Walking football as sustainable exercise for older adults – A pilot investigation

The health benefits of playing football and the importance of exercise and social contact for healthy ageing are well established, but few older adults in the UK take enough exercise. Football is popular, flexible in format and draws players into engrossing, effortful and social exercise, but the physical demands of play at full speed may make it unsustainable for some older adults. Restricted to walking pace, will play still be engaging? Will health benefits be retained? Will physical demands remain manageable? This pilot study aims to investigate: (1) the experience of older adults playing walking football every week, is it sustainable and rewarding, (2) the intensity and locomotor pattern of walking football, (3) the scale and nature of walking football health benefits and (4) possible cognitive benefits of playing walking football through measures of processing speed, selective and divided attention and updating and inhibition components of executive function. ‘Walking football’ and ‘waiting list’ groups were compared before and after 12 weeks of one-hour per week football. Walking football was found to be engaging, sustainable for older adults and moderately intensive; however, selective health and cognitive benefits were not found from this brief intervention.

Highlights

• Walking football is a lower impact but authentic form of football that enables older players to extend their active participation.

• Walking football is enjoyable and moderately demanding and may be a sustainable form of exercise for older adults.

• Health and cognitive benefits to playing walking football were not found.

     

Wyndham Halswelle and the 1908 Olympic 400 metres final,the most controversial race in Olympic history?

One of the central narratives of the 1908 Olympic Games is the intense Anglo-American acrimony which culminated in the nadir of their sporting relations. One of the major controversies involved the 400 metres final which featured Halswelle, a British athlete, and three Americans – Carpenter, Robbins and Taylor. The final was declared void after Carpenter obstructed Halswelle and was disqualified. In protest the Americans withdrew Robbins and Taylor from the re-run and Halswelle won the gold medal unopposed. This paper explores the 400 metres final from the perspective of the British athlete Wyndham Halswelle utilising his diaries, photo albums, scrapbooks and the papers of his elder brother, Gordon. Serendipitously, the continual digitisation of newspapers also gave further insight into allegations of illegal team tactics by Carpenter and Robbins in the initial race. The article then further exploits these resources to develop a case study of Halswelle as an elite early-twentieth-century British amateur athlete. Differences in ideas of the amateur athlete ideal are often identified as an underpinning cause of international squabbling at the IV Olympiad and may have led to Halswelle’s decision to retire after the games at the age of 26 while still improving his performances.     

W.W. Alexander’s reflections on Britain at the Olympic Games, 1908–1912

William Whiteway (W.W.) Alexander (b.1852) was a prominent figure in Midlands athletics from the 1890s to the 1930s. Primarily, he is remembered for his impact upon Birmingham’s Birchfield Harriers Athletic Club, whose stadium in Perry Barr bears his name. Alexander’s involvement went far beyond the club, as he served as a prominent administrator of the sport and wrote a weekly column in the Birmingham sporting newspaper The Sporting Mail. This article will examine Alexander’s comments regarding the Olympic Games of London (1908) and Stockholm (1912), where he provides an alternative perspective on the British attitude at these Games and offers possible reasons as to why the British performance declined.     

Goal orientations, motivational climate, and prosocial and antisocial behaviour in youth football: exploring their temporal stability and reciprocal relationships

In this study, we examined the temporal stability and reciprocal relationships among task and ego orientation, task- and ego-involving climates, and prosocial and antisocial behaviour in youth football. Male (n = 156) and female (n = 24) footballers (mean age 14.1 years, s = 1.8) completed questionnaires towards the beginning and end of a regular season. Questionnaires measured goal orientation, perceived motivational climate, and frequency of prosocial and antisocial behaviours. Structural equation modelling indicated moderate covariance stability between the beginning and end of the season. Subsequent analyses revealed a significant decrease only in perceptions of task-involving climate. In the cross-lagged analyses, prosocial behaviour at the beginning of the season positively predicted task-involving climate at the end of the season. Antisocial behaviour at the beginning of the season positively predicted both ego orientation and ego-involving climate at the end of the season and a reciprocal relationship was revealed whereby ego orientation at the beginning of the season positively predicted antisocial behaviour at the end of the season. Task orientation at the beginning of the season negatively predicted ego-involving climate at the end of the season. All cross-lagged relationships were weak. This exploratory study offers limited support for bi-directional relationships between personal, environmental, and behavioural variables but provides useful insight into the covariance stability, change, and interrelationships between motivational and moral constructs over a competitive season.     

The Globalization of Multicultural Education in Social Science Textbooks: Cross-national Analyses, 1950–2010

In this study the authors analyze 548 secondary social science textbooks to examine the extent to which multiculturalism-related content appears over time and around the world. Findings suggest significant global increases in textbook depictions of minority rights and groups experiencing discrimination over time and in many regions.     

Surface protein gradients generated in sealed microchannels using spatially varying helium microplasma

Spatially varied surface treatment of a fluorescently labeled Bovine Serum Albumin (BSA) protein, on the walls of a closed (sealed) microchannel is achieved via a well-defined gradient in plasma intensity. The microchips comprised a microchannel positioned in-between two microelectrodes (embedded in the chip) with a variable electrode separation along the length of the channel. The channel and electrodes were 50 μm and 100 μm wide, respectively, 50 μm deep, and adjacent to the channel for a length of 18 mm. The electrode separation distance was varied linearly from 50 μm at one end of the channel to a maximum distance of 150, 300, 500, or 1000 μm to generate a gradient in helium plasma intensity. Plasma ignition was achieved at a helium flow rate of 2.5 ml/min, 8.5 kV_pk-pk, and 10 kHz. It is shown that the plasma intensity decreases with increasing electrode separation and is directly related to the residual amount of BSA left after the treatment. The plasma intensity and surface protein gradient, for the different electrode gradients studied, collapse onto master curves when plotted against electrode separation. This precise spatial control is expected to enable the surface protein gradient to be tuned for a range of applications, including high-throughput screening and cell-biomolecule-biomaterial interactions.     

Action learning: how learning transfers from entrepreneurs to small firms

This paper presents research with small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) owners who have participated in a leadership development programme. The primary focus of this paper is on learning transfer and factors affecting it, arguing that entrepreneurs must engage in ‘action’ in order to ‘learn’ and that under certain conditions they may transfer learning to their firm. This paper draws on data from 19 focus groups undertaken from 2010 to 2012, involving 51 participants in the LEAD Wales programme. It considers the literatures exploring learning transfer and develops a conceptual framework, outlining four areas of focus for entrepreneurial learning. Utilising thematic analysis, it describes and evaluates what (actual facts and information) and how (techniques, styles of learning) participants transfer and what actions they take to improve the business and develop their people. This paper illustrates the complex mechanisms involved in this process and concludes that action learning is a method of facilitating entrepreneurial learning which is able to help address some of the problems of engagement, relevance and value that have been highlighted previously. This paper concludes that the efficacy of an entrepreneurial learning intervention in SMEs may depend on the effectiveness of learning transfer.     

Kinematic analyses of seated throwing activities with and without an assistive pole

In Paralympic seated throwing events, the athlete can throw with and without an assistive pole. This study aimed to identify and compare performance-related kinematic variables associated with both seated throwing techniques. Twenty-nine non-disabled males (21.9 ± 2.6 years) performed 12 maximal throws using a 1-kg ball in two conditions (no-pole and pole). Automatic 3D-kinematic tracking (150 Hz) and temporal data were acquired. There was no significant difference between ball speeds at the point of release between conditions (no-pole = 12.8 ± 1.6 m/s vs. pole = 12.9 ± 1.5 m/s). There were four kinematic variables that were strongly correlated with ball speed when throwing with or without an assistive pole. These variables were elbow flexion at the start phase (pole r = .39 and no-pole r = .41), maximum shoulder external rotation angular velocity during the arm cocking phase (pole r = .42), maximum shoulder internal rotation angular velocity during the arm acceleration phase (pole r = .47), and should internal rotation angular velocity at the instant of ball release (pole r = .40). The pole clearly influenced the throwing technique with all four strongly correlated variables identified in this condition, compared to only one during the no-pole condition. When using the pole, participants produced significantly higher shoulder internal rotation angular velocities during the arm acceleration phase (pole = 367 ± 183°/s vs. no-pole = 275 ± 178°/s, p < .05) and at the instant of ball release (pole = 355 ± 115°/s vs. no-pole = 264 ± 120°/s, p < .05), compared to throwing without the pole. These findings have implications for the development of evidence-based classification systems in Paralympic seated throwing, and facilitate research that investigates the impact of impairment on seated throwing performance.     

Who teaches primary physical education? Change and transformation through the eyes of subject leaders

Primary physical education (PE) lessons tend to be taught by one, or a combination of, three different groups: generalist classroom teachers, specialist primary PE teachers and so-called adults other than teachers, who are almost exclusively sports coaches. Drawing upon data gathered from one-to-one interviews with 36 subject leaders (SLs), this study sought answers to two main questions: ‘Who delivers primary PE nowadays?’ and ‘What are the consequences?’ The findings revealed that the most common model for the delivery of PE involved responsibility being shared between the generalist class teacher and either a sports coach or specialist PE teacher. The SLs recognised strengths and weaknesses in all of the three main approaches used. However, while they favoured the use of specialist teachers because of their subject knowledge and expertise, the more prosaic constraints of cost and flexibility meant that the use of coaches had become increasingly popular. Whether or not, the growth of coaches is de-professionalising the delivery of PE, it certainly appears to be exacerbating any existing tendency to turn primary PE into a pale imitation of the sport-biased curricular of secondary schools. Ironically, the apparent ‘threat’ to the status of PE in the primary curriculum (as well as the status of PE specialists) posed by the growth of coaches in curricular PE in primary schools may well be exaggerated by the Primary PE and Sport Premium which appears to have added momentum to a change of direction regarding staffing the subject—towards sports coaches and away from generalist classroom teachers and PE specialists. As the shift towards outsourcing PE to commercial sports coaches becomes increasingly commonplace, it seems appropriate to talk of transformation, rather than mere change, in the delivery of primary PE.