Portraits of marginalized lives: Stories of literacy and collaboration in school and prison

The purpose of our paper is to focus on two multicultural literacy programs that we have developed in different sites in a major Canadian urban centre. We compare an inner city elementary school and a provincial correctional facility (jail) in order to study two respective literacy programs, as grounded in the experience of marginalized populations, with a view to promoting the transformative reconstruction of the meaning of education for individuals. In this discussion we provide a context for understanding these two educational sites; for examining the pedagogical dimensions of them; and for sharing portraits of our participants both in custody and in the classroom; and, finally, for exploring the interactive, collaborative approach undertaken in our respective programs and in our research together. Through this research inquiry, we, like our participants, have experienced the value of sharing and writing stories about schooling and life experiences from an immigrant/refugee perspective.We have attempted to illustrate how researchers and their participants can collaborate to create alternatives for encouraging self-expression and discovery in education. Our vision of education is that more attention needs to be given to marginalized individuals and populations in the context of curricular innovations that both enhance and promote literacy development and personal self-esteem. Culturally sensitive literacy programs can have the potential to transform students, teachers, and researchers to become writers of their own educational stories and, moreover, authors of their own lives.     

Widening the Circle: Faculty-Student Support Groups as Innovative Practice in Higher Education

Faculty-student support groups have the potential to promote strategies for co-mentorship in places of learning. They can also function to facilitate alternative forms of pedagogical practice in the context of lifelong learning. The purpose of this paper is to describe ideas and practices in the innovative development of faculty-student support groups in higher education. The authors provide a context for introducing the model of a co-mentoring support group, for considering institutional dynamics in forming co-mentoring support groups, for illustrating a case study analysis of a university-based support group, for providing a collegial response to the mentoring literature, for considering the need to formalize mentoring programs and outcomes, for exploring challenges to and benefits of the support group effort, and finally for envisioning co-mentoring support groups more generally. The authors argue that more attention needs to be given to studying alternative pedagogical practices that enable mutualistic relationships to endure. This article accordingly offers an original holistic guide for viewing mentoring as interconnected cycles and phases of lifelong learning.     

Stochastic ordering of simulated rugby match activity produces reliable movements and associated measures of subjective task load,cognitive and neuromuscular function

ABSTRACT

The study assesses the test–retest reliability of movement and physiological measures during a simulated rugby match that employed activities performed in a stochastic order. Twenty male rugby players (21.4 ± 2.1 y) completed two trials of a 2 × 23 min rugby movement simulation protocol during which the order of events was performed in a stochastic order, with 7–10 days between trials. Movement characteristics, heart rate (HR), RPE, maximum voluntary contraction (MVC), voluntary activation (VA%) of the quadriceps, Stroop test and subjective task load rating (NASA-TLX) were measured. The most reliable measures of external load was relative distance (typical error [TE] and CV% = 1.5–1.6 m min^?1 and 1.4–1.5%, respectively), with all other movement characteristics possessing a CV% <5%. The most reliable measure of internal load, neuromuscular function and perceptual measures were for %HRmax (TE and CV% = 1.4–1.7% and 1.4–2.1%, respectively), MVC before (TE and CV% = 10.8–14.8 N·m and 3.8–4.6%, respectively), and average RPE (TE and CV% = 0.5–0.8 AU and 3.6–5.5%, respectively). The Stroop test, NASA-TLX and blood lactate produced the least reliable measures (CV% >5%). Future studies can confidently examine changes in several perceptual, neuromuscular, physiological and movement measures related to rugby activity using stochastic movements.