Negotiations of the ageing process: older adults' stories of sports participation

The purpose of this paper is to examine the talk of older athletes, with particular focus on how the context of sport helps them negotiate the ageing process. It draws on personal stories provided by 44 World Masters Games competitors (23 women; 21 men; aged 56–90 years; M = 72). Four themes emerged: ‘There's no such thing as old’ (a story of avoiding old age); ‘Keep moving’ (a story of fighting the ageing process); ‘Fun, fitness, friendship … [and] competing’ (a story of redefining self and ‘old age’) and; ‘Making the most of your life … with the capabilities that you still have’ (a story of adaptation and acceptance). Together, the four themes show how through sports participation older individuals can simultaneously resist, redefine and accept the ageing process. These stories of a ‘sporting later life’ allow for alternative meanings to the dominant ‘declining body’ narrative of ageing. Therefore, these narratives present the possibility for personal, pedagogical and social transformation.     

A model of ice friction for a speed skate blade

The FAST 2.0i numerical model of ice friction was developed for an inclined speed skate blade. It describes ice friction at sliding velocities sufficiently high to produce a lubricating layer of meltwater, which completely separates the ice and slider surfaces (known as the hydrodynamic friction regime). Friction arises from ploughing a groove in the ice and from the shear stress in the lubricating Couette flow. The model takes into account frictional melting, heat conduction into the ice and the lateral squeeze flow of the lubricating liquid. We use the numerical model to calculate the ice–blade contacts, the parameters of the lubricating liquid layer, and the relative importance of the various contributions to the overall friction coefficient. We also use it to perform sensitivity studies and to predict the variation of ice friction during a typical skating stroke. The model results compare favorably with measurements of the ice friction coefficient during speed skating, made by others.     

Attentional Bias for Exercise-Related Images

Abstract

This research examined attentional bias toward exercise-related images using a visual probe task. It was hypothesized that more-active participants would display attentional bias toward the exercise-related images. The results showed that men displayed attentional bias for the exercise images. There was a significant interaction of activity level by gender, and simple slopes analysis showed that active women displayed attentional bias toward the exercise-related images and inactive women displayed attentional bias toward the control images. A similar analysis with explicit attention to the pictures as the outcome variable was not significant. These findings confirm that attention for exercise-related images can be captured automatically regardless of whether people report they are attending to them.     

Bangqiu: MLB's Role in Baseball's Comeback in the People's Republic of China

This article explores the growth of Chinese baseball since the early 1970s. The sport was very popular in the 1940s and 1950s as the semi-official pastime of the People's Liberation Army, but it disappeared from the country in the 1960s due to economic woes stemming from the Great Leap Forward and the anti-western fervour of the Cultural Revolution. Richard Nixon's historic meeting with Chairman Mao in 1972 ushered in a thaw in Sino–American relations that enabled veterans of 1950s competitions to take up baseball once again and teach the game to a new generation. Over the 1970s, baseball began to slowly grow in China with some modest Japanese encouragement and China began competing internationally the following decade. Over the past decade, Major League Baseball has made such a large investment in China that baseball has become the fastest growing sport in the country. At present, the country's only professional league is currently in the early stages of its development, but American talent evaluators believe that the skill of Chinese players is steadily improving and that it is not impossible to foresee a day when China produces baseball's Yao Ming from a massive pool of millions of internationally competitive athletes.     

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.     

Common Challenges and Experiences of School Districts That Are Implementing One-to-One Computing Initiatives

This article explores the implementation of various K–12 one-to-one computing initiatives to determine if patterns exist. These initiatives are funded in times of limited resources and constitute a serious investment in technology for the schools and districts adopting them. The goals of this study were to understand how and why one-to-one computing initiatives are being implemented, how these initiatives are funded and supported, and expectations or assumptions of stakeholders that are driving adoption of this type of technology. The results suggest that these school districts, and those like them, will face many challenges—some financial, some technical, and some procedural—as they work to integrate technology into instruction and assessment. Common themes or challenges identified from this work, and linked with previous research, include leadership and vision, funding, teacher professional development, and project evaluation.     

Service Learning as a Mechanism for Change in Attitudes and Perceptions of Human Services Students Toward Substance-Dependent Mothers

The purpose of the study was to explore the potential effectiveness of service learning as a pedagogical technique for providing substance abuse education to human services/social work students. Using a quasi-experimental design, the authors assigned 38 human services undergraduate students to experimental and comparison groups on the basis of their availability to attend a service-learning project in substance abuse. The service learning consisted of a 30-min educational presentation followed by a visit to a residential substance abuse treatment facility for women. Results indicated that service learning in substance abuse had a positive effect on the general knowledge, perceptions, and attitudes of human services students toward substance-dependent mothers and their children. The findings from this exploratory study support future research in this area.     

Book Reviews

Whitman. By Edgar Lee Masters. Charles Scribner's Sons. 342 pp. $3.50.

Curriculum Guides for Teachers of Children from Two to Six Years of Age. By Ruth Andrus and Associates. Reynal and Hitchcock. 299 pp. $2.50.

Education and the Class Struggle. By Zalmen Slesinger. Covici-Friede. 312 pp. $3.00.

Educational Psychology. Edited by Charles E. Skinner. Prentice-Hall, Inc. 754 PP- $3.00.

High School English, Books One, Two, Three. By Henry Seidel Canby, Olive I. Carter, and Helen Louise Miller. The Macmillan Co. 337, 413, and 494 pp. $1.00.

Introduction to Modern Views of Education. By W. A. Saucier. Ginn and Company. 490 pp. $2.00.

Principles of Modern Education. By Frank W. Thomas and Albert R. Lang. Houghton Mifflin Co. 340 pp. $2.25.

Public Discussion and Debate. By A. Craig Baird. Ginn and Co. 400 pp. $2.00. Revised Edition.

Teaching Purposes and Their Achievement. By L. John Nuttall. Charles Scribner's Sons. 290 pp. $1.80.

The Beginning Superintendent. By Frederick E. Bolton, Thomas R. Cole and John H. Jessup. Illustrated. The Macmillan Co. 613 pp. $4.00.

The New Culture: An Organic Philosophy of Education. By A. Gordon Melvin. Illustrated. Reynal and Hitchcock. 296 pp. $3.50.

The Small High School at Work. By R. Emerson Langfitt, Frank W. Cyr, and N. William Newsom. The American Book Company. 660 pp. $2.75.

The Social Functions of Education. By Robert M. Bear. The Macmillan Co. 434 pp. $2.25.

A Woman of Washington. By Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr. E. P. Dutton and Company. 282 pp. $2.00.

I Was a Probationer. By Corinne Johnson Kern. E. P. Dutton & Co. 314 pp. $2.50.

The Street of the Fishing Cat. By Jolan Foldes. Farrar and Rinchart. 308 pp. $2.50.

A Southern Treasury of Life and Literature. By Stark Young. Charles Scribner's Sons. 748 pp. $1.48.

Grand Tour. Edited by R. S. Lambert. Illustrated. E. P. Dutton and Co. 167 pp. $2.50.

Monticello and Other Poems. By Lawrence Lee. Charles Scribner's Sons. 92 pp. $2.00.

The Sixteenth Century. By Charles Oman. E. P. Dutton and Co. 247 pp. $3.00.

The Magic World of Music. By Olga Samaroff Stokowski. Illustrated. W. W. Norton. 197 pp. $2.50.

The Concept of Time. By Louise Robinson Heath. The University of Chicago Press. 236 pp. $3.00.

Fifty Million Brothers. A Panorama of Lodges and Clubs by Charles W. Ferguson. Farrar and Rinehart. 389 pp. $3.00.

Mobilizing for Chaos. The Story of the New Propaganda. Yale University Press. 231 pp. $2.50.     

Improving engagement: the use of ‘Authentic self-and peer-assessment for learning’ to enhance the student learning experience

Innovative assessment practices have the potential to shift the way universities function. By focusing on well-designed assessment tasks, where students are expected to work collegially and are actively involved in self- and peer-assessment, the opportunity to engage students in the assessment process is realised. This article contends that students are significantly and detrimentally disengaged from the assessment process as a result of traditional assessments that do not address key issues of learning. Notable issues that arose from observations and questioning of students indicated that vast proportions of students were not proofreading their own work were not collaborating on tasks; had not been involved in the development of assessment tasks; and that students had insufficient skills in relation to their ability to evaluate their own efforts. These facts led the author to conceptualise new models of assessment focusing on authentic learning and the authentic assessment of that learning through self- and peer-assessment. Authentic assessment for sustainable learning (AASL) and Authentic self-and peer-assessment for learning (ASPAL) were trialled with approximately 300 undergraduate education students at the University of Notre Dame Australia. This article explains the conceptual development of the models and provides justification for their implementation.     

The challenge of assessing professional competence in work integrated learning

A fundamental aspect of work integrated learning (WIL) is the development of professional competence, the ability of students to perform in the workplace. Alignment theory therefore suggests that the assessment of WIL should include an assessment of students’ demonstration of professional competence in the workplace. The assessment of professional competence in WIL is, however, problematic. It may be impractical for the academic supervisor to directly assess professional competence if there are a large number of students in external placements. If evidence of professional competence is provided by the student, the student’s ability to articulate his or her own capabilities will interfere with the validity of the assessment. If evidence of professional competency is provided by the supervisor then the assessment is heavily dependent on the individual supervisor and may be unreliable. This paper will examine the literature relating to the assessment of professional competence in WIL. The paper will be informed by the author’s experience in coordinating a WIL subject in an undergraduate law course. It will recommend that a mix of evidence provided by the student, the workplace supervisor and the academic supervisor should be used to assess professional competence in WIL.