Relationship between Students' Perceptions of School Environment,Their Satisfaction with School and Perceived Academic Achievement: An International Study

During the last decades numerous studies have been conducted with the aim of finding predictors of an effective school measured in terms of the average level of the students' academic achievement. Few of these studies have examined how the students' perception of their work environment at school influences their academic achievement. The present article applies theory and findings from research on the adult work environment to the daily school life of children and adolescents. The analyses are based on self-reported data from the "Health Behaviour in School-aged Children Survey" (the HBSC study), using data from countries in both Eastern and Western Europe. Data from 11, 13 and 15 year old students in Finland, Latvia, Norway and Slovakia are used. The findings suggest that the most important psychosocial school setting predictors of students' perception of their academic achievement are that they feel satisfied with school, that they feel the teachers do not expect too much of them, and that they have a good relationship with their fellow students. The findings imply that interventions which enhance the students' satisfaction with school are likely to improve their achievement as well.     

Facilitating Teachers' Participation in School‐Based Health Promotion—A Qualitative Study

The focus of this article is on examining Norwegian teachers' perception of what factors at the school's organisational level have facilitated their participation in a school‐based health promotion project. The study is based on 12 semistructured interviews with teachers from two of the pilot schools participating in the European Network of Health Promoting Schools. The findings indicate that there are a number of conditions at the organisational level facilitating the implementation process and the teachers' participation in the project. These conditions are common goals, good leadership, sufficient and available resources, competence and cooperation inside the school and with the local community. The results from this study also indicate that working with the Health Promoting Schools Project helped the teachers in fulfilling many of the goals of the new Norwegian National Curriculum (L97), and in the longer term, also contributed to the implementation of the new reform.     

The Dimensionality of Language Ability in Four-Year-Olds: Construct Validation of a Language Screening Tool

The Norwegian government recommends a systematic language assessment of all four-year-olds as part of the general health surveillance program for the purpose of identifying children at risk of language delay. This study aimed to investigate the construct validity of the recommended language screening tool called LANGUAGE4 [SPRÅK4] by first examining the dimensionality of the underlying construct of the tool, after which the concurrent convergent validity was established by regressing an external language factor, defined by four standardized language tests, on a single higher-order factor. The findings provide support for a higher-order model with one general language factor, suggesting that a large amount of the variance in LANGUAGE4 is attributable to a single common factor at the second-order level. Furthermore, this single factor explained a considerable amount of the variance in the external language factor. Our findings are interpreted as support for satisfactory construct validity of LANGUAGE4.     

Energy availability in athletes

This review updates and complements the review of energy balance and body composition in the Proceedings of the 2003 IOC Consensus Conference on Sports Nutrition. It argues that the concept of energy availability is more useful than the concept of energy balance for managing the diets of athletes. It then summarizes recent reports of the existence, aetiologies, and clinical consequences of low energy availability in athletes. This is followed by a review of recent research on the failure of appetite to increase ad libitum energy intake in compensation for exercise energy expenditure. The review closes by summarizing the implications of this research for managing the diets of athletes.     

Teacher Report of Children's Problem Behavior on The Sutter–Eyberg Student Behavior Inventory—Revised (SESBI-R) in a Norwegian Sample of Preschool and School Children

In the present study, the applicability of The Sutter–Eyberg Student Behavior Inventory—Revised (SESBI-R) was explored within a Norwegian sample of 983 children aged 3–8 years. By using an exploratory factor analysis the same 2-factor solution as the original SESBI-R was supported by Principal Component Analysis. Good internal consistency (alpha?>?.96) was found for both the SESBI-R Intensity and Problem scales. Teachers in Norway report relatively low levels of behavior problems among children in day-care units and school-aged boys receive higher Intensity and Problem scores than girls. The results show that the SESBI-R is a reliable assessment tool that can be used in the Norwegian population for efficient screening of behavior of conduct-disordered children.     

The accidental learner: experiences from participation in classroom research

This paper brings into focus what can happen when a person is both a researcher and a teacher in two different classrooms almost at the same time. In the two classrooms project work is the subject of inquiry and the working method used. The aim of the research was to figure out how group work and collaborative processes function during project work, and to compose and present a kind of ‘thinking tool’ for other teachers to use when reflecting over their own teaching. Both the researcher and the informant maintain that they influenced each other. The paper also shows that the teacher/informant interactions in addition mediate the researcher’s work as a teacher.     

Carbohydrates and fat for training and recovery

An important goal of the athlete's everyday diet is to provide the muscle with substrates to fuel the training programme that will achieve optimal adaptation for performance enhancements. In reviewing the scientific literature on post-exercise glycogen storage since 1991, the following guidelines for the training diet are proposed. Athletes should aim to achieve carbohydrate intakes to meet the fuel requirements of their training programme and to optimize restoration of muscle glycogen stores between workouts. General recommendations can be provided, preferably in terms of grams of carbohydrate per kilogram of the athlete's body mass, but should be fine-tuned with individual consideration of total energy needs, specific training needs and feedback from training performance. It is valuable to choose nutrient-rich carbohydrate foods and to add other foods to recovery meals and snacks to provide a good source of protein and other nutrients. These nutrients may assist in other recovery processes and, in the case of protein, may promote additional glycogen recovery when carbohydrate intake is suboptimal or when frequent snacking is not possible. When the period between exercise sessions is <8?h, the athlete should begin carbohydrate intake as soon as practical after the first workout to maximize the effective recovery time between sessions. There may be some advantages in meeting carbohydrate intake targets as a series of snacks during the early recovery phase, but during longer recovery periods (24?h) the athlete should organize the pattern and timing of carbohydrate-rich meals and snacks according to what is practical and comfortable for their individual situation. Carbohydrate-rich foods with a moderate to high glycaemic index provide a readily available source of carbohydrate for muscle glycogen synthesis, and should be the major carbohydrate choices in recovery meals. Although there is new interest in the recovery of intramuscular triglyceride stores between training sessions, there is no evidence that diets which are high in fat and restricted in carbohydrate enhance training.     

Carbohydrates and fat for training and recovery

An important goal of the athlete's everyday diet is to provide the muscle with substrates to fuel the training programme that will achieve optimal adaptation for performance enhancements. In reviewing the scientific literature on post-exercise glycogen storage since 1991, the following guidelines for the training diet are proposed. Athletes should aim to achieve carbohydrate intakes to meet the fuel requirements of their training programme and to optimize restoration of muscle glycogen stores between workouts. General recommendations can be provided, preferably in terms of grams of carbohydrate per kilogram of the athlete's body mass, but should be fine-tuned with individual consideration of total energy needs, specific training needs and feedback from training performance. It is valuable to choose nutrient-rich carbohydrate foods and to add other foods to recovery meals and snacks to provide a good source of protein and other nutrients. These nutrients may assist in other recovery processes and, in the case of protein, may promote additional glycogen recovery when carbohydrate intake is suboptimal or when frequent snacking is not possible. When the period between exercise sessions is < 8 h, the athlete should begin carbohydrate intake as soon as practical after the first workout to maximize the effective recovery time between sessions. There may be some advantages in meeting carbohydrate intake targets as a series of snacks during the early recovery phase, but during longer recovery periods (24 h) the athlete should organize the pattern and timing of carbohydrate-rich meals and snacks according to what is practical and comfortable for their individual situation. Carbohydrate-rich foods with a moderate to high glycaemic index provide a readily available source of carbohydrate for muscle glycogen synthesis, and should be the major carbohydrate choices in recovery meals. Although there is new interest in the recovery of intramuscular triglyceride stores between training sessions, there is no evidence that diets which are high in fat and restricted in carbohydrate enhance training.