Blue-collar work,career, and success: occupational narratives of Sisu

This study examined underground iron ore miners' occupational narratives to uncover how their stories socialize miners into blue-collar careers and reinforce their work identities. Through the root theme of sisu (Finnish for inner determination), underground miners create a status hierarchy that is used to construct a sense of pride around their work and to establish milestones of success for themselves and others in their workgroup. Furthermore, they communicatively construct exemplars that guide their performance and decisions during the unfolding of their work experiences. Their discourses provide alternatives to white-collar conceptualizations and practices of careers and success.     

The complexity of the learning and teaching of EFL among Swedish‐minority students in bilingual Finland

In Finland, English is widely visible outside the school context, above all in the area of entertainment and mass media, and is no longer regarded as a foreign language in the old sense of the word. Among Swedish‐minority students in Finland, the dominant status of English in various mass media leads to positive attitudes towards English among students and provides strong motivation to acquire the language. This paper considers whether the incidental learning of English taking place outside the classroom results in the same kind of proficiency as that resulting from formal classroom learning.     

Write More,Grade Less: Five Practices for Effectively Grading Writing

This article describes five practices for effectively grading writing that demystify the grading process and focus on students, writing more and faculty grading less.     

Research Literature Review on Social Work Education Instructional Methods: 1998–2008

This article presents a review of research studies examining instructional methods reported in the social work education literature published between 1998 and 2008. From a sample of 91 studies, 31 were identified as having used either a single group pre/post test design or a comparison of two or more groups and inclusion of a learning outcome measure. Most of the studies were deficient in either the employment of comparison groups, pre/post designs, utilization of multiple learning outcome measures, or a clear delineation of the connection between teaching methods and learning outcomes. Very few studies were based on previous work. A challenge is made to the field to conduct better designed studies and several suggestions for doing so are offered.     

Evaluating Strategic Approaches to Competitive Displacement: The Case of the U.S. Newspaper Industry

The concept of competitive displacement is central to theories of media evolution, and the threat that the Internet has posed to printed newspapers provides an ongoing case study on the topic. In particular, this situation offers an opportunity to examine the strategic efforts of print newspapers to prevent competitive displacement, as well as the effectiveness of these strategies. This article addresses these issues through an analysis of a unique data set, constructed from 20 years of newspaper circulation data, as well as data on local market characteristics, newspaper staffing and content variety, and state-level Internet penetration. Specifically, this article examines whether, and to what extent, these competitive strategies impacted local print newspaper circulation trends over this 20-year time period. This analysis focuses on the following strategic responses: (a) newspapers’ launching of online versions (a diversification strategy within the language of media evolution literature); and (b) newspapers’ efforts to cover a greater variety of subject areas, as measured by the number of editors and special editorial sections produced. (The authors characterize these as a “mimicking” strategy from media evolution literature, as this strategy essentially represents an effort to simulate the much greater content variety that readers can find online). This article examines the relationships between these circulation, strategic, and Internet penetration variables over a 20-year time period, while also taking into account relevant characteristics of local newspaper markets.     

Monitoring weekly heart rate variability in futsal players during the preseason: the importance of maintaining high vagal activity

ABSTRACT

This study aimed to compare the weekly natural log of the root-mean-square difference of successive normal inter-beat (RR) intervals (ln RMSSD_Weekly) and its coefficient of variation (ln RMSSD_CV) in response to 5 weeks of preseason training in professional male futsal players. A secondary aim was to assess the relationship between ln RMSSD_Weekly and ln RMSSD_CV. The ln RMSSD is a measure of cardiac–vagal activity, and ln RMSSD_CV represents the perturbations of cardiac autonomic homeostasis, which may be useful for assessing how athletes are coping with training. Ten futsal players had their resting ln RMSSD recorded prior to the first daily training session on four out of approximately five regular training days · week^?1. Session rating of perceived exertion (sRPE) was quantified for all training sessions. Despite weekly sRPE varying between 3455 ± 300 and 5243 ± 463 arbitrary units (a.u.), the group changes in ln RMSSD_Weekly were rated as unclear (using magnitude-based inference), although large inter-individual variability in ln RMSSD responses was observed. The ln RMSSD_CV in weeks 4 and 5 were likely lower than the previous weeks. A large and significant negative correlation (r = ?0.53; CI 90%: ?0.36; ?0.67) was found between ln RMSSD and ln RMSSD_CV. Therefore, monitoring individual ln RMSSD responses is suggested since large inter-individual variations may exist in response to futsal training. In addition, higher values of ln RMSSD are associated with lower oscillations of cardiac autonomic activity.     

Do field position and playing standard influence athlete performance in wheelchair basketball?

Improved understanding of mobility performance in wheelchair basketball is required to increase game performance. The aim of this study was to quantify the wheelchair-athlete activities of players in different field positions and of different playing standard during wheelchair basketball matches. From video analysis, absolute and relative duration and frequency of wheelchair movements and athlete control options were examined in 27 national standard and 29 international standard players during entire wheelchair basketball matches. Between-group factorial analysis of variances identified that national players drove more forward (42.6 ± 6.8 vs. 35.4 ± 3.7%; effect size Cohen’s d (ES) = 1.48) and started more often driving forward (33.9 ± 2.6 vs. 31.8 ± 2.8; ES = 0.77) during a match while the mean activity duration for a single driving forward activity was longer (4.3 ± 0.9 vs. 3.7 ± 0.6 s; ES = 0.75) than for international players. Furthermore, national players performed fewer rotational movements (21.8 ± 4.0 vs. 28.9 ± 7.8%; ES = –1.30) and started less often with the rotational movements (35.0 ± 3.6 vs. 40.5 ± 5.5; ES = –1.21) while the mean activity duration for a single rotation activity was shorter (2.1 ± 0.3 vs. 2.3 ± 0.3 s; ES = –0.67) than for international players. Differences in mobility performance among guard, forward and centre players were minimal. The results should help wheelchair basketball coaches specify wheelchair-handling training techniques and means to optimise wheelchair-athlete configurations.