Salvation for the fittest? A West African sportsman in Britain in the age of the new imperialism

This paper addresses issues raised in Paul Ward's essay ‘Last man picked’, focusing on methodological and discipline-refining questions to call for a more open dialogue between sports historians and others in the discipline. The argument includes a call on the wider discipline to both recognise the need for and participation in sub-discipline specific debates.     

Books reviews

J. Neils (ed.), Goddess and Polis: The Panathenaic Festival in Ancient Athens (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993). Pp. 227, 24 colour plates, 170 b&w illus. $49.50 (£37.50) cloth; $19.95 (£13.95) paper. ISBN 0–691–03612–8 (cloth); 0–691–00223–1 (paper).

Steven H. Lonsdale, Dance and Ritual Play in Greek Religion (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993). Pp. xxi + 352. Illustrations, bibliography, indexes. $39.95. ISBN 0–8018–4594–7.

Ramachandra Guha, Spin and Other Turns: Indian Cricket's Coming of Age (London: Penguin Books, 1994). Pp. xii + 158. Rs 100. ISBN 0–14–024720–3.

Robert Mechikoff and Steven Estes, A History and Philosophy of Sport and Physical Education: From the Ancient Greeks to the Present (Dubuque, Iowa: William C. Brown, 1993). Pp. 391. $29.50. ISBN 0–697–12159–3. Elliot J. Gorn and Warren Goldstein, A Brief History of American Sports (New York: Hill and Wang — Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1993). ISBN 0–8090–1561–7. Pp. 290. $11.95.

Richard O. Davies, America's Obsession: Sports and Soceity since 1945 (Orlando, Florida: Harcourt Brace, 1994). Pp. 274. $16.00. ISBN 0–03–073332–4.

Ted Vincent, The Rise and Fall of American Sport: Mudville's Revenge (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994). Pp. 358. ISBN 0–8032–9613–4.

Leonard Koppett, Sports Illusion, Sports Reality: A Reporter's View of Sports, Journalism and Society (Urbana and Chicago: University of Ilinois Press, 1994) paperback reprint of book originally published in 1981. Pp. xiv + 296. ISBN 0–252–06415–1.

Gilbert Andrieu, Force et beauté. Histoire de l'esthétique en éducation physique (Bordeaux: Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, 1992). Pp. 252. FF150. ISBN 2–86781–125–2.

Charles Fountain, Sportswriter: The Life and Times of Grantland Rice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). Pp. 327. $25.00. ISBN 0–19–506176–4.

Peter Levine, Ellis Island to Ebbets Field: Sport and the American Jewish Experience (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).

Charles S. Prebish. Religion and Sport: The Meeting of Sacred and Profane (Westport, Ct.: Greenwood Press, 1993). Pp. xix + 243. ISBN 0–313–28729–5.

Tom Derderian, Boston Marathon: The History of the World's Premier Running Event (Champaign: Human Kinetics Publishers, 1994). Pp. xxvi + 606. $21.95 (paperback). ISBN 0–87322–491–4.

Kevin McAleer, Dueling, The Cult of Honor in Fin‐de‐Siècle Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). Pp. 268. $24.95. ISBN 0–691–03462–1.     

Promoting perseverance and challenge in physical education: the missing ingredient for improved games teaching

This paper explores critical notions about how improved understandings of students learning experiences within practical learning environments could sensitise teachers to appreciate the complex influences more that affect how levels of challenge and perseverance are constructed by students. The authors, in furthering their critique, build on the model of constructivism developed by Ollis and Sproule. This model attempted in embryonic terms to recognise the specific situational factors that most influenced the minded ways in which students identified and responded to learning challenges. In refining these ideas further the authors specifically consider how teaching games for understanding (TGfU) methodologies could be enhanced by recognising the meta-cognitions of students when constructing rich task led learning episodes. In conclusion, it is posited that comprehending the complexity of learning theory holds considerable promise for the ongoing development of physical education as a valuable and integral part of the school learning experience.     

Thorns on My Tongue

How might we bear witness to the fluidity and fragility of identity work that takes place during classroom discussion? How do teachers and pupils play with the personal politics of positioning during our everyday interactions? The piece that follows is written as a story almost entirely in everyday dialogue. It takes a methodological turn towards narrative imagining in order to develop an approach that explores the performance of projected, received and contested identity positions during an English lesson. A brief discussion of some of the issues raised and of what informed the process of writing serves as an epilogue to the story.     

Automatically structuring domain knowledge from text: An overview of current research

This paper presents an overview of automatic methods for building domain knowledge structures (domain models) from text collections. Applications of domain models have a long history within knowledge engineering and artificial intelligence. In the last couple of decades they have surfaced noticeably as a useful tool within natural language processing, information retrieval and semantic web technology. Inspired by the ubiquitous propagation of domain model structures that are emerging in several research disciplines, we give an overview of the current research landscape and some techniques and approaches. We will also discuss trade-offs between different approaches and point to some recent trends.     

Visual—Auditory matching of trigrams in first-grade and third-grade reading achievement

Task performances of 35 first graders were analyzed in relation to their third-grade reading and arithmetic test scores. The visual—auditory (V-A) task, requiring the child to select the correct auditory representation of a visually presented CVC (Consonant-Vowel-Consonant), accounted for 48% of the variance in third-grade reading scores. Arithmetic scores were not significantly related to any task performance.