Cooperative learning: a relevant instructional model for physical education pre-service teacher training?

Background: One of the key questions of physical education teacher educators (PETE) programmes refers to whether future teachers are prepared to build knowledge and skills to feel self-efficacious in teaching physical education (PE). This issue concerns the instructional model of teaching used to help PE pre-service teachers to master both pedagogical knowledge and motor skills. According to this twofold challenge, the direct instruction (DI) is mainly used for pre-service teacher training. Beyond this traditional model, other instructional models as cooperative learning (CL) approach arise in the initial PE teacher education. Nevertheless, surrounding attempts at innovation, little information related to the instructor’s role. Under the social cognitive perspective of self-efficacy and instructional competency building, more information is currently expected with regard to the strategies the instructor uses to scaffold the mastery of skills for PE pre-service teachers’ effective teaching.

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to consider whether PE pre-service teachers are trained during short training sessions aimed to discover new physical activities. We examine the influence of a scaffolding procedure (CLS design) on PE pre-service teachers’ knowledge, skills and self-efficacy in comparison to a CL and a DI experience. This leads to consider to what extent this instructional support provided by the instructor would help pre-service teachers to perceive themselves as self-efficacious to teach contents in PE.

Participants and design: After a pre-test, sixty-nine PE pre-service teachers were randomly assigned to one of the three following conditions: CL (14 males and 7 females); CLS (20 males and 8 females) or direct instruction condition (DI; 12 males and 8 females). For the training session a selected CL procedure (Jigsaw) [Aronson, Elliot, and Shelley Patnoe. 1997. The Jigsaw Classroom: Building Cooperation in the Classroom. 2nd ed. Wokingham: Addison-Wesley Educational]) was used to split CL and CLS participants into mixed-sex teams, whereas DI participants practiced the same exercises in dyads. According to the training conditions, the same instructor provided different information to participants along the three 2-hour instructional sessions with regard to: (a) warm-up (DI), (b) CL organization (CL), and (c) scaffolding integrated into a CL implementation (CLS).

Data collection: A Pre-test/post-test design was used to consider PE pre-service teacher’s motor skill, knowledge for practice, and self-efficacy improvements. The post-test also examined participants’ pedagogical knowledge.

Findings: The results showed that the participants in the three conditions progressed on performance, knowledge for practice, knowledge for teaching, and self-efficacy. Although no difference was found in self-efficacy between the three training conditions over time, significant differences appeared on pedagogical knowledge or/and motor skills with an advantage for the CL and CLS participants, respectively.

Conclusion: Although short training sessions dedicated to discovering new sports stay problematic for teacher professional development, implementing CL pre-service teacher training designs would be a relevant alternative. Instructional knowledge would be developed mainly when they have explicitly access to information concerning the teacher intervention. Nevertheless, such a scaffolding procedure integrated into CL training designs would need to be applied repeatedly to various physical activities to have an impact on pre-service teachers’ self-efficacy.     

Ethyl Silicate for Unbaked Earth Tablets Conservation: Evaluation of the Physico-mechanical Aspects

ABSTRACT

Preservation of cuneiform tablets made with clay minerals is an ongoing conservation issue. A treatment based on TEOS consolidation has been used since 1996 at the Louvre museum. The characterization of the tablets pointed out kaolinite, illite, and smectite as the three main clay minerals constituting the objects. In this research, the physico-mechanical aspects of the treatment are investigated. The penetration depth of the TEOS solution and the gradient induced are quantified using laboratory samples. TEOS treatment preserves the macroscopic swelling and the vapour transfer properties, but modifies the clay’s affinity to moisture. Elastic properties are gradually improved for all clays, but only kaolinite’s strength increases significantly. The impact of TEOS treatment on the natural behaviour related to the respective structure of the clays is considered, and the amount of kaolinite required to create adequate reactions appears to be of interest for conservation treatments.     

Two of a Kind: Shining New Light on Bronze Spiritelli Attributed to Donatello

ABSTRACT

Two Spiritelli attributed to Donatello have been extensively studied from a technical point of view, including X-radiography, alloy analysis, characterization of the core, and visual observations on the interior and exterior of the statues. The results of this technical study reveal how the two statues were cast and document the artist’s technical choices. These new insights offer additional information to address questions regarding their attribution, production context, and conservation history. First, the technical study confirmed that the statues were made by the same workshop and argues against the prior proposal of different attributions for the two figures. Second, the results strongly suggest that the statues have never been separated since they were taken off Luca Della Robbia’s Cantoria. Finally, study of the two Spiritelli offers further evidence of the heterogeneity and ingeniousness of Donatellos bronze artistic production, and contributes to the ongoing debate whether the artist himself was involved in the technical aspects of his sculpture.     

The breadth of peer relationships among preschoolers: an application of the Q-connectivity method to externalizing behavior

Preschoolers' (M(age) = 48.7 months) social breadth (the number of peer children interact with and the frequency of these interactions) and the relations between breadth and externalizing behaviors were examined using the Q-connectivity method. After considering age, sex, and classroom effects on social breadth, children's externalizing behaviors were studied in relation to levels of social breadth across variations in frequency of exposure to peers and to patterns of decline in social breadth. Externalizing preschoolers occasionally interacted with most of their classmates. However, their individual peer networks moderately to rapidly became selective, and they engaged in repeated interactions with a relatively small number of peers. Although there were no sex effects, significant age and classroom effects were obtained.     

The cubicle warrior: the marionette of digitalized warfare

In the last decade we have entered the era of remote controlled military technology. The excitement about this new technology should not mask the ethical questions that it raises. A fundamental ethical question is who may be held responsible for civilian deaths. In this paper we will discuss the role of the human operator or so-called ‘cubicle warrior’, who remotely controls the military robots behind visual interfaces. We will argue that the socio-technical system conditions the cubicle warrior to dehumanize the enemy. As a result the cubicle warrior is morally disengaged from his destructive and lethal actions. This challenges what he should know to make responsible decisions (the so-called knowledge condition). Nowadays and in the near future, three factors will influence and may increase the moral disengagement even further due to the decrease of locus of control orientation: (1) photo shopping the war; (2) the moralization of technology; (3) the speed of decision-making. As a result, cubicle warriors cannot be held reasonably responsible anymore for the decisions they make.     

Varieties of work related learning

Based on 30 interviews with and observations of professionals, 5 prototypical metaphors of learning are described and related to existing theories about learning. Two of the metaphors were previously described by Sfard: the acquisition and participation metaphors. As well, three new metaphors were found: the discovery metaphor, the apperception metaphor and the exercising metaphor. In an initial study, a newly devised questionnaire was tested with 713 elementary teachers, 92 principals and 33 support people. The five learning metaphors could be distinguished and proved to be reliable, although improvements were necessary. The correlations between the scales were as expected. Meaningful relations were found with the variables of the educational system, age, experience and educational level. In a second study, a revised questionnaire was tested with 556 professionals from 12 different organisations. The five learning metaphors proved to be more reliable than in the first study. The correlations between the scales were in line with expected patterns of correlations: implicit, explicit and social preferences correlated more with each other than with the other preferences. The expected differences between organisations, professions and groups were apparent and could be interpreted meaningfully. The discussion describes the practical use of the metaphors and suggestions for further research.     

Book Review

Abstract

The mechanical responses (i.e. external contact forces and external power) of 25 elite rowers to a race-pace rowing protocol were investigated on the traditional fixed stretcher mechanism and the more recently introduced free-floating stretcher mechanism rowing ergometers. Using a Rowperfect rowing ergometer for both conditions, external contact forces at the handle, stretcher and sliding seat, as well as the displacements of the handle and stretcher, were recorded. The external power was calculated as the product of the force and velocity data from both the handle and stretcher. Significant differences (P < 0.05) between the two conditions for each mechanical parameter were observed. The fixed condition showed larger maximum values for forces and external power and average power throughout the rowing cycle. Moreover, rowing with the fixed mechanism generated higher inertial forces during the transition between the propulsion and recovery phases, especially at the catch of the cycle. The results suggest that: (i) muscular coordination may differ according to the stretcher mechanism used, which could have an impact on the physiological adaptations of muscles; and (ii) the free-floating mechanism may induce lower catch and maximum values for net joint forces and net joint moments that could decrease the risk of injury.     

Journal acceptance rates: A cross-disciplinary analysis of variability and relationships with journal measures

There are many indicators of journal quality and prestige. Although acceptance rates are discussed anecdotally, there has been little systematic exploration of the relationship between acceptance rates and other journal measures. This study examines the variability of acceptance rates for a set of 5094 journals in five disciplines and the relationship between acceptance rates and JCR measures for 1301 journals. The results show statistically significant differences in acceptance rates by discipline, country affiliation of the editor, and number of reviewers per article. Negative correlations are found between acceptance rates and citation-based indicators. Positive correlations are found with journal age. These relationships are most pronounced in the most selective journals and vary by discipline. Open access journals were found to have statistically significantly higher acceptance rates than non-open access journals. Implications in light of changes in the scholarly communication system are discussed.     

Enhancing the MeSH thesaurus to retrieve French online health resources in a quality-controlled gateway

The amount of health information available on the Internet is considerable. In this context, several health gateways have been developed. Among them, CISMeF (Catalogue and Index of Health Resources in French) was designed to catalogue and index health resources in French. The goal of this article is to describe the various enhancements to the MeSH thesaurus developed by the CISMeF team to adapt this terminology to the broader field of health Internet resources instead of scientific articles for the medline bibliographic database. CISMeF uses two standard tools for organizing information: the MeSH thesaurus and several metadata element sets, in particular the Dublin Core metadata format. The heterogeneity of Internet health resources led the CISMeF team to enhance the MeSH thesaurus with the introduction of two new concepts, respectively, resource types and metaterms. CISMeF resource types are a generalization of the publication types of medline. A resource type describes the nature of the resource and MeSH keyword/qualifier pairs describe the subject of the resource. A metaterm is generally a medical specialty or a biological science, which has semantic links with one or more MeSH keywords, qualifiers and resource types. The CISMeF terminology is exploited for several tasks: resource indexing performed manually, resource categorization performed automatically, visualization and navigation through the concept hierarchies and information retrieval using the Doc'CISMeF search engine. The CISMeF health gateway uses several MeSH thesaurus enhancements to optimize information retrieval, hierarchy navigation and automatic indexing.