Where have all the skeptics gone?: Patterns of new age beliefs and anti-scientific attitudes in preservice primary teachers

Is belief in the paranormal alive and well within preservice teachers? In this survey 232 undergraduates (including 202 preservice primary teachers) were asked to react to a series of eight statements reflecting paranormal New Age beliefs rated earlier by a faculty panel as “totally unbelievable.” Overall, the students' modal response was expressed as “no particular opinion,” although for five of the eight items the modal respónse was “slightly believable.” It was found that only four students within the sample consistently rejected all eight statements. The frequency of ‘believers’ outnumbered the ‘skeptics’ in relation to three items (beliefs in UFOs, psychic seances, and Nostradamus). New Age factor scores were not significantly related to undergraduate faculty or year level, to holding anti-scientific beliefs or to a measure of TV-viewing, and did not correlate significantly with the personality scale Need for Cognition. Females evidenced higher New Age scores than males, but attitudes to science were unrelated to gender.     

Change in strategy: The relationship of attribution,expectancy, performance,and satisfaction

The purpose of the study was to examine the degree to which change in examination preparation is related to measures of attribution, expectancy, prior performance, perceived success/failure, and satisfaction. Subjects were students in an intermediate graduate statistics course. Although performance is the single best predictor of change in preparation, three attribution measures and satisfaction contributed unique predictive variance. While expectancy was significantly related to change in preparation, it did not add uniquely to the multiple correlation.     

Pedagogical possibilities for unruly bodies

Project Re?Vision uses disability arts to disrupt stereotypical understandings of disability and difference that create barriers to healthcare. In this paper, we examine how digital stories produced through Re?Vision disrupt biopedagogies by working as body-becoming pedagogies to create non-didactic possibilities for living in/with difference. We engage in meaning making about eight stories made by women and trans people living with disabilities and differences, with our interpretations guided by the following considerations: what these stories ‘teach’ about new ways of living with disability; how these stories resist neoliberalism through their production of new possibilities for living; how digital stories wrestle with representing disability in a culture in which disabled bodies are on display or hidden away; how vulnerability and receptivity become ‘conditions of possibility’ for the embodiments represented in digital stories; and how curatorial practice allows disability-identified artists to explore possibilities of ‘looking back’ at ableist gazes.     

Converting between estimates of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity derived from raw accelerations measured at the wrist and from ActiGraph counts measured at the hip: the Rosetta Stone

The ability to compare published group-level estimates of objectively measured moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) across studies continues to increase in difficulty. The objective of this study was to develop conversion equations and demonstrate their utility to compare estimates of MVPA derived from the wrist and hip. Three studies of youth (N = 232, 9-12yrs, 50% boys) concurrently wore a hip-worn ActiGraph and a wrist-worn GENEActiv for 7-days. ActiGraph hip count data were reduced using four established cutpoints. Wrist accelerations were reduced using the Hildebrand MVPA 200 mg threshold. Conversion equations were developed on a randomly selected subsample of 132 youth. Equations were cross-validated and absolute error, absolute percent error, and modified Bland-Altman plots were evaluated for conversion accuracy. Across equations R²_adj was 0.51–0.56 with individual-level absolute error in minutes ranging from 7 (wrist-to-hip Puyau) to 14.5 minutes (wrist-to-hip Freedson 3MET) and absolute percent differences ranging from 13.9%-24.5%. Group-level cross-validation to convert hip-to-wrist MVPA resulted in average absolute percent errors ranging from 3.1%-4.9%. Conversion of wrist-to-hip MVPA resulted in average absolute percent errors ranging from 3.0%-10.0%. We recommend the use of these equations to compare published estimates of MVPA between the wear-site cut-point combinations presented.     

Culture,Education and Britain's Industrial Crisis

The paper printed below is based upon a lecture given by Sir Geoffrey Chandler, former Director General of the National Economic Development Office. The lecture was delivered at a school based in‐service conference of the staff of Northgate High School, Ipswich on 23rd September, 1983. The conference venue was the Research Headquarters of British Telecom, Martdlesham, Suffolk and the conference organiser was Ray Dalton of Homerton College, Cambridge. The editors wish to record their thanks to Sir Geoffrey for his permission to publish the lecture in the Cambridge Journal of Education.