The reliability and validity of the bar-mounted PUSH BandTM 2.0 during bench press with moderate and heavy loads

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study was to assess the reliability and validity of the bar-mounted PUSH Band^TM 2.0 to determine peak and mean velocity during the bench press exercise with a moderate (60% one repetition maximum [1RM]) and heavy (90% 1RM) load. We did this by simultaneously recording peak and mean velocity using the PUSH Band^TM 2.0 and three-dimensional motion capture from participants bench pressing with 60% and 90% 1RM. We used ordinary least products regression to assess within-session reliability and whether the PUSH Band^TM 2.0 could accurately predict motion capture velocity. Results showed that PUSH Band^TM 2.0 and motion capture peak and mean velocity reliability was acceptable with both loads. While there was a tendency for the PUSH Band^TM 2.0 to slightly overestimate peak and mean velocity, there was no fixed bias. However, mean velocity with 60 and 90% 1RM demonstrated proportional bias (differences between predicted and motion capture values increase with magnitude). Therefore, PUSH Band^TM 2.0 peak velocity with 60 and 90% 1RM is valid, but mean velocity is not.     

Can we measure practical wisdom?

ABSTRACT

Wisdom, long a topic of interest to moral philosophers, is increasingly the focus of social science research. Philosophers have historically been concerned to develop a rationally defensible account of the nature of wisdom and its role in the moral life, often inspired in various ways by virtue theoretical accounts of practical wisdom (phronesis). Wisdom scientists seek to, among other things, define wisdom and its components so that we can measure them. Are the measures used by wisdom scientists actually measuring what philosophers have in mind when they discuss practical wisdom? I argue that they are not. Contemporary measures of wisdom and its components may pick out some necessary prerequisites of practical wisdom, but they do not measure a philosophically plausible practical wisdom or its components. After explaining the argument and defending it against objections, I consider its implications. Should wisdom scientists ignore the philosophical conception of practical wisdom in favor of other conceptions, revise their methods to try to measure it, or continue the interdisciplinary study of practical wisdom without expecting to measure it? I make a preliminary argument for the third option.     

The Significance of Gender Boundaries in Preadolescence: Contemporary Correlates and Antecedents of Boundary Violation and Maintenance

Previous research has established the importance of gender boundaries as a normative aspect of development in middle childhood. Here, the nature and importance of gender boundaries as an individual differences construct was explored. Ratings of gender boundary violation and gender boundary maintenance were made of 47 10–11-year-old children participating in a series of summer day camps. These ratings were supported by videotape-based behavior codings of gender boundary violating behaviors and by live observations of sheer number of associations with members of the opposite gender. In addition, considerable external validation of these individual differences was obtained. Children low on gender boundary violation and (especially) children high on boundary maintenance were independently judged by camp counselors to be socially competent. They also were found to be higher on a friendship variable, based on observation. Those who violated boundary were especially unpopular with peers, based on a child interview. Finally, boundary violation and maintenance were related to attachment history and to early measures of parent-child generational boundary distortions.     

Reconceptualizing the Sources of Teaching Self-Efficacy: a Critical Review of Emerging Literature

Teachers’ efficacy beliefs are thought to influence not only their motivation and performance but also the achievement of their students. Scholars have therefore turned their attention toward the sources underlying these important teacher beliefs. This review seeks to evaluate the ways in which researchers have measured and conceptualized the sources of teaching self-efficacy across 82 empirical studies. Specifically, it aims to identify what can be inferred from these studies and what important questions still remain about the origins of teachers’ efficacy beliefs. Results indicate that a number of methodological shortcomings in the literature have prevented a clear understanding of how teachers develop a sense of efficacy. Nonetheless, insights gleaned from existing research help to refine, and to expand, theoretical understandings of the sources of self-efficacy and their influence in the unique context of teaching. Implications for future research and practice are addressed.     

Stereotype Threat,Identification with Academics,and Withdrawal from School: Why the most successful students of colour might be most likely to withdraw

Claude Steele’s stereotype threat hypothesis posits that when there are negative stereotypes about the intellectual capacity of certain (stigmatised) groups, members of that group suffer aversive consequences; group members who are most strongly identified with the stigmatised domain in question (e.g., intellectual or academic ability) are those most likely to suffer the effects of stereotype threat. In education, it is widely held that personal investment in schooling should lead to more positive outcomes. However, highly‐invested individuals will most keenly experience the negative effects of stigma. Thus those most at risk for withdrawing from school among students of colour (who suffer a stigma of intellectual inferiority) could be those most invested in schooling. This hypothesis was tested by measuring identification with academics among a group of incoming students at a racially diverse inner‐city high school in the Midwest USA. Regardless of race, the students who most strongly identified with academics (they valued and considered academics central to the self) had higher GPAs, lower levels of absenteeism, and fewer behavioural referrals. However, among students of colour the most strongly identified were more likely to withdraw, while identification with academics did not significantly influence the withdrawal of Caucasian students. These results highlight the importance of providing a supportive environment that diffuses stereotype threat for all students, even those who appear to be academically successful.     

Appreciation of Pro-Attitudinal Versus Counter-Attitudinal Political Humor: A Cognitive Consistency Approach to the Study of Political Entertainment

This study highlights the explanatory principle of cognitive consistency as a foundation for political entertainment research. More specifically, appreciation for pro- versus counter-attitudinal political humor is analyzed via one statewide (N = 304) and two national surveys (N = 1008, N = 786, respectively). Analyses reveal a preference for pro-attitudinal over counter-attitudinal humor. In addition, an assessment of pro- versus counter-attitudinal political humor appreciation serving as potential mediators of one another relative to political party identification is offered. Pro-attitudinal political humor appreciation serves as the stronger mediator, but a full range of mediation-based processes are evident. Implications and potential future lines of research are detailed.     

The design of tasks in support of teachers’ development of coherent mathematical meanings

We examine the role of tasks that have the intended effect of teachers re-conceiving the mathematics they teach as comprising a coherent body of meaningful ideas. We ground our discussion in ideas of trigonometry and modular functions and draw from a professional development research project to illustrate our approach. In this project, many teachers experienced dissonance that was rooted in their commitments to their curricular knowledge of trigonometry. Teachers who built new meanings into a coherent whole were those who coordinated them at a micro level. Teachers who saw implications of their own reasoning for student learning were also successful at expressing that reasoning in natural language. We saw a similar pattern in the case of teachers' creation of meanings for action and process conceptions of mod(f(x),g(x)). Teachers who gained insight into implications of their own activities for student learning were the teachers who reasoned at a micro level in regard to the meaning of mod, who coordinated that meaning with a covariational perspective on the behavior of functions, and who expressed that coordination in natural language. We conclude that a primary feature of tasks that promote teachers' construction of coherent mathematical meanings is that they support an overall effort to have teachers engage in the coordination of meanings in the context of explaining significant ideas and relationships.     

A new paradigm for teaching Histology laboratories in Canada's first distributed medical school

To address the critical problem of inadequate physician supply in rural British Columbia, The University of British Columbia (UBC) launched an innovative, expanded and distributed medical program in 2004–2005. Medical students engage in a common curriculum at three geographically distinct sites across B.C.: in Vancouver, Prince George and Victoria. The distribution of the core Histology course required a thorough revision of our instructional methodology. We here report our progress and address the question “How does one successfully distribute Histology teaching to remote sites while maintaining the highest of educational standards?” The experience at UBC points to three specific challenges in developing a distributed Histology curriculum: (i) ensuring equitable student access to high quality histological images, (ii) designing and implementing a reliable, state‐of‐the‐art technological infrastructure that allows for real‐time teaching and interactivity across geographically separate sites and (iii) ensuring continued student access to faculty content expertise. High quality images—available through any internet connection—are provided within a new virtual slide box library of 300 light microscopic and 190 electron microscopic images. Our technological needs are met through a robust and reliable videoconference system that allows for live, simultaneous communication of audio/visual materials across the three sites. This system also ensures student access to faculty content expertise during all didactic teaching sessions. Student examination results and surveys demonstrate that the distribution of our Histology curriculum has been successful. Anat Sci Ed 1:95–101, 2008. © 2008 American Association of Anatomists.     

Predicting acceptance of diversity in pre-kindergarten classrooms

This study examined classroom-level contributors to an acceptance of diversity in publicly supported pre-kindergarten classrooms across 11 states. Classroom composition, process quality, and teacher characteristics were examined as predictors of diversity-promoting practices as measured by the ECERS-R, acceptance of diversity construct. Findings reveal that emotional climate, bilingual classrooms, family poverty levels within classrooms, and Latino teacher ethnicity are predictive of diversity-promoting classrooms; while classroom-level ethnic sameness to teacher prohibits diversity-promoting practices in pre-kindergarten classrooms.