Getting to the heart of the matter: A diary study of swimmers' appraisals of organisational stressors

Abstract We explored sport performers' cognitive appraisals of organisational stressors. The relevant demands and transactional alternatives that athletes experience in relation to the situational properties were identified. Thirteen national standard swimmers completed semi-structured, interval-contingent daily diaries for a 28-day period. A combination of inductive and deductive content analysis was used to organise and analyse the diary entries with a focus on the following areas: organisational stressors, their underlying situational properties, and the swimmers' transactional alternatives. One hundred and thirty-one of the organisational stressors were appraised as threat, 41 as challenge, and 83 as harm/loss. Support was found for the majority of Lazarus and Folkman's (1984) situational properties with the only exception being temporal uncertainty. Imminence was associated with the greatest number of threat appraisals (47), novelty was associated with the greatest number of challenge appraisals (17), and duration was associated with the greatest number of harm/loss appraisals (22). It is concluded that appraisal plays a pivotal role in sport performers' experiences of their organisational environment. Swimmers' transactional alternatives are influenced by the situational properties of the stressors encountered.     

“Fully Equal to That of Any Children”: Experimental Creek Education in the Antebellum Era

During the 1840s and 1850s, members of the Creek Nation rejected schools as a colonial tool and instead experimented with various forms of education to fit their own local and national needs. Diverse individuals and communities articulated educational visions for their nation in conversation with fellow citizens, national leaders, and U.S. educators. Rather than embrace education to assimilate into the American republic, Creeks turned to schools and English literacy as one strategy to shape their own society and defend it from further Euro‐American colonial policies. By the end of the 1850s, they had established a fledgling national school system consisting of both neighborhood and mission schools. These institutions reflected and reinforced changes in race, class, gender, culture, and religion in the antebellum Creek Nation.     

‘Becoming your best’: student perspectives on community in the pursuit of aspirations

Achieving equitable schooling outcomes for young people living in communities of low socio-economic status is a prominent issue that assumes focus in educational policy, theory and practice both in Australia and internationally. This paper draws upon the narratives of five secondary school students living in the northern urban fringe of Adelaide in South Australia, a region that is characterised by socio-economic challenge (Prosser et al. in Connecting lives and learning: Renewing pedagogy in the middle years, 2010). Specifically, the participants’ understandings and perspectives about community are used to examine their aspirations through the analysis of qualitative data obtained from a focus group, visual methods, a storying activity and semi-structured interviews. Discussion on students’ construction and pursuit of aspirations is framed by Appadurai’s (Culture and public action: 59–84, 2004, p. 67) conceptualisation of aspiration as a cultural capacity influenced by one’s social, cultural and economic contexts. This paper demonstrates that students from low socio-economic backgrounds have aspirations for their future which are influenced by their schooling experiences and the positive trust relationships they develop with teachers in community. As such, connections between place and learning are highlighted as critical factors in achieving more equitable schooling outcomes. The research identifies factors in ‘community’ that shape young people’s aspirations and ways in which young people can be supported in navigating toward their aspirations.