Mocking God and Celebrating Satan: Parodies and Profanities in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials

Given its stance against organised religion, it is perhaps not surprising that Philip Pullman’s award-winning trilogy His Dark Materials has, alongside the plaudits and praise, invited controversy and debate. Jacobs (The Weekly Standard, 2000), for instance, views the “anti-Christian” theme in Pullman’s work as both misleading and dishonest, whilst Hitchens (The Mail on Sunday, 2002) denounces it as atheistic “propaganda.” Of central concern to these critics, and others, is the impact of Pullman’s heretical understandings on impressionable young readers. I would suggest that such concern implies a somewhat questionable homogenisation of young readers, and fails to recognise the empowering potential residing in Pullman’s text. Indeed, by drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of “carnival,” a literary mode which subverts official culture through laughter and role reversals, it can be argued that far from indoctrinating the reader or promoting uncontested atheistic understandings, the heretical disruptions and inversions in Pullman’s religious theme encourage an altogether more positive and plural response.     

From closed to open: Job role changes,individual predispositions,and the adoption of commercial open source software development

When trying to attain the benefits of open source software (OSS), proprietary closed source software (PCSS) firms are struggling to adopt this radically different practice of software development. We approach these adoption challenges as a problem of gaining support for organizational innovation. Through a mixed-method research design consisting of qualitative interviews and a survey of employees of a large telecommunications firm, we find that the organizational innovation to commercially engage in OSS has different impacts on technical and administrative dimensions of different job roles. Accordingly, individuals enacting different job roles are—on average—more or less well aligned with the OSS practice and OSS processes per se. We find that individual-level attributes can counterbalance the job role changes that weaken support for adopting OSS, while perceived organizational commitment has no effect. Suggestions for PCSS firms are presented and implications for innovation literature are discussed.     

Relative age effects in Swiss talent development – a nationwide analysis of all sports

Relative age effects (RAE) generate consistent participation inequalities and selection biases in sports. The study aimed to investigate RAE across all sports of the national Swiss talent development programme (STDP). In this study, 18 859 youth athletes (female N = 5353; mean age: 14.8 ± 2.5 y and male N = 13 506; mean age: 14.4 ± 2.4 y) in 70 sports who participated in the 2014 competitive season were evaluated. The sample was subdivided by sex and the national level selection (NLS, N = 2464). Odds ratios (ORs) of relative age quarters (Q1-Q4) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated. In STDP, small RAE were evident for females (OR 1.35 (95%-CI 1.24, 1.47)) and males (OR 1.84 (95%-CI 1.74, 1.95)). RAE were similar in female NLS athletes (OR 1.30 (95%-CI 1.08, 1.57)) and larger in male NLS athletes (OR 2.40 (95%-CI 1.42, 1.97)) compared to athletes in the lower selection level. In STDP, RAE are evident for both sexes in several sports with popular sports showing higher RAE. RAE were larger in males than females. A higher selection level showed higher RAE only for males. In Switzerland, talent identification and development should be considered as a long-term process.     

Men and women academics: An Anglo-American comparison of subject choices and research activity

In both the U.S. and the U.K. women academics are concentrated in certain subject fields. There is considerable similarity between the two countries in this respect: women are found in relatively large numbers in the humanities and are virtually absent from the applied sciences, but in both countries they are a small minority in all five major subject areas. In the U.S.A. the degree of polarisation between the men and women is greater than in the U.K. This is also true with respect to the teaching and research activities of men and women: in both countries women tend to publish fewer articles than men, but in the U.S. the difference is greater. The degree to which this is true varies according to subject fields; it is most marked in the humanities and least marked in the social sciences and applied sciences. There is one unexpected difference between the two countries: whereas in America women teach more than men, in Britain they teach less except in the social sciences. The causes of the different behaviour and interests of men and women academics are likely to be a function both of cultural definitions of male and female roles in the wider society, and institutional factors associated with educational systems both prior to the university stage and at that stage.

     

Prognostic relevance of motor talent predictors in early adolescence: A group- and individual-based evaluation considering different levels of achievement in youth football

ABSTRACT

In the debate about the usefulness of motor diagnostics in the talent identification process, the prognostic validity for tests conducted in early adolescence is of critical interest. Using a group- and individual-based statistical approach, this prospective cohort study evaluated a nationwide assessment of speed abilities and technical skills regarding its relevance for future achievement levels. The sample consisted of 22,843 U12-players belonging to the top 4% in German football. The U12-results in five tests served as predictors for players’ selection levels in U16-U19 (youth national team, regional association, youth academy, not selected). Group-mean differences proved the prognostic relevance for all predictors. Low individual selection probabilities demonstrated limited predictive values, while excellent test results proved their particular prognostic relevance. Players scoring percentile ranks (PRs) ≥ 99 had a 12 times higher chance to become youth national team players than players scoring PR < 99. Simulating increasing score cut-off values not only enhanced specificity (correctly identified non-talents) but also led to lower sensitivity (loss of talents). Extending the current research, these different approaches revealed the ambiguity of the diagnostics’ prognostic relevance, representing both the usefulness and several pitfalls of nationwide diagnostics. Therefore, the present diagnostics can support but not substitute for coaches’ subjective decisions for talent identification, and multidisciplinary designs are required.     

Towards an activist approach to research and advocacy for girls and physical education

Background: Much research and practice in the field of physical activity and physical education for girls has been trapped in a reproductive cycle of telling the ‘same old story’ as if it is news over and over again, since at least the 1980s. A thread running through this narrative is that despite all of this research and related interventions, we have yet to find the ‘solution’ to the ‘problem’ of girls and physical education. As a result, little progress appears to have been made in terms of changing things for the better for the majority of girls.

Purpose: We offer an activist approach to work with girls in physical education as one possible means of breaking the reproductive cycle of research and media reporting that we suggest has worked against improving the situation for girls. We take a pragmatist stance to ask ‘can we make the situation for girls better than it is currently?’ and ‘how might we go about this task?’ We propose an activist approach not as ‘the solution’ to the ‘problem’ of girls in physical education, but as one worthy of testing in practice.

Process: We begin by outlining the broad features of an activist approach to working with girls in physical education. We then overview the findings of a growing body of activist studies in physical education and identify four critical elements that we believe need to be present in order to assist girls to identify, name and negotiate barriers to their engagements with physical education and their participation in physically active lifestyles. We highlight one example of an activist study that shows how the four critical elements interact in their work with girls.

Discussion: We argue for the need for a consensus around improving the current situation of girls in physical education, for a scaling up of this activist work as it is tested in practice, and for the coincidental development of a pedagogical model for working with girls in physical education.     

Football and its continuity as a classless mass phenomenon in Germany and England: rethinking the bourgeoisification of football crowds

Considering football’s popular notion of a working-class sport in England and Germany – at least in the 1950s – the shift towards present classless fandom in football is mainly explained by the genesis of a middle-class fan culture induced by the process of football’s accumulating (hyper-) commodification. However, this so-called ‘bourgeoisification thesis’ cannot be verified on the basis of empirical data – neither on the basis of the employment status of people attending football matches in the stadia of the top league clubs in England and Germany between 1977 and 2009 nor on the basis of representative data pertaining to the social-class profile of regular readers of German football magazines carried out in 1954. It is demonstrated that football has enjoyed continuous popularity among all social classes. Hence, the bourgeoisification of football fandom can basically be ascribed to the inter- and intra-generational upward mobility in postmodern societies induced by socio-structural change.     

Software that assists learning within a complex abstract domain: the use of constraint and consequentiality as learning mechanisms

This paper describes a research project into undergraduates’ use of a software tool to learn symbolic logic—a complex abstract domain that has been shown to be intimidating for students. The software allows the students to manipulate proofs in certain ways and then calculates the consequences of their actions. A research method has been developed that allowed students’ use of this tool to be modelled, and this model was then used to identify, refine and create visual cues that provide support for students’ reasoning. The focus of this paper is the role of the software as an artefact to aid students’ visualisation of reasoning processes rather than the logic itself. The main mechanisms by which this visualisation is supported are the imposition of constraints on the actions available and the demonstration to students of the consequences of their actions. The study shows that the software encouraged experimentation with different routes to a proof, and constituted a challenge to fixated reasoning.