Effect of sport education on students’ perceived physical literacy,motivation, and physical activity levels in university required physical education: a cluster-randomized trial

Higher Education - Originating from the field of physical education, physical literacy is an individual disposition that accentuates the importance of lifelong physical activity. Sport education is...     

Phytochemicals in Fruits and Vegetables: Use of Interactive Videoconferencing and the World Wide Web for Teaching a Multidisciplinary Course

ABSTRACT: An evaluation of interactive video conferencing and Web-assisted instruction to deliver a multidisciplinary course entitled Phytochemicals in Fruits and Vegetables to Improve Human Health was conducted during the spring semesters of 1999 and 2001. This course was taught by 20 instructors from 11 institutions to 49 students during spring 2001, which was an increase of 53% over spring 1999. Weekly 3-h lectures were delivered by the Trans-Texas Videoconference Network integrated with PowerPoint® or HTML slides available on the course Web site ( http://phytochemicals.tamu.edu ). Qualitative and quantitative data were collected through formative and summative methods. Participants expressed their satisfaction with course format and the need for technical support for interactive videoconferencing.     

An examination of the relationship between Facebook groups attached to university courses and student engagement

Educators and researchers are increasingly interested in the benefits of using Facebook groups attached to university courses, largely around connectedness, engagement and sense of belonging. However, thus far, there have been no broad-scale investigations on the potential outcomes of course-attached Facebook groups. The current study used both within- and between-group analyses on 471 participants, in order to investigate whether courses with an attached official or unofficial Facebook group was related to increased student engagement (in the categories of relationships with faculty members, peer relationships, behavioural engagement, cognitive engagement, valuing and a sense of belonging) and degree identity compared to courses without Facebook groups. Results indicated that students reported interacting more with unofficial than official Facebook groups. Courses with an official Facebook group had significantly greater staff connectedness compared to courses without an official Facebook group, while courses with either an official or unofficial Facebook group had a significantly higher peer relationships compared to courses without any Facebook group. Students with either an official or unofficial Facebook group had a significantly higher sense of belonging. Though students with either an official or unofficial Facebook group reported higher degree identity, this may be primarily due to the unofficial, rather than official Facebook groups; this difference may only exist in the unofficial, but not the official Facebook groups.     

Autonomy and control: a university funding formula as an instrument of public policy

Formulas are used in many jurisdictions to allocate public funds among universities which may then have considerable autonomy in the internal allocation of those funds. This paper provides first an overview of formula funding as it affects university education. This is followed by an exposition on the balance between autonomy and accountability in the Province of Ontario. Formula funding in Ontario is used as a case study to evaluate how effective formula-funding has been in encouraging autonomous universities to work towards the attainment of public policy objectives. The analysis shows that four mechanisms have in fact been used - namely formula funding, designated extraformula grants, incentive funding, and controls - and that some objectives are better supported by different mechanisms. The paper concludes with a discussion of the evolution and an evaluation of formula funding in Ontario against the objectives given for its introduction.     

Behaviour and misbehaviour of Latino children in a time of zero tolerance: mothers' views

Thirty‐eight Latin American mothers with young children tell of their perceptions of school discipline and comportment issues and talk of their children's encounters with ‘zero tolerance’ legislation, and related rules for conduct, implemented by the local school boards. The purpose of this exploratory study is to understand: (a) parents' views of and concern about disciplinary practices at school; (b) parents' ideas about the connection between home and school discipline; and (c) parents' understanding of the officially prescribed consequences of behaviour identified as non‐tolerable. Implications of the findings are discussed with regard to professional practice.     

What are Middle School Students Talking About During Clicker Questions? Characterizing Small-Group Conversations Mediated by Classroom Response Systems

There is a growing interest in using classroom response systems or clickers in science classrooms at both the university and K-12 levels. Typically, when instructors use this technology, students are asked to answer and discuss clicker questions with their peers. The existing literature on using clickers at the K-12 level has largely focused on the efficacy of clicker implementation, with few studies investigating collaboration and discourse among students. To expand on this work, we investigated the question: Does clicker use promote productive peer discussion among middle school science students? Specifically, we collected data from middle school students in a physical science course. Students were asked to answer a clicker question individually, discuss the question with their peers, answer the same question again, and then subsequently answer a new matched-pair question individually. We audio recorded the peer conversations to characterize the nature of the student discourse. To analyze these conversations, we used a grounded analysis approach and drew on literature about collaborative knowledge co-construction. The analysis of the conversations revealed that middle school students talked about science content and collaboratively discussed ideas. Furthermore, the majority of conversations, both ones that positively and negatively impacted student performance, contained evidence of collaborative knowledge co-construction.     

University Graduates with Learning Disabilities Define Success and the Factors that Promote It

ABSTRACT

The concept of success has been investigated before, primarily with an emphasis on explanatory factors among highly successful individuals. Voices of individuals with any form of disability are generally missing from this discourse. This qualitative study examined definitions of success as well as the factors that promote it amongst graduates with learning disabilities from a university faculty of education, thereby inviting an inclusive dialog around a heretofore socially and educationally exclusive topic. A participatory action framework was chosen allowing the participants to take an active role in the enquiry. This approach was a natural offshoot of the community of learners that the graduates had participated in during their studies. While success was defined as a multifaceted concept accounted for by multiple factors, many of the findings aligned with those reported in previous studies. However, several unique themes emerged; success as a relative concept, ‘paying it forward,’ and the disability as a driving force. Instances of overlap between definitions and factors emphasised inherent connections between beliefs and actions. Practical implications for support services for students with special needs, in higher education, are considered in light of the findings.     

Depictions of Human Bodies in the Illustrations of Early Childhood Textbooks

In many Ibero-American countries children in the early childhood education (ECE) system have the opportunity to interact with textbooks on a regular basis. The powerful social function of textbooks in socializing children in primary and secondary school, and in legitimizing what counts as cultural norms and officially sanctioned values and knowledge, is clearly documented. However, the examination of ECE textbooks especially in the context of developing countries for messages about the social construction of the body is virtually nonexistent. Therefore, the purpose of this research was to examine, through a content analysis of the illustrations, the representation of the body across the different categories of gender, age, activity level, space and disability in eight Colombian ECE textbooks from the three major commercial publishing houses between 2009 and 2012. Our results show that these textbook authors and publishers have made an effort to promote equality between the genders. However, only four disabled people were portrayed in the illustrations and there was a lower proportion of older adults doing a limited range of gross motor activities. Likewise the results note that, although progress has been made in terms of the balance of gender representation in textbooks, these still reinforce and legitimize the status of the “able-body”, and contribute to consolidating a view of able-bodiedness as the dominant norm. Taking into account that beliefs and prejudices constitute barriers to education and social participation, these results suggest that the representation of children with disabilities in ECE textbooks at the earliest stages of education should be mandatory.     

The Instructional Design Environment: technology to support design problem solving

The problems of efficiently producing effective instruction in areas such as industry, military, and vocational education are exacerbated by several complex factors: increasingly rapid change in technology; substantial variation in training needs and target populations within large organizations; inefficient mechanisms for performing formative evaluations; and a lack of means for efficiently incorporating new models of design into practice. In the context of these increasingly difficult problems, we present the Instructional Design Environment (IDE), a hypermedia system for designing and developing instructional material, including texts, interactive video disk, and intelligent tutoring systems. The representation of design analyses and specifications, and the design activities of IDE users are not constrained by any particular model of instructional design, but can be tailored to suit a wide range of such models. Although the system is continually evolving and exists in several forms, (Swartz and Russell, 1989) we discuss how the features of IDE suggest how computer-based design environments may provide ways simplifying the design problems for technical training in rapidly changing areas.