Bewegungsberatung durch Experten aus der Sportwissenschaft. Eine Public Health Strategie zur Erhöhung körperlicher Aktivität bei speziellen Zielgruppen

Although sports clubs, associations and health insurance companies offer a wide range of exercise programs, several target groups, such as groups with low socioeconomic status struggle to overcome barriers for participation. The aim of this paper is to show the need for, as well as the prospects of structured physical activity counselling for specific target groups provided by exercise specialists. This successful approach to promote physical activity is described detailed in the group of long-term unemployed persons over 50 years in a job centre setting. A close cooperation with established local exercise programs is intended. Deficits and requirements of physical activity counselling in primary health care settings are adopted and transferred into the theory-based public health strategy. This approach has the potential to create a new field of work for exercise and health professionals in the field of primary prevention.     

A New Resource for College Distance Education Astronomy Laboratory Exercises

This article introduces a set of distance education astronomy laboratory exercises for use by college students and instructors and discusses first usage results. This General Astronomy Education Source exercise set contains eight two-week projects designed to guide students through both core content and mathematical applications of general astronomy material. Projects are divided between hands-on activities and computer-aided analyses of modern astronomical data. The suite of online resources includes student and instructor guides, laboratory report templates, learning objectives, video tutorials, plotting tools, and web-based applications that allow students to analyze both images and spectra of astronomical objects. A pilot usage study indicates that distance learners using these materials perform as well as or better than a comparison cohort of on-campus students. The authors are actively seeking collaborators to use these resources in astronomy courses and other educational venues.     

The timing of a time out: the gap year in life course context

Based on biographical interviews from a three-generation study in Norway, this article examines the place of the contemporary ‘gap year’ within life course transition trajectories and intergenerational relations embedded in wider patterns of social inequality. Under the heading of taking a gap year, young people on academic transition trajectories are often granted a time out after upper secondary, during which they can recuperate from competitive school experiences and resolve uncertainties about which type of higher education to pursue. For those following vocational transition trajectories, in contrast, a gap year appears irrelevant and out of the question. The timing of their educational decisions in the life course does not coincide with arrangements for a legitimate break. Whereas a gap year before university may be seen as understandable and even beneficial, a person taking a break before or during vocational education is more likely to be described as a ‘dropout’ or an ‘early school leaver’. Based on empirical analysis, the article discusses similarities and differences between contemporary gap years in Norway and what Erik Erikson described as the institutional moratorium. Young people’s access to the moratorium of a gap year appears to be a privilege unequally distributed in the population.     

Tennis serve performances at break points: Approaching practice patterns for coaching

Tennis comprises specific match situations when winning the next point is crucial. These big points can decide about a win or loss and, thus, reasonably arouse mental stress. Break points (BPs) are considered as big points and the outcome is influenced by, among a variety of other factors, the serve, which is well accepted being one of the dominant strokes in Men’s tennis. In this study, we examined the serve behaviour for male players in the Wimbledon tournament 2016 to investigate the possible impacts of presumed mental stress within the situation of BPs, and further, if winning players perform better than losing players. A total of 28.843 points were analysed and divided into BP (n?=?2.035) and non-break points – referred to as regular points (RP; n?=?26.808).     

Assessment of Understanding: Student Teachers’ Preparation,Implementation and Reflection of a Lesson Plan for Science

Research finds that student teachers often fail to make observable instructional goals, without which a secure bridge between instruction and assessment is precluded. This is one reason that recent reports state that teacher education needs to become better at helping student teachers to develop their thinking about and skills in assessing pupils’ learning. Currently in Europe, the Lesson Study method and the Content Representation tool, which both have a specific focus on assessment, have started to address this problem. This article describes and discusses an intervention in which Lesson Study was used in combination with Content Representation in student teachers’ field practice. Empirical materials from one group of student teachers were analyzed to illustrate how the student teachers worked with assessment during the planning of a lesson, how they implemented it in a research lesson, and how they used the gathered observations to make claims about assessment aims. The findings suggest that the student teachers placed greater emphasis on assessment through the intervention. However, it is also found that more attention should have been dedicated to the planning phase and that the group did not manage to keep a research focus throughout the Lesson Study process. This suggests that it properly would be beneficial with several planning sessions prior to the research lesson, as well as having an expert teacher leading the Lesson Study.     

From visuo-motor interactions to imitation learning: behavioural and brain imaging studies

We review three areas of research and theory relating to the involvement of motor processing in action observation: behavioural studies on imitation learning, behavioural work on short-term visuomotor interactions, and related neurophysiological and neuroimaging work. A large number of behavioural studies now indicate bi-directional links between perception and action: visual processing can automatically induce related motor processes, and motor actions can direct future visual processing. The related concept of direct matching (Rizzolatti et al., 2001) does not, however, imply that observed actions are transduced into a corresponding motor representation that would guarantee an instant and accurate imitation. Rather, studies on the mirror neuron system indicate that action observation engages the observer's own motor prototype of the observed action. This allows for enhanced action recognition, imitation recognition, and, predominantly in humans, imitation and observational learning. Despite the clear impact of action observation on motor representations, recent neuroimaging work also indicates the overlap of imitation learning with processes of non-imitative skill acquisition.