What is really causing the obesity epidemic? A review of reviews in children and adults

Obesity prevention is a public health priority and intervention strategies have focused primarily on healthy eating and physical activity in children and adults. To date, no review has systematically compiled and synthesised the scientific evidence from published review articles to determine whether there is clear consensus on the causes of obesity. A systematic review of the literature was conducted searching PubMed/Medline for narrative and systematic review articles published between January 1990 and October 2014 that examined the causes of obesity. In total, 12 of 65 articles met the inclusion criteria; 7 reviews focused on adults (1 systematic, 6 narrative) and 5 reviews on children (2 systematic, 3 narrative). The most popular cause of obesity identified in reviews of adult studies was “combined physical activity and diet” (3 of 7 studies), whereas the most popular cause specified in reviews of child studies was deemed “inconclusive” (2 of 5 studies). While a number of reviews have examined the causes of obesity, the methodology and conclusions varied widely, and few were conducted systematically. Currently, no consensus exists across published literature reviews regarding the primary cause of the obesity epidemic, and more research, particularly prospective studies using state-of-the-art measures, is warranted.     

Comparison of two article-level,field-independent citation metrics: Field-Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI) and Relative Citation Ratio (RCR)

We reproduce the article-level, field-independent citation metric Relative Citation Ratio (RCR) using the Scopus database, and extend it beyond the biomedical field to all subject areas. We compare the RCR to the Field-Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI), also an article-level, field-normalised metric, and present the first results of correlations, distributions and application to research university benchmarking for both metrics. Our analyses demonstrate that FWCI and RCR of articles correlate with varying strengths across different areas of research. Additionally, we observe that both metrics are comparably stable across different subject areas of research. Moreover, at the level of universities, both metrics correlate strongly.     

Instructional design learners make sense of theory: a collaborative autoethnography

Educational technology research and development - Understanding theory is essential to instructional design (ID) research and practice; however, novice designers struggle to make sense of...     

When We Inquire Into Our Own Practice: An Early Childhood Teacher Research Group

Every day, early childhood teachers confront issues, problems, and concerns in their classrooms. Sometimes they do nothing. Sometimes they use trial and error. Sometimes they go to a workshop or read an article. We have found a way to intentionally and systematically research and answer our own questions and to enrich our own professional development through teacher research. Teacher research provides early childhood educators with a strategy that supports reflective thinking and practice. This article describes the experience of a small group of early childhood teacher researchers. How is it different from other required assessments? How is it different from other professional development?     

Supporting school teachers’ rapid engagement with online education

Educational technology research and development - In response to Philipsen et al.'s (Educ Technol Res Dev 67:1145–1174, 2019) article titled “Improving teacher professional...     

The Importance of Forgetting ‘Perishing’ in Whitehead’s Cosmology and Epistemology

In this paper, I will address a constructive criticism of the papers that appeared as a Symposium on Whitehead’s Process Philosophy of Education (Interchange, 26(4), pp. 341–415, 1995). In his criticism of those papers, George Allan (1998) claimed that the contributors to the Symposium were not as Whiteheadian as they thought they were because they failed to contextualize their papers in the harmony and holism of Whitehead’s organic philosophy. Allan thought, in essence, that we had committed a fallacy of misplaced concreteness. Ironically, this is exactly what we had been trying to avoid. With regards to my paper, Allan felt that I had failed to explain the importance of perishing for Whitehead in the becoming and objective immortality of the superject of experience. Hopefully, I have done a better job of this in what follows. I would also like to begin exploring the implications of Whitehead’s cosmology and epistemology for the advance of theory in psychology. On a pleasant afternoon in Oulu, Finland I was discussing the ideas presented here with my friend Hannu Soini who said to me, “when one is learning it is important to forget certain things so they do not impede our creativity.” Hence, the title of this paper and a further exploration of the concepts that Hannu and I feel are impeding the advance of psychology. I would like to preface with a reminder that when I try to explain Whitehead’s philosophy succinctly I sometimes fail to explain things well. His is a truly organic conception of reality so please forgive me.