Effects of Grip and Forearm Position on Flexed-Arm Hang Performance

Abstract

The purposes of this study were to associate age-related performance deficits in children with the use of recall strategies and to determine whether children who performed poorly in cycling would benefit from learning a recall strategy. In Experiment 1, 18 younger children (ages 5-7 years) and 18 older children (ages 8-10 years) were asked to recall selected pedaling cadences. The majority of the older children used strategies and performed with less error than the younger children. In Experiment 2, children with a high number of errors in Experiment 1 were assigned to an experimental or a control group. The children in the experimental group were taught to use a specific recall strategy. The results showed that children who received the instruction in strategy use improved their performance.     

Government research for industry: recent British developments

From late 1972 the Department of Trade and Industry (and its successor, the Department of Industry) began to operate new machinery for formulating policy towards R & D outside the nuclear and aerospace fields. Under the new machinery, the research establishments of the Department no longer arrive at their programmes through a series of advisory committees, with final endorsement by the Department's Chief Scientist, but rather have requirements placed with them by one or more executive Requirements Boards, comprising industrialists, academics and officials.This paper reviews the developments, beginning in the former Ministry of Technology, which led up to this new machinery, and then examines aspects of its operations from the viewpoints of the Departmental headquarters and of the research establishments involved. Attention is paid to the strategies and composition of the Boards, and to the requirement that the research establishments earn part of their income from industry.     

What and how do designers design?

Conclusion The design-layering concept has many implications. In this paper I have explored one of them that explains the maturation in designer thinking over time. In order to move to a new perspective of design it is not necessary to leave older views behind. The new principles added as the designer becomes knowledgeable about each new layer adds to the designer’s range and to the sophistication of the designs that are possible. Further consideration of the layering concept will expand our ability to communicate designs in richer detail, achieve more sophisticated designs, and add to our understanding of the design process itself.     

Adding an expert to the team: The expert flight plan critic*

This paper reports the development of a practical tool that provides expert feedback to students following an extended simulation exercise in cross‐country flight planning. In contrast to development for laboratory settings, the development of an expert instructional product for everyday use posed some interesting challenges, including dealing with a larger content scope, less ideal and controllable content structure, greater emphasis on the completeness and continuity of the student experience, and more stringent limits on time and money. Moreover, the transition from laboratory to real world caused the developers to think more critically of the principles of instruction embodied in the product and to place less emphasis on computer tool and technique questions. The product, which will be used in the context of routine ab initio pilot training, is described in terms of how these problems were solved and what lessons were learned that can be applied to the development of future instructional systems involving expertise.     

How L.A.T.E. it was, how L.A.T.E.

The London Association for the Teaching of English is a subject group that was founded in 1947 to ‘provide a live forum for the exchange of ideas, and to undertake the practical study of problems connected with the teaching of English’. The early history of this Association, its influence on the development of English pedagogy and practice is the subject of my current PhD research. Within this work are key questions about the nature of subject English, the curriculum, and the ways in which members of a subject community work together to effect change. This article gives some background to the research project, and begins to point towards some potentially important questions about the subject and ways of working together. After two decades of top down, centralised government initiatives around English pedagogy, curriculum and assessment, and teachers’ professional development, these questions are worth addressing.     

Young children's recall and reconstruction of audio and audiovisual narratives

It has been claimed that the visual component of audiovisual media dominates young children's cognitive processing. This experiment examines the effects of input modality while controlling the complexity of the visual and auditory content and while varying the comprehension task (recall vs. reconstruction). 4- and 7-year-olds were presented brief stories through either audio or audiovisual media. The audio version consisted of narrated character actions and character utterances. The narrated actions were matched to the utterances on the basis of length and propositional complexity. The audiovisual version depicted the actions visually by means of stop animation instead of by auditory narrative statements. The character utterances were the same in both versions. Audiovisual input produced superior performance on explicit information in the 4-year-olds and produced more inferences at both ages. Because performance on utterances was superior in the audiovisual condition as compared to the audio condition, there was no evidence that visual input inhibits processing of auditory information. Actions were more likely to be produced by the younger children than utterances, regardless of input medium, indicating that prior findings of visual dominance may have been due to the salience of narrative action. Reconstruction, as compared to recall, produced superior depiction of actions at both ages as well as more constrained relevant inferences and narrative conventions.     

Beliefs about learning and enacted instructional practices: An investigation in postsecondary chemistry education

While research on and development of evidence‐based instructional practices (EBIPs) in STEM education has flourished, implementation of these practices classrooms has not been as prolific. Using the teacher‐centered systemic reform model as a framework, we explore the connection between chemistry instructors’ beliefs about teaching and learning and self‐efficacy beliefs, and their enacted classroom practices. Postsecondary chemistry faculty present a unique population for the study because of their role in teaching prerequisite courses, such as general and organic chemistry, which are key to many science major fields. A measure of teacher beliefs and self‐efficacy was administered to a national survey of postsecondary chemistry faculty members. Instructional practices used in a chemistry course were also collected via self‐report. While instructional practices were not directly observed, a cluster analysis of our data mirrors patterns of instructional practices found in observation‐based studies of chemistry faculty. Significant differences are found on teacher thinking and self‐efficacy measures based on enacted instructional practices. Results support the hypothesized connection between beliefs and instructional practice on a larger scale than in previous studies of this relationship, bolstering the evidence for the importance of this relationship over previously criticized results. These results present a call for reform efforts on fostering change from its core, that is, the beliefs of those who ultimately adopt EBIPs. Dissemination and design should incorporate training and materials that highlight the process by which faculty members interpret reformed practices within their belief system, and explore belief change in the complex context of education reform.