Lower extremity joint coupling variability during gait in young adults with and without chronic ankle instability

Chronic ankle instability (CAI) is a condition resulting from a lateral ankle sprain. Shank-rearfoot joint-coupling variability differences have been found in CAI patients; however, joint-coupling variability (VCV) of the ankle and proximal joints has not been explored. Our purpose was to analyse VCV in adults with and without CAI during gait. Four joint-coupling pairs were analysed: knee sagittal-ankle sagittal, knee sagittal-ankle frontal, hip frontal-ankle sagittal and hip frontal-ankle frontal. Twenty-seven adults participated (CAI:n = 13, Control:n = 14). Lower extremity kinematics were collected during walking (4.83 km/h) and jogging (9.66 km/h). Vector-coding was used to assess the stride-to-stride variability of four coupling pairs. During walking, CAI patients exhibited higher VCV than healthy controls for knee sagittal-ankle frontal in latter parts of stance thru mid-swing. When jogging, CAI patients demonstrated lower VCV with specific differences occurring across various intervals of gait. The increased knee sagittal-ankle frontal VCV in CAI patients during walking may indicate an adaptation to deal with the previously identified decrease in variability in transverse plane shank and frontal plane rearfoot coupling during walking; while the decreased ankle-knee and ankle-hip VCV identified in CAI patients during jogging may represent a more rigid, less adaptable sensorimotor system ambulating at a faster speed.     

Supplying Choice: An Analysis of School Participation Decisions in Voucher Programs in Washington,DC, Indiana,and Louisiana

Since school voucher funds are public, policymakers fiercely debate how those funds should be spent. A goal of many decision-makers is to ensure that every private school option is “high-quality” through program accountability regulations. Private schools, however, decide whether to participate in a private school choice program and likely factor the amount of state regulations into that decision. This paper estimates the program participation decisions of the private schools in D.C., Indiana, and Louisiana. We specifically examine the impacts of voucher regulations on the supply-side of voucher programs. We employ a linear probability model to examine how school quality, as measured by revenue, tuition, enrollment, and Great School Review scores, is associated with program participation for schools. Results indicate that higher tuition-levels and larger cohort enrollments, conditions normally associated with high quality schools, identify schools that are less likely to participate in voucher programs. We also find a consistent negative relationship between Great Schools Review score and the school participation decision in all three locations; however, these coefficients are not statistically significant. State fixed effects reveal that private schools in D.C. and Louisiana, the two states that have higher regulatory burdens, are less likely to participate in voucher programs.     

Private schooling promotes political and economic freedom? An international fixed effects instrumental variables analysis

Specialised learning environments provided through private schooling may increase educational quality, which may increase the likelihood that citizens will pursue human rights through civic engagement. We employed 2-stage least squares year and country-level fixed effects and examined how private schooling could affect political rights, civil liberties, and economic freedom indices in 174 nations across the globe from 1999 to 2014. We used an innovative instrumental variable, fluctuations in the short-run demand for schooling within countries, over time, in order to predict private schooling. Our results suggest that an increased share of private schooling enrolment at the primary level leads to enhanced political and economic freedom.     

Hesitant hopes: How a comprehensive approach to learning impacts on the transition hopes of marginalised young people in an alternative learning programme in regional Australia

Concerns have been raised internationally about whether alternative learning programmes are producing low-skilled labourers for rapidly disappearing twenty-first-century jobs. Researchers claim that learners in alternative programmes are more at risk due to the focus on low-level vocational and basic skill attainment, with a lack of formal academic pathways available to them. This article questions whether and in what ways an alternative learning programme supports young people to achieve successful transitions to sustainable social mobility for informed citizenship through a holistic approach to learning; or if class stratification is being re/enforced through systems’ accountability discourses. Hesitant hopes in alternative learning are explored through an ethnographic study of one alternative learning programme across five sites in regional Australia. Contextually, not-for-profit community agencies provide physical infrastructures as well as youth workers and volunteers, while a publicly funded School of Distance Education provides teacher oversight of the curriculum. Findings suggest that the theme of ‘hesitant hope’ is constructed through the analysis of the discourses of supporting wellbeing, life skill development and academic learning. These discourses facilitate further analysis of the concept of social mobility, suggesting a conceptual starting point for an engaging critique of the differing perspectives on how support could be providing these marginalised young people with a sense of hope for a socially mobile future.     

Classification of children in special education: Importance of pre-assessment information

The records of 137 students for whom complete data files were available were examined in order to determine the extent to which pre-assessment data (teacher referral information and standardized reading test scores) could successfully be used to predict the handicapping classifications decided on by child-study teams. We were specifically interested in the predictive power of pre-assessment information above and beyond that provided by handicapped children's race and gender. Results of our analyses indicated that pre-assessment data can successfully predict the handicapped classifications of the majority of special education students, as well as differentiate students who are found eligible for special education from those found to be ineligible.     

Statistical design,models and analysis for the job change framework

The author wishes to thank David R. Black and Teri A. Loughead for their invitation to contribute this paper, and for stimulating his interest in models of job change. Research on this paper was supported, in part, by NSF grant DMS-8901922.     

Predatory schools and student non-lives: a discourse analysis of the Safe Schools Coalition Australia controversy

This article addresses the controversy surrounding the Safe Schools Coalition Australia. Certain politicians and media commentators have accused the initiative of harming the students it ostensibly aims to benefit. Those accusations have, in turn, been labelled ‘homophobic’ by supporters of the Coalition. This article suggests that the term homophobic does not adequately describe or explain the visceral hostility of anti-Safe Schools discourses. Drawing on discourse analysis, I demonstrate how Safe Schools has been represented by its critics as being a sexual predator, while students have been represented as innocent, asexual, and requiring protection by their parents. These parents are the ones who can and should regulate their child’s access to sexual knowledge – and who can and should oppose Safe Schools. I conclude by arguing that the Safe Schools controversy is useful in that it provides an opportunity to recognise gender and sexually diverse student lives as being ‘lives’; and to consider how programmes such as Safe Schools can help create safer educational environments for these and other disadvantaged students.