Coping with writing apprehension

Students with high writing apprehension (WA) were exposed or not exposed to visualization (a procedure designed to encourage positive thinking). Those exposed to visualization reported enjoying writing more than those who were not trained to visualize, both immediately and over time. The paper ends with a discussion of these and other results.     

Performance tolerance and boat set-up in elite sprint kayaking

The aim of this study was to examine the inter-relationship between athlete morphology, equipment set-up and performance in elite sprint kayaking. Correlations applied to data from the 2000 Olympics were used to select the most important links between morphology and boat set-up--paddle grip width and foot-bar distance. Associations between body size and the above selected equipment set-ups were calculated using a Pearson correlation matrix, to facilitate the logical selection of independent variables as input for regression analyses. Significant (p < 0.01) regression equations were developed for the prediction of foot-bar distance (r2 = 0.589: standard error of estimate (SEE) = 4.48) and paddle grip width (r2 = 0.541: SEE = 3.08). Three national-standard sprint kayakers used their preferred set-up together with modifications of their predicted set-up, derived from Olympic data, to test performance tolerance in sprint kayaking. Mean coefficients of multiple determination over three trials for the three paddlers of 0.91, 0.91 and 0.92 for left paddle force, right paddle force, and paddle angle at water entry, respectively, were recorded when using their preferred set-up. These data showed that the paddlers produce consistent patterns of motion. The intervention of altering the boat set-up resulted in varying changes to boat speed. The mean preferred speed for the three paddlers of 4.47 m/s was reduced by 0.07 and 0.10 m/s when the above boat set-up was modified to a predicted and 'predicted plus one standard deviation'respectively. These changes in boat speed were the result of alterations in the mechanics of paddling technique.     

Paying the piper: the costs and consequences of academic advancement

In many professions there are qualifications to gain and professional standards to achieve. Lawyers pass the bar and doctors pass their boards. In academic life the equivalent is a doctorate, closely followed by a profile of peer-reviewed publication. To hold a doctoral degree is the common requirement to become ‘academic’ but does it prepare individuals to advance in an academic career? In choosing the idiom ‘paying the piper’ (i.e. where one must pay the costs and accept the consequences of one's actions) we recognise that in seeking to develop our scholarly profiles we had to choose to adapt successfully to global workplace expectations, modify our professional aspirations or refuse to participate. In this paper we examine the challenges we faced as academics in physical education as we progressed from beginning to mid-career stages. We focus particularly on challenges related to seeking external research funding, exploring our assumptions about academic life and the perceived expectations that lie under the surface around research funding, teaching and service. Through the use of self-study we demonstrate how our perceptions of academic career progress meant paying personal and professional costs that we were largely (and perhaps naively) unaware of when we entered the academic workforce. Data consisted of Ashley’s reflective diaries generated over the past six years, which were analysed deductively based on an understanding of salient experiences of academic life, most notably, those related to the pursuit of funding and its relationship to academic advancement. Tim played the role of critical friend by asking probing questions, relating personal experiences to instances in Ashley's data, and offering alternative interpretations of Ashley's insights. By sharing our experiences we hope early career academics (ECAs) may relate to and learn from our naivety. In this way, there may be implications for the induction and mentoring of future ECAs.