Getting into teams in physical education and exclusion processes among students

Although splitting up a class into teams is a consistent didactical element in physical education (PE), it is under-investigated in terms of how students handle the social dynamics in these situations. Therefore, the present study examines the strategies of exclusion as markers for non-recognition when students are split up into teams/pairs. The data set includes video data from 6 different classes (a total of 59 video sequences) and 40 video-stimulated recall interviews with children who were excluded when the class was split up into teams/pairs or with children that excluded others. Sociograms as well as PE teacher ratings about their students’ sport competence were also analysed. Four different exclusion and inclusion strategies were identified: accepting or ignoring “assurance strategies” before the class is split up into teams/pairs, negotiating the affiliation of an individual when students get into pairs, publicly denying the affiliation to a team, and publicly negotiating the individual’s value for a team. The findings show that students use the team-selection proceedings and situations when the class was split up into teams as opportunities to transmit non-recognition. The social order was publicly demonstrated and legitimated.     

In search of an effective source use pattern for writing argumentative and informative synthesis texts

Reading and Writing - In order to design effective instruction and feedback for synthesis writing on both writing processes and products, a clear insight into synthesis writing processes underlying...     

ASSESSING STUDENTS’ EXPERIMENTATION PROCESSES IN <Emphasis Type="Italic">GUIDED INQUIRY</Emphasis>

In recent science education, experimentation features ever more strongly as a method of inquiry in science classes rather than as a means to illustrate phenomena. Ideas and materials to teach inquiry abound. Yet, tools for assessing students’ achievement in their processes of experimentation are lacking. The present study assumes a basal, non-exclusive process model of inquiry in experimentation that can be considered a consensus from multiple approaches: (1) finding an idea/hypothesis, (2) planning and conducting an experiment, and (3) drawing conclusions from evidence. The study confronted 339 secondary level students with three guided inquiry experimentation tasks on 3 days. Selected working groups were videotaped while experimenting. All the students reported their processes in a structured report form simultaneous to their progress. The generated videos and reports were analysed in a two-stepped way: (1) Experimentation was coded according to the process model into process plots; on basis of these, (2) process-focused performance scores were calculated considering logical coherence and immediacy of the inquiry processes. Correlative analyses show for two of the tasks that the report format yielded comparable performance scores to those generated from video data after students have had opportunity to learn the surveying formats (r _S?>?.80). A first suggestion of a process-oriented assessment tool for inquiry in experimentation can be drawn from this study. It might be used to inform and complement secondary science instruction.     

Regulatory autonomy and performance: the reform of higher education re-visited

The main aim of this article is to contribute to the understanding of organizational autonomy and control in higher education reform and related expectations as regards the performance of universities. Our analyses draws on principal-agent models as a normative theory of policy reform, and institutionalist approaches in public policy and institutional design as an analytical theory of policy reform. We discuss how the dominant narrative of political reform moves away from traditional beliefs in university autonomy that are built on institutional trust and linked to professional autonomy. In the emerging narrative of political change, autonomy becomes re-defined as the ‘new organizational autonomy’ of universities as both strategic actors and as an addressee of governmental control. The concept of ‘regulatory autonomy’ captures the use of organizational autonomy of universities as a tool of a new regime of governmental control. Exemplified by the Dutch case, we analyze autonomy policies for strengthening managerial discretion and internal control of universities that are combined with regulatory policies for external control that steer organizational choices. Regulatory autonomy thus aims at aligning universities more closely with governmental goals and improve respective performance. Our literature review shows, however, that there is scarce, inconclusive and methodologically problematic evidence for a link between ‘organizational autonomy and performance’. We point at promising avenues for further research on autonomy and performance as two core concepts in the contemporary higher education debate.     

‘Nature’ in German colonial literature for children and young people

ABSTRACT

German colonialism has long been treated as a sort of footnote in the epoch of the Empire due to its relatively short time span. The focus was mostly on the reconstruction of a story of ‘white’ men – as the story of pioneers, ‘discoverers’, missionaries or traders. But how were children included in the colonial project? This article deals with this question with regard to the genre of colonial literature for children that emerged in the German Empire. Due to their pedagogic impetus these novels are of significance for historical educational research: they were explicitly put in the service of instruction to inspire children with the meaning of colonial issues. Within these novels ‘nature’ had high priority. On the basis of selected colonial novels for boys and girls, this article investigates the question of what was understood by ‘nature’ and of its importance for colonial education.     

Schadenersatzanspruch Studierender gegen die Universit?t wegen unzureichenden Lehrveranstaltungsangebots? Anmerkungen und überlegungen zu OGH 1 Ob 142/07z

Mit dem Urteil zu 1 Ob 142/07z best?tigte der OGH die Entscheidungen der Vorinstanzen, wonach die Klage eines Studierenden gegen eine Universit?t auf Feststellung, dass die beklagte Partei der klagenden Partei für s?mtliche aus der Unterlassung des Anbots von Parallellehrveranstaltungen zukünftig entstehenden Sch?den hafte, wegen fehlender Passivlegitimation abgewiesen wurde. Das H?chstgericht stellte eindeutig klar, dass "Universit?ten in Vollziehung der Studienvorschriften im Rahmen der Hoheitsverwaltung t?tig werden", weshalb ein zivilrechtlicher Anspruch gegen die Universit?t aufgrund eines zu geringen Angebots von Lehrveranstaltungen nicht in Betracht kommt und bekr?ftigte, dass die Haftung der Universit?t oder ihrer Organe für hoheitliches Handeln in Vollziehung der Studienvorschriften auch nach dem UG 2002 ausgeschlossen ist.     

Constructivist learning environments and the (im)possibility to change students’ perceptions of assessment demands and approaches to learning

Recent research shows that, as students interpret the demands of the assessment tasks, they vary their approaches to learning in order to cope with the assessment tasks. Three research questions are central in the present paper: (1) Do students who participate in a constructivist learning environment change their perception of assessment demands towards more deep level demands? (2) Do students in a constructivist learning environment change their approaches to learning towards a more deep approach to learning? (3) Is there a relation between change in approaches to learning and change in the perceptions of the assessment demands? Students following the course ‘Education and psychology’ of the teacher training program at the University of Antwerp completed questionnaires during the first, the second and the final lesson of the course. One questionnaire measured their approaches to learning and the other their general perceptions of the assessment demands. The course ‘Education and psychology’ can be labelled as a ‘constructivist learning environment’ with congruent assessment methods. Results of the paired sampled t-tests indicated that students indeed do change their perceptions of assessment demands towards more deep level demands. However, the results also indicated that students did not change their approach to learning towards a more deep approach. On the contrary, students seem to develop more surface approaches to learning during the course. Correlation analyses indicated that only changes of perceptions of assessment demands towards less surface levels are significantly related to changes in approaches to learning, towards a more surface approach. Results of the stepwise multiple regression analyses indicated that students’ approach to learning at the beginning of the course seems to have a higher impact on the extent to which they change their approach to learning than how students perceive the demands of the assessment within the course. These results point us to the complexity of the relationship between the learning environment, the students’ perceptions of assessment demands, and students’ approaches to learning.     

The continuous nature of timing reprogramming in an interceptive task

The time course of movement timing reprogramming was examined in a task requiring temporal coincidence of the conclusion of a forehand drive with the arrival of a moving luminous target at the end of an electronic trackway. The moving target departed from one end of the trackway at a constant velocity of 2 m (.) s(-1), and for a part of the trials its velocity was increased to 3 m (.) s(-1). Target velocity was modified at different moments during stimulus displacement, producing times-to-arrival after velocity increment (TAVIs) from 100 to 600 ms. The effect of specific practice on movement reprogramming was also examined. The results showed early adjustments to the action (TAVIs = 100 - 200 ms) that seemed to be stereotyped, while feedback-based corrections were implemented only at TAVIs of 300 ms or longer. Temporal accuracy was progressively increased as longer TAVIs were provided up to 600 ms. Skill training led to an overall increment of temporal accuracy, but no effect of specific practice was found. The results indicate that timing reprogramming in interceptive actions is a continuous process limited mainly by intrinsic factors: latency to initiate more effective adjustments to the action, and rate-of-movement timing reprogramming.