Physiological profile and incidence of injuries among elite figure skaters.

The physiological responses to skating and the incidence of injuries were recorded in young, Danish elite figure skaters (n = 8) over a 1-year period. The skaters' maximum oxygen uptake (VO2 max) ranged from 54.7 to 68.8 ml kg-1 min-1, and work intensity during simulated competitive figure skating corresponded to 89% VO2 max. Before the onset of competitive skating, but after a warm-up, blood lactate (BLa) concentration was measured as 2.0 +/- 0.05 mM (means +/- S.E.). After a 4-min run, BLa increased to 8.0 +/- 0.6 mM. The subjects' resting heart rates were measured each morning over a 1-year period and corresponded to 53 +/- 2 and 58 +/- 3 beats min-1 for the males and females respectively, with no systematic season-related variations. The skaters trained for 15-41 h per week, 60-95 min of this time being spent on warm-up activities. The injury incidence rate during competitive skating was recorded as 1.4 injuries per 1000 h of training, 56% of these being acute and 44% chronic injuries. Of those injuries registered, 83% were recalled by the skaters when a retrospective questionnaire was given to them at the end of the observation period. This study indicates that ice figure skating is associated with high aerobic power. Furthermore, Danish skaters spend large amounts of time on training, including warm-up and stretching. Despite the amount of training and the intensity of ice-skating programmes, injury rates are low compared with other sporting events.     

Final Summing-Up at the Vienna Conference

The final session of the ICEF international conference in Vienna was in two parts. First came the summaries of each working group, who reported variously on the integration of audiovisual media in the primary school, in the secondary school, and in technical and professional teaching. The second part of the meeting took the form of a round-table discussion on the subject of 8mm film and the development of its use in schools.     

School’s out: a comprehensive follow-up study on parents’ perceptions of their child’s school

This longitudinal study set out to examine the changes that took place in parents’ evaluations of their child’s school in the course of the child’s complete 9-year-long compulsory education. Over the follow-up period, academically educated and vocationally educated mothers and fathers (N = 326) were asked to indicate their degree of satisfaction with aspects of their child’s school every 2 years. It was found that the level of parental satisfaction was fairly high at the start, that the general decreasing trend was gradual rather than abrupt, and that the proportion of dissatisfied parents remained low and stable. A pattern of differences emerged to suggest that the parents’ perceptions were structured by their social-psychological distance from the school as measured by their social positions; for instance, the vocationally educated parents, fathers in particular, displayed less satisfaction than the academically educated ones.     

Parents' and teachers' views of the child's academic potential

Parents (N = 97) and their child's class‐teachers were instructed to rate the child's potential for improvement in mathematics and Finnish. The results showed that there was a moderate correlation between the parents' and teachers' ratings. The parents rated their child's potential more optimistically than the teachers did. Views of malleability may be seen as a potentially important factor in defining the child's educability.     

Desirable places: spatial representations and educational strategies in the inner city

This article examines how the outcome of neoliberal educational reforms has affected urban schooling in the inner city of Stockholm – making it into a centralized nexus or a ‘hot-spot’ for students and schools. The aim is to analyse how geographical place and space have become major distinctive criteria in inner-city students’ educational strategies, as well as a comparative advantage for upper-secondary schools in the fierce in-between school competition. The data consist of interviews with close to 120 participants, official statistics and marketing from 55 inner-city upper-secondary schools. Our findings suggest that the growing commodification and upward socio-spatial homogenization of the inner city both affect the way schools use spatial representations in their marketing and also the strategies deployed by students in their school choice.     

Conceptions of intelligence as social representations

The aim of the study was to investigate the theory put forward by Mugny and Carugati that social representations of intelligence are organised both by social identity and by experiences of unfamiliarity. Parents’, teachers’ and students’ conceptions of intelligence were examined in two separate questionnaire-based studies, the first one (N=196) dealing with views on the development of intelligence, and the second one (N=222) with views on the definitions of intelligence. It was found that social identity (“fostererhood” and teacherhood) tends to organise the conceptions in terms of the “theory of natural inequalities”, as suggested by Mugny and Carugati. However, the experienced unfamiliarity of intelligence had a clear effect only on the conceptions of development, and there were no general associations between social identity and experienced unfamiliarity. We suggest that the social representations of intelligence might be organised in terms of several basic themes, with one dealing with the puzzle of development, another with the definition of intelligence, and a third, more general one, treating the whole concept of intelligence with suspicion and apprehension.     

The Finnish miracle of PISA: historical and sociological remarks on teaching and teacher education

One of the recent tributes to the success of Finnish schooling was the PISA 2000 project report. As befits the field of education, the explanations are primarily pedagogical, referring especially to the excellent teachers and high‐quality teacher education. Without underrating the explanatory power of these statements, this paper presents some of the social, cultural and historical factors behind the pedagogical success of the Finnish comprehensive school. From the perspectives of history and the sociology of education, it also sheds light on some ironic paradoxes and dilemmas that may be concealed by the success. The focus is on the problematic nature of international comparative surveys based on school performance indicators. The question is whether they really make it possible to understand schooling in different countries, or whether they are just part of processes of ‘international spectacle’ and ‘mutual accountability’.     

Are the social workers prepared to assist a changing population of dysfunctional parents in Sweden?

What kind of support can an affluent society as the Swedish offer dysfunctional parents in order to give the infants an optimal start in life? The purpose of the present study was to analyze the social situation in families precipitating the admission of infants to institutional care in 1970. 1975 and 1980. The results show that in 1980 more complex forms of parental dysfunction were common including mental disorders, criminality, abuse of alcohol and drug addiction. The reported incidence of domestic violence had increased significantly from 1970 to 1980 as well as the number of maltreated infants. The social welfare agencies had greater difficulties and to a larger extent lacked adequate methods of providing assistance to the dysfunctional parents in 1980 than in 1970.