles and contexts in one local authority in England and on those of a small number of mothers of children with longer and more complex histories of involvement in school exclusion processes. It argues for greater recognition of the impact of social class on parent–professional interaction in school exclusion processes because of the way in which it helps to perpetuate an intergenerational cycle of social and educational disadvantage.     

Cable and Educational Media

Mary Louise Hollowell, ed, The Cable/Broadband Communications Book, 1977-1978 (Washington: Communications Press [1346 Connecticut Ave. N.W., 20036], 1977—$16.25 including postage, paper)

1976 NCTA Cable Services Directory (National Cable Television Association, 918 Sixteenth St. NW, Washington D.C. 20006—$4.00, paper)

Regulatinzfable Television Subscriber Rates: A Guide for Local Officials (Cable Television Information Center, Yrban Institute, 2100 M St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20037—$17.50 including postage, paper)

Alan Hancock Planning for Educational Mass Media (London and New York: Longman, 1977—$20.00)

Kenyon C. Rosenberg and John S. Doskey Media Equipment: A Guide and Dictionary (Littleton, Colo.: Libraries Unlimited, 1976—$11.50)