A Shared Place of Discovery and Creativity: Practices of Contemporary Art and Design Pedagogy

This article is based on a project that explored the practices of art and design beginning teachers (BTs) working with learners in a post‐age‐16 context. The aim of the project was to: explore contemporary art and design practices; explore the concept of artist teacher learner researcher; enable beginning teachers to collaborate with post‐age‐16 pupils and develop new approaches and strategies to art and design pedagogy. Through practices that blurred learner‐teacher identities a dialectical pedagogy emerged and a collaborative community of practice developed, all enabled through a renegotiation and reconceptualising of places of learning. The beginning teachers also started to construct their artist teacher identities, understand what it means to practise as an artist teacher in the classroom, understand the impact of these practices on teaching and learning and develop new learning and teaching methods. This project demonstrates the possibilities of these practices for contemporary art and design pedagogy and also how these practices can endure and be sustainable for this community of beginning teachers in the current cultural, social and political contexts of education.     

Lower extremity muscle function of front row rugby union scrummaging

A rugby scrum’s front row must act uniformly to transfer maximal horizontal force and improve performance. This study investigated the muscle activation patterns of lower extremity muscles in front row forwards during live and machine scrums at professional and amateur levels. Electromyography was collected bilaterally on vastus lateralis, rectus femoris and gastrocnemius muscles of 75 male rugby prop players during live and machine scrums. ANOVAs compared muscle reaction time, rate of change in muscle amplitude and muscle amplitude between groups and conditions. Cross-correlation analysis explored muscle synchronicity. There were significantly greater rates of change in each muscle amplitude in professional players than amateur players. Additionally, there was significantly quicker muscle reaction time in all muscles, and greater amplitude in vastus lateralis and gastrocnemius, during the live scrum vs. machine condition. The professional props produced more synchronised muscle activation than amateur players and all players produced more synchronised muscle activation against the scrum machine vs. live scrummage. The results indicate a higher skill proficiency and muscle synchronicity in professional players. While scrum machine training is ideally suited for functional muscle strengthening during practice, to truly simulate the requirements of the scrum, training should incorporate the live situation as much as possible.     

Readability and Basic Course Hybrid Textbooks in Human Communication: A Disparity of Reading Difficulty

Parents play a pivotal role in the gender development and sex-typing of children. It is important to discover whether gender role communication differences exist based on the sex of the child or parent. The present study aimed to discover differences in gender role messages communicated between mother-daughter, mother-son, father-daughter, and father-son dyads. Participants (n = 630) completed a modified version of Bem's Sex Role Inventory. Two key results were discovered: mothers communicate significantly more feminine messages to children, regardless of child sex; and the modified BSRI identifies respondents as weak vs. strong gender identity rather than masculine, feminine, androgynous, or undifferentiated.     

Childcare choices and voices: using interpreted narratives and thematic meaning-making to analyse mothers’ life histories

This paper focuses on the methodology of a study that asked what factors English mothers of very young babies consider when making employment decisions and childcare choices, and sought their views on the idea of carers in day care settings ‘loving’ their children. After a characterisation of life historical study, a four-staged process of analysis demonstrates how meaning was made from data created with six mothers. The discussion ‘voices’ their stories through excerpts from their expressions of emotion. The conclusion acknowledges insights generated into the dilemmas of mothers’ choices, but importantly points up how the careful listening and critical attending required by life historical study themselves generate stories that ‘go awry’ to reveal something of personal and of social importance. The paper concludes that using life story methods is a difficult process which may create discomfort for researcher and ‘researched’ long after the study is finished.     

Digital Discernment: An E‐Commerce Web Site Evaluation Tool

Students entering the business workforce today may well share some responsibility for developing, revising, or evaluating their company's Web site. They may lack the experience, however, to critique their employer's Web presence effectively. The purpose of developing Digital Discernment, an e‐commerce Web site evaluation tool, was to prepare students for this work. The tool provides them with a listing of criteria with which to assess e‐commerce sites, lets them evaluate pre‐selected sites qualitatively and quantitatively, and allows them to compare their evaluations with their peers. In this article, we discuss and examine the effectiveness of this tool and consider the ways in which it can help students in their future business careers.     

The State of Media Literacy: A Rejoinder

Based on the uses and gratifications framework, this study examined associations between motivations for using Facebook among college students, their concern for impression management, Facebook intensity, and psychological outcomes including sense of belonging and satisfaction with campus life. Using data from an online survey (N = 246), the study found that four motivations—entertainment, relationship maintenance, self-expression, and communication—together with impression management, were significantly associated with Facebook intensity. However, the impacts of Facebook intensity on psychological consequences were relatively limited. Theoretical implications of the study were discussed.     

College Adjustment Difficulties and the Overt and Covert Forms of Narcissism

Overt narcissism correlated negatively with emotional distress and interpersonal difficulties among female, but not male, students. After controlling for self‐esteem, overt narcissism correlated positively with depression among female students and with emotional distress and interpersonal difficulties among male students. Covert narcissism correlated positively with emotional distress and interpersonal and academic difficulties among both male and female students. Associations between covert narcissism and emotional distress and interpersonal difficulties remained after controlling for self‐esteem.