Effects of wearing lower leg compression sleeves on locomotion economy

The purpose of this investigation was to assess the effect of compression sleeves on muscle activation cost during locomotion. Twenty-two recreationally active men (age: 25 ± 3 years) ran on a treadmill at four different speeds (ordered sequence of 2.8, 3.3, 2.2, and 3.9 m/s). The tests were performed without (control situation, CON) and while wearing specially designed lower leg compression sleeves (SL). Myoelectric activity of five lower leg muscles (tibialis anterior, fibularis longus, lateral and medial head of gastrocnemius, and soleus) was captured using Surface EMG. To assess muscle activation cost, the cumulative muscle activity per distance travelled (CMAPD) of the CON and SL situations was determined. Repeated measures analyses of variance were performed separately for each muscle. The analyses revealed a reduced lower leg muscle activation cost with respect to test situation for SL for all muscles (p < 0.05, η_p² > 0.18). The respective significant reductions of CMAPD values during SL ranged between 4% and 16% and were largest at 2.8 m/s. The findings presented point towards an improved muscle activation cost while wearing lower leg compression sleeves during locomotion that have potential to postpone muscle fatigue.     

Rituale im Grundschulalter: Performativität,Mimesis und Interkulturalität

Rituals in Primary School Age – Performativity, mimesis and interculturality. Rituals and ritualization play a central role in the upbringing, education and socialization of children at primary school age. They structure children’s lives and support their integration into the social order in a constructive manner. Rituals shape transitions between fields of socialization and institutions, and facilitate social learning, which is important both in lessons and more generally at school. Due to their performativity, pedagogic processes act just like rituals and ritualization in all fields of social action. How children stage (or perform) their behaviour and actions, whether alone or together with adults, can be seen as the performativity of actions. Important aspects of cultural learning at primary school age occur as mimetic processes. In this, pictures, schemes, the expectations of others, of social situations, occurrences and actions are incorporated into an individual’s “world” of mental pictures. This practical knowledge enables children to learn and act together, to live and to exist. In view of Globalization and Europeanization, upbringing and education have become an intercultural task, for which rituals, ritualization, pedagogic and social gestures, the performativity of social practices and mimetic forms of learning play an important role. Ethnography and qualitative methods are appropriate for investigating rituals and ritualization, the performativity of pedagogic practices, of mimetic processes and intercultural education processes. Amongst the most important methods, which are complementary and, where possible, should be combined, are participative observation, video-supported observation, video performance and photograph analysis, interviews and group discussions. With the help of this method-mix, attempts can be made to capture complex and methodologically transparent research results.     

The Benefits of Fixed Item Parameter Calibration for Parameter Accuracy in Small Sample Situations in Large‐Scale Assessments

Large‐scale assessments such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) have field trials where new survey features are tested for utility in the main survey. Because of resource constraints, there is a trade‐off between how much of the sample can be used to test new survey features and how much can be used for the initial item response theory (IRT) scaling. Utilizing real assessment data of the PISA 2015 Science assessment, this article demonstrates that using fixed item parameter calibration (FIPC) in the field trial yields stable item parameter estimates in the initial IRT scaling for samples as small as n = 250 per country. Moreover, the results indicate that for the recovery of the county‐specific latent trait distributions, the estimates of the trend items (i.e., the information introduced into the calibration) are crucial. Thus, concerning the country‐level sample size of n = 1,950 currently used in the PISA field trial, FIPC is useful for increasing the number of survey features that can be examined during the field trial without the need to increase the total sample size. This enables international large‐scale assessments such as PISA to keep up with state‐of‐the‐art developments regarding assessment frameworks, psychometric models, and delivery platform capabilities.     

Oxygen uptake during mini trampoline exercise in normal-weight,endurance-trained adults and in overweight-obese,inactive adults: A proof-of-concept study

Objectives: To examine cardiorespiratory exertion during mini trampoline exercises of different intensities in both endurance-trained athletes and overweight-obese adults. Methods: Physically healthy participants (Group A: normal-weight, endurance-trained athletes; Group B: inactive, overweight-obese adults) participated in two measurement appointments and three training sessions in between appointments, in which participants familiarized themselves with the use of the mini trampoline and the execution of the exercises. The primary outcome was the ?O_2peak for each of the six mini trampoline exercises relative to the ?O_2peak as established during an all-out exercise test on a bike ergometer during the first measurement appointment. Secondary outcomes were average ?O₂ as well as maximum and average heart rate. Results: The six mini trampoline exercises generated ?O_2peak values between 42% and 81% in the endurance-trained athletes and between 58% and 87% in the overweight-obese participants, both in relation to the bike ergometer ?O_2peak. Average ?O₂ values ranged from 35% to 69% (endurance-trained athletes) and from 48% to 71% (overweight-obese participants), depending on exercise. Average heart rate likewise lay in a range that can be categorized as moderate-to-vigorous aerobic exercise for both groups. A moderate-to-strong correlation (0.658 to 0.875, depending on exercise) between bike ergometer ?O_2peak and mini trampoline ?O_2peak was found for all six exercises. Conclusions: Mini trampoline exercise has the potential to produce training intensities that concur with established exercise guidelines. The exercise intensity is self-adjusting and allows for an effective and safe workout for different users with a wide range of fitness levels.     

Happiness,pride and elite sporting success: What population segments gain most from national athletic achievements?

Elite sports are widely considered by national governments as a merit good through which many benefits to society as whole can be fostered through the stimulation of ‘national pride’ and ‘happiness’ (or ‘wellbeing’). The aim of this paper is to analyze what factors influence perceived national pride and happiness when athletes succeed at major national and/or international competitions. Based on a nation-wide survey, data was collected from n = 2006 randomly selected Germans by means of a computer assisted telephone interview. The results reveal that 66.2% respondents felt proud and 65.6% respondents were happy when German athletes were successful at major events. National pride and happiness were significantly explained through interest in elite sports, sport participation and socio-economic variables. The results reveal that there are differences between the perception of pride and that of happiness. Women, individuals with a low educational background, and low income and individuals having a migration background are the population segments who gain most from the sporting success of elite athletes. The results show in particular that the funding of elite sports and elite athletes can be considered as policy tool for social integration.     

The impact of sub-skills and item content on students’ skills with regard to the control-of-variables strategy

The so-called control-of-variables strategy (CVS) incorporates the important scientific reasoning skills of designing controlled experiments and interpreting experimental outcomes. As CVS is a prominent component of science standards appropriate assessment instruments are required to measure these scientific reasoning skills and to evaluate the impact of instruction on CVS development. A detailed review of existing CVS instruments suggests that they utilize different, and only a few of the four, critical CVS sub-skills in the item development. This study presents a new CVS assessment instrument (CVS Inventory, CVSI) and investigates the validity of student measures derived from this instrument utilizing Rasch analyses. The results indicate that the CVSI produces reliable and valid student measures with regard to CVS. Furthermore, the results show that the item difficulty depends on the CVS sub-skills utilized in item development, but not on the item content. Accordingly, previous instruments that are restricted to a few CVS sub-skills tend to over- or underestimate students’ CVS skills. In addition, these results indicate that students are able to use CVS as a domain general strategy in multiple content areas. Consequences for science instruction and assessment are discussed.     

Polytechnische Bildung Und Erziehung In Der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik

Zusammenfassung Polytechnische Bildung ist ein zentrales Element marxistischer Pädagogik. Im Bildungswesen der DDR ist polytechnische Bildung sowohl als Bildungsprinzip wie als eigenständiges Unterrichtsfach fest verankert. Der Artikel charakterisiert die Leitgedanken polytechnischer Bildung und stellt ausführlich dar, wie im Laufe der verschiedenen Phasen in der Entwicklung des Bildungssystems der DDR sich die Konzeptionen, Schwerpunktsetzungen und die konkrete Unterrichtspraxis in Abhängigkeit von politischen und ökonomischen Faktoren verändert haben. Die Konfrontation von eigenem Anspruch, den emphatischen Leitgedanken polytechnischer Bildungskonzeptionen, und der Unterrichtswirklichkeit führt zu einer kritischen Beurteilung heutiger Bildungspraxis in der DDR.

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Polytechnical education is a central element in Marxist educational theory. It is firmly anchored in the educational system of the German Democratic Republic both as a principle and as a subject of instruction. The author characterizes the ideas guiding this polytechnical education and describes how the concepts, emphases and teaching practices of the GDR educational system have been influenced by political and economic factors in the course of the various phases in its development. The confrontation of actual education practice with its own goals and with the guiding principles of polytechnical education concepts leads to a critical assessment of current education in the GDR.

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Résumé L'éducation polytechnique est un élément central de la théorie de l'éducation marxiste. Elle est fortement ancrée dans le système d'enseignement de la République Démocratique Allemande, tant comme principe d'éducation que comme matière d'enseignement. L'auteur met en évidence les idées directrices de cette éducation polytechnique et montre comment les concepts, l'importance accordée à certains aspects particuliers et les pratiques pédagogiques du système d'enseignement en R.D.A. ont été influencés par des facteurs politiques et économiques au cours des différentes phases de son développement. La confrontation de la pratique pédagogique avec les principaux concepts directeurs de l'éducation polytechnique conduit à un diagnostic critique de l'éducation telle qu'elle est actuellement dispensée en R.D.A.

     

A Framework of Effective Science Explanation Videos Informed by Criteria for Instructional Explanations

Research in Science Education - Science explanation videos, especially online ones, have become popular. They cover nearly all topics from school science curricula. Teachers use them in a flipped...     

Retrieving Information from a Distributed Heterogeneous Document Collection

This paper describes a probabilistic model for optimum information retrieval in a distributed heterogeneous environment.The model assumes the collection of documents offered by the environment to be partitioned into subcollections. Documents as well as subcollections have to be indexed, where indexing methods using different indexing vocabularies can be employed. A query provided by a user is answered in terms of a ranked list of documents. The model determines a procedure for ranking the documents that stems from the Probability Ranking Principle: For each subcollection, the subcollection's documents are ranked; the resulting ranked lists are combined into a final ranked list of documents, where the ordering is determined by the documents' probabilities of being relevant with respect to the user's query. Various probabilistic ranking methods may be involved in the distributed ranking process. A criterion for effectively limiting the ranking process to a subset of subcollections extends the model.The property that different ranking methods and indexing vocabularies can be used is important when the subcollections are heterogeneous with respect to their content.The model's applicability is experimentally confirmed. When exploiting the degrees of freedom provided by the model, experiments showed evidence that the model even outperforms comparable models for the non-distributed case with respect to retrieval effectiveness.     

The Competence Screening Questionnaire for Higher Education: Adaptable to the needs of a study programme

There is a lively discussion on how to evaluate competence-based higher education in both evaluation and competence research. The instruments used are often limited to course evaluation or specific competences, taking a rather narrow perspective. Furthermore, the instruments often comprise predetermined competences that cannot be adapted to higher education needs. The aim of this paper is to provide a flexible screening instrument into which practitioners/evaluators of study programmes can themselves insert the competences they are interested in, i.e. competences students ought to acquire through their study programme. The present study describes the development of the Competence Screening Questionnaire for Higher Education (CSQ-HE) in different domains of higher education. Results show that the CSQ-HE provides plausible screening information whilst fulfilling evaluation standards. It can be integrated into a higher education institution’s internal quality management system to demonstrate a programme’s legitimacy and enhance competence-based teaching and learning. Strengths, weaknesses and implications for practice are discussed.