Submission or subversion: survival and resilience of Chinese international research students in neoliberalised Australian universities

Higher Education - Although scholars have noted the detrimental nature of the various changes in higher education prompted by neoliberalism, its impact on the experiences of international Higher...     

Anticipatory postural adjustments during cutting manoeuvres in football and their consequences for knee injury risk

Abstract

Anticipatory postural adjustments (APAs), i.e. preparatory positioning of the head, the trunk and the foot, are essential to initiate cutting manoeuvres during football games. The aim of the present study was to determine how APA strategies during cutting manoeuvres are influenced by a reduction of the time available to prepare the movement.

Thirteen football players performed different cutting tasks, with directions of cutting either known prior to the task or indicated by a light signal occurring 850, 600 or 500 ms before ground contact.

With less time available to prepare the cutting manoeuvre, the head was less orientated towards the cutting direction (P = 0.033) and the trunk was even more rotated in the opposite direction (P = 0.002), while the foot placement was not significantly influenced. Moreover, the induced higher lateral trunk flexion correlated with the increased knee abduction moment (r = 0.41; P = 0.009).

Increasing lateral trunk flexion is the main strategy used to successfully perform a cutting manoeuvre when less time is available to prepare the movement. However, higher lateral trunk flexion was associated with an increased knee abduction moment and therefore an increased knee injury risk. Reducing lateral trunk flexion during cutting manoeuvres should be part of training programs seeking the optimisation of APAs.     

‘But that wasn't enough’: exploring affective assemblages within a professional relationship

This paper engages with the early childhood–school relationship. The relationship has a long-standing history of being defined by a series of divisions and separations. Research has identified the divisions and separations to be largely determined by differences around concepts of learning and pedagogy. Discursive analyses of these differences often result in a series of impasses. The aim of this paper is to move beyond these discursively determined impasses. I draw on data from a small pilot study where a group of early childhood teachers come together to talk about their use of Transition Statements. I bring to the analysis of the data the concept of affective assemblages. This allows me to look beyond that which has been discursively produced in order to ask new questions, and to offer new ways of being in relationship.     

Problems in Classroom Engagement: Validation of an Assessment for District-Wide Use in the Early Primary Grades

Research Findings: The aim of this study was to provide an initial investigation into the psychometric properties of the Problems in Classroom Engagement Scale (PCES). The PCES was designed and tested for district-wide use as part of the report card system for a large urban school district. The PCES was administered to all 1st-, 2nd-, and 3rd-grade students in the district. Factor analytic examination revealed a bifactor structure as the best fit to the data. The bifactor structure reflected a general factor of Problems in Behavioral Engagement and two group factors: Problems in Social Engagement and Problems in Academic Engagement. These factors were found to be reliable within and across grades and demonstrated convergent and divergent relations with academic and behavioral outcomes. Practice or Policy: Findings provide initial evidence to support the routine use of the PCES in a large urban setting. The use of the PCES can help in fostering district-wide attention to students’ early difficulties with behavioral, social, and academic engagement.     

Shaping global teacher identity in a short-term mobility programme

This article explores the shaping of Australian and Malaysian pre-service teachers’ possible selves in a short-term mobility programme. With the theory of possible selves, individuals imagine who they will become based on their past and current selves. The focus of the research was on pre-service teachers’ possible selves as global and culturally responsive teachers. The experiential learning through participation in the programme allowed participants to consider their future possible selves as teachers with a deeper understanding of diverse learners’ needs and how they might strive to address these needs in their own classrooms. The scaffolding of reflections in the programme encouraged the pre-service teachers to take on multiple perspectives, to step outside their comfort zones and in many ways to see the world from different eyes. The research found that through experiential learning in the short-term mobility programme both the Australian and Malaysian pre-service teachers gained in positioning their cultural selves currently and as future teachers, suggesting that there is merit in utilising the theory of possible selves in future research in the area of shaping teacher identity.     

Universities as partners in U.S. research joint ventures

This paper investigates the conditions when a research joint venture (RJV) will involve a university as a research partner. We hypothesize that larger RJVs are more likely to invite a university to join the venture as a research partner than smaller RJVs because larger ventures are less likely to expect substantial additional appropriability problems to result because of the addition of a university partner and because the larger ventures have both a lower marginal cost and a higher marginal value from university R&D contributions to the ventures’ innovative output. We test this hypothesis using data from the COoperative REsearch (CORE) database, and those data confirm the hypothesis.