The Relationship between Attitudes, Knowledge, and Demographic Variables of High School Teachers Regarding Food Irradiation

ABSTRACT:  The purpose of this study was to use a validated instrument to determine the attitudes and knowledge of high school teachers regarding food irradiation, and to determine the correlations among their knowledge and attitudes and certain demographic variables. Knowledge and attitudes about food irradiation were measured in selected high school family and consumer sciences teachers ( n = 121) who taught Food and Nutrition, Food Science and Technology, and/or Food Production Management and Services, via a 24-item instrument with 6 factors. Results revealed these teachers held neutral to positive attitudes about the safety of irradiated foods, their perception of the risk of foodborne illness, and learning about food irradiation, and neutral to negative perceptions of their understanding of food irradiation and their competence to teach about it. These teachers had a moderate knowledge base regarding food irradiation. Teachers' attitudes regarding the safety of food irradiation were positively correlated with their perceived understanding of food irradiation, actual knowledge of it, and competence to teach about it. Their perceived understanding of food irradiation was positively correlated with competence to teach about it, knowledge, and attitudes toward the safety of food irradiation. The only demographic variable correlated with knowledge or attitudes was teachers' previous food irradiation educational experiences. These data suggest the importance of education for family and consumer sciences teachers concerning food irradiation.     

Temperament, emotion, and social interactive behavior in the strange situation: a component process analysis of attachment system functioning

This study examines the contributions of temperamentally and nontemperamentally based emotional reactions to the organization of social interactive behavior within the Strange Situation to better understand the emotional underpinnings of attachment system functioning. At 12 1/2 and 19 1/2 months, temperamental fear (assessed via maternal report) was related to independent per-episode dimensions of social interactive and distress behavior. Fear was moderately correlated with both distress and interactive dimensions at each age. Path-analytic models revealed that temperamental fear had direct effects on interactive behavior and also indirect effects mediated by preceding distress reactions. However, residualized measures of "context-specific" distress (with temperamental variance removed) were still highly consistent across Strange Situation episodes and also significantly predicted subsequent social interactive behavior; furthermore, stable distress reactions from 12 1/2 to 19 1/2 months significantly predicted concurrent stability in social interactive behavior. We discuss likely sources of "context-specific" emotional influences on Strange Situation behavior and also age-related differences in these findings.     

ADORNO AND THE BORDERS OF EXPERIENCE: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE NONIDENTICAL FOR A "DIFFERENT" THEORY OF BILDUNG

A bstract .  In this essay Christiane Thompson discusses the systematic outcomes of Theodor Adorno's philosophical work for a reworked theory of Bildung (an important term in the German tradition of philosophy and history of education). In his essay "Theory of Halbbildung ," Adorno revealed the inevitable failure of Bildung , on the one hand, and the necessity of Bildung (in view of a critique of society), on the other. After having exposed this contradiction, Thompson seeks to analyze Bildung 's systematic role by turning to Adorno's reflections on art and metaphysics. Adorno's concept of aesthetic experience hints at the possibility of a more genuine approach to Bildung and culture, one that makes the borders of our experience visible and, as a result, suggests a different relation to ourselves and to the world. She concludes by examining the critical dimensions of this different Bildung as well as its pedagogical relevance.     

Associations between trait personality,anxiety, self-efficacy and intentions to exercise by gender in high school physical education

Trait personality has been associated with achievement and many of its related outcomes in settings such as education, health, physical activity and sport. Scant trait personality research has been performed among school-age students in physical education, so this study investigates relations between the six-dimension (HEXACO) model of trait personality and anxiety, self-efficacy and intentions to exercise as a function of gender in 316 high school physical education students. Students completed validated measures of these constructs. Results revealed that trait personality (particularly the social self-esteem aspect of extraversion) predicted lower anxiety and higher self-efficacy and intentions to exercise in both females and males. Openness to experience was predictive of both anxiety and lowered self-efficacy in females. It appears that physical educators should consider the role of the HEXACO personality traits and sub-traits in their students and potentially differentiate instruction to better accommodate students who are more vulnerable. From this study, it appears that students who are less extraverted and females who are more open to experience may be at be more at risk for anxiety and lower self-efficacy in physical education which may compromise their intentions to exercise.     

Emotional regulation and emotional development

Current neofunctionalist views of emotion underscore the biologically adaptive and psychologically constructive contributions of emotion to organized behavior, but little is known of the development of the emotional regulatory processes by which this is fostered. Emotional regulation refers to the extrinsic and intrinsic processes responsible for monitoring, evaluating, and modifying emotional reactions. This review provides a developmental outline of emotional regulation and its relation to emotional development throughout the life-span. The biological foundations of emotional self-regulation and individual differences in regulatory tendencies are summarized. Extrinsic influences on the early regulation of a child's emotion and their long-term significance are then discussed, including a parent's direct intervention strategies, selective reinforcement and modeling processes, affective induction, and the caregiver's ecological control of opportunity for heightened emotion and its management. Intrinsic contributors to the growth of emotional self-regulatory capacities include the emergence of language and cognitive skills, the child's growing emotional and self-understanding (and cognized strategies of emotional self-control), and the emergence of a theory of personal emotion in adolescence.     

Towards a sociocognitive model of progression in spoken English

Current approaches to oral assessment of English in English secondary schools tend to concentrate more on ‘confidence’ and ‘participation’ than on the quality of children's thinking. This undermines the rich possibilities in classroom talk for cognitive development. Behavioural assessment approaches deny the essentially cognitive character of spoken English. This paper compares two brief representative extracts from a larger data‐set of students engaged in small group debate on the subject of abortion. One group of students are hindered in their discussion by an inability to conceptualize abstractly. It is suggested that a formative assessment approach based on a model of cognitive progression such as Vygotsky's could enable all students to develop as speakers by encouraging their teachers to focus more explicitly on the development of the quality of thinking. A sociocognitive framework for conceptual progression could guide teachers in their interpretation of peer debate in order to develop the quality of students' understanding and argument. Building on the work of Newman, Griffin and Cole, and Torrance and Pryor, further research should be conducted into the ways in which formative teacher–student and student–student assessment dialogue might enhance students' ability to think through talk.     

False-performance feedback does not affect punching forces and pacing of elite boxers

Prior research indicates that providing participants with positive augmented feedback tends to enhance motor learning and performance, whereas the opposite occurs with negative feedback. However, the majority of studies were conducted with untrained participants performing unfamiliar motor tasks and so it remains unclear if elite athletes completing familiar tasks respond in a similar fashion. Thus, this study investigated the effects of three different versions of false-performance feedback on punching force (N), pacing (force over time) and ratings of perceived exertion (RPE) in 15 elite amateur male boxers. Athletes completed a simulated boxing bout consisting of three rounds with 84 maximal effort punches delivered to a punching integrator on four separate days. Day one was a familiarisation session in which no feedback was provided. In the following three days athletes randomly received false-positive, false-negative and false-neutral feedback on their punching performance between each round. No statistical or meaningful differences were observed in punching forces, pacing or RPE between conditions (P > 0.05; ≤ 2%). These null results could stem from the elite status of the athletes involved, the focus on performance rather than learning, or they may indicate that false feedback has a less potent effect on performance than previously thought.     

A modified TRIMP to quantify the in-season training load of team sport players

The aims of the study were to modify the training impulse (TRIMP) method of quantifying training load for use with intermittent team sports, and to examine the relationship between this modified TRIMP (TRIMP(MOD)) and changes in the physiological profile of team sport players during a competitive season. Eight male field hockey players, participating in the English Premier Division, took part in the study (mean+/-s: age 26+/-4 years, body mass 80.8+/-5.2 kg, stature 1.82+/-0.04 m). Participants performed three treadmill exercise tests at the start of the competitive season and mid-season: a submaximal test to establish the treadmill speed at a blood lactate concentration of 4 mmol . l(-1); a maximal incremental test to determine maximal oxygen uptake ([V]O(2max)) and peak running speed; and an all-out constant-load test to determine time to exhaustion. Heart rate was recorded during all training sessions and match-play, from which TRIMP(MOD) was calculated. Mean weekly TRIMP(MOD) was correlated with the change in [V]O(2max) and treadmill speed at a blood lactate concentration of 4 mmol x l(-1) from the start of to mid-season (P<0.05). The results suggest that TRIMP(MOD) is a means of quantifying training load in team sports and can be used to prescribe training for the maintenance or improvement of aerobic fitness during the competitive season.     

The undulating contours of sōgō geijutsu (total work of art), or Hanada Kiyoteru's thoughts on transmedia in postwar Japan

This article provides an insight into the theorization of sōgō geijutsu or the work of total art during the postwar decades in Japan, primarily through the language of Hanada Kiyoteru, a notable communist critic during the 1950s, as a way to present a discursive precursor to what would be explored as intermedia in the 1960s. It is an attempt to trace the debates that were seen in journal Sōgō Bunka, which was established immediately after the war, and how the question of collectivity and collective production of art was discussed among the contributing critics, artists, and intellectuals. Totality as some may know already, is a problematic term that comes close to the wartime notion of ‘totality’, as it was employed for Japanese government's ideological deployment for its war efforts. Although the term has accrued a sinister ring, the critics mentioned in the article, especially Hanada, were determined to reclaim the term as a way of devising a postwar aesthetic-political platform. One important component of sōgō geijutsu was popular art and its relationship to the masses, as it was designed to relocate avant-garde art practices to the juncture of popular space and political praxis, while critiquing the modernist avant-garde art associated with high art. In addition to providing a fuller historiography of intermedia (or transmedia) in Japan, interrogating sōgō geijutsu also serves to shed some light on the complex and multivalent discourse of locating a ‘people’ and their communicative action. Through this history, the term totality gains a greater texture, no longer dismissible as a mere vestige of fascism in the minds of the Japanese artists and critics.