Skiing accidents in the past 15 years

For the last 15 years a statistical analysis of distances skied and of alpine skiing accidents has been performed in the Davos‐Klosters skiing area, a ‘closed’ skiing area, where every skier has to return from the top to the bottom station. Distance skied is measured by vertical drop in 10⁶ km determined by calculations from frequency surveys by lift‐operators. About 2.5 million km per season have been skied during the past years, a number remaining constant for the last 15 years. In the same time the requirement for rescue‐transports in this area has shown a decline of 46% to 288 transports per season due to a decrease of the number of injuries with initial immobilization. Therefore the so‐called transport‐quotient (one rescue‐transport per 10⁴ km of vertical drop skied) has decreased from its initial value of 4 to 1 per 10⁴ km. During the same time all winter sport injuries were analysed at the hospital of Davos. About 90% are injuries caused by alpine skiing resulting in a total of 17 246 alpine skiing injuries for the last 15 years. There is a great decline in the incidence of lower leg fractures with a contrary development of knee injuries. Today half of the lower leg injuries are knee injuries (280 knee injuries out of a total of 1250 alpine skiing accidents per season). There is a gradual increase of upper extremity injuries from 17% of all skiing injuries in 1972 to 35% in 1976. A Swiss multicentre study on skiing safety shows comparable injury patterns in other skiing areas. The average injury‐severity measured by several parameters is declining.

In a technical investigation of skiing equipment of 1072 persons who sustained an accident, only 32% had ski bindings with tolerable frontal release and 17% with tolerable torsional release. Parallel measurements of bindings of 600 non‐injured skiers gave the same alarming results. More research on the correlation between binding adjustment and knee injuries is needed.     

Hitting the vault board: Implications for vaulting take‐off ‐ a preliminary investigation

Gymnastics vaulting relies on a specialized take‐off board for propulsion during the take‐off phase of the vault. There is little information on the vault board and its behaviour. The aim of this study was to characterize the behaviour of the vault board during handspring drill take‐offs of young male gymnasts (n = 36). The side of the top surface of the vault board and the wooden base were marked with three reflective markers, placed at the end of the vault board nearest the vault table and the centres of the two rearmost coil springs. The vault board surface was divided into two areas, rear and middle, based on marker location. The gymnasts’ groups were determined from the location of the gymnast's lateral malleolus at vault board contact. Landings with the malleolus directly above or behind the rearmost marker were considered rear landings; landings with the malleolus forward of the rearmost marker were considered middle landings. Marker movements were automatically digitized and the right malleolus was hand digitized at 120 Hz. The maximum vertical displacement, vertical deflection time, and vertical velocity at take‐off of the vault board markers did not differ statistically between board contact groups (all p > 0.05). The lateral malleolus velocity components also did not differ between board contact groups. Some low to moderately strong correlations were observed between the various marker displacements, durations and take‐off velocities. Modest correlations were obtained between board markers and right malleolus velocities. The results indicate that foot contact on the vault board, as defined here, did not result in differences in board marker behaviour or right lateral malleolus velocities. This information does not support the idea that vault board contacts at the rear of the vault board are worse than contacts near the middle of the vault board. More research is needed to ascertain the role of the vault board's vibration characteristics to whole body actions that are observed in the subsequent preflight phase.     

Dynamics of the martial arts high front kick

Fast unloaded movements (i.e. striking, throwing and kicking) are typically performed in a proximo‐distal sequence, where initially high proximal segments accelerate while distal segments lag behind, after which proximal segments decelerate while distal segments accelerate. The aims of this study were to examine whether proximal segment deceleration is performed actively by antagonist muscles or is a passive consequence of distal segment movement, and whether distal segment acceleration is enhanced by proximal segment deceleration. Seventeen skilled taekwon‐do practitioners were filmed using a high‐speed camera while performing a high front kick. During kicking, EMG recordings were obtained from five major lower extremity muscles. Based on the kinematic data, inverse dynamics computations were performed yielding muscle moments and motion‐dependent moments. The results indicated that thigh deceleration was caused by motion‐dependent moments arising from lower leg motion and not by active deceleration. This was supported by the EMG recordings. Lower leg acceleration was caused partly by a knee extensor muscle moment and partly by a motion‐dependent moment arising from thigh angular velocity. Thus, lower leg acceleration was not enhanced by thigh deceleration. On the contrary, thigh deceleration, although not desirable, is unavoidable because of lower leg acceleration.     

A review of parent–professional partnerships and some new obligations and concerns arising from the introduction of the SEND Code of Practice 2015

This article contributes a current thematic review of literature about the challenges of productive parent–professional partnership working relating to children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). It also reports on an empirical project which explored early experiences of professionals working under the newly statutory SEND Code of Practice 2015 and asks what new challenges have emerged for SEND parent‐partnerships. Particular consideration is given to the language of choice and preference in the Code, the new focus on outcomes in the place of specified provision, and the problematic construction of compliant partners.     

Expanding opportunities to learn to support inclusive education through drama‐enhanced literacy practices

This study examines how the Early Years Educators at Play (EYEPlay) professional development (PD) programme supported inclusive learning settings for all children, including English language learners and students with disabilities. The EYEPlay PD model is a year‐long programme that integrates drama strategies into literacy practices within real‐classroom contexts. Inclusive education refers to ensuring equal opportunities to access and participation in learning activities for all students. Cultural‐historical activity theory was used to understand and unpack the drama practices. Twelve semi‐structured focus group interviews were conducted with 19 preschool teachers. The data were analysed via constant‐comparative and interpretive methods. The study findings showed that EYEPlay PD practices enhanced inclusive learning settings for diverse groups of students by increasing access and expanding opportunities to learn, and supporting a positive learning environment.     

Why do long‐serving teachers stay in the teaching profession? Analysing the motivations of teachers with 10 or more years’ experience in England

This paper examines the reasons why long‐serving teachers remain in the teaching profession. Interest in teacher retention has grown in recent years, both in the UK and internationally, due to concerns over teacher shortage. However, most research on retention has focused on why teachers leave; this paper aims to fill the gap in our understanding of the positive reasons why long‐serving teachers stay in the profession, and how these reasons change over time. We define ‘long‐serving teachers’ as teachers who have taught for 10 years and more. We draw on a subset of data from an existing, broader study (Menzies et al., 2015 ) on why teachers enter and stay in the profession. In this paper, we draw on questionnaire findings from over 900 teachers with 0 to over 30 years’ teaching experience, and interviews with 14 long‐serving teachers, to understand why long‐serving teachers enter and, more importantly for our purposes, stay in teaching. We find that teachers’ motivational patterns are highly complex and influenced by school‐level and policy contexts. Nonetheless, two prominent retention factors are identified: teachers’ perceived professional mastery and altruistic reasons. Perceived professional mastery is particularly important due to its mutually reinforcing analytic relationships with other reasons. We find that teachers’ identification with intrinsic, altruistic and perceived professional mastery reasons become stronger with years of experience, but in some cases, paradoxically, so does their identification with extrinsic reasons. From our evidence, we suggest policy implications for enhancing the retention of long‐serving teachers.     

《雨中的猫》与《一小时的故事》之比较阅读——女性意识的觉醒与幻灭

本文通过对《雨中的猫》和《一小时的故事》进行对比阅读,研究两者不同的故事情节和相同的对意象和象征手法的运用,挖掘其共同的主题:女性意识的觉醒与幻灭。     

Conceptualizing an East Asian popular culture

Since the 1980s, popular cultural products have criss‐crossed the national borders of East Asian countries, enabling a discursive construction of an ‘East Asian Popular Culture’ as an object of analysis. The present essay is a preliminary attempt to provide some conceptual and analytic shape to this object, delineated by its three constitutive elements of production, distribution and consumption. Each East Asian location participates in different and unequal levels in each of these component processes. Production can either be located entirely in a single geographic location or, alternatively, each of the necessary constituent sub‐processes can be executed from different locations; preference for either arrangement tends to reflect the relative dominance of the production location in exporting its finished products. Consumption and thus consumers are geographically located within cultural spaces in which they are embedded. Meanings and viewing pleasures are generated within the local cultures of specific audience. Conceptually, among the several possible consumption positions, the one in which an audience watches an imported programme is most intriguing. In this viewing position, differences between the cultures of the location of consumption and that of the production location become most apparent. The audience member has to bring his or her own cultural context to bear on the content of the imported product and read it accordingly. In this sense, the cultural product may be said to have crossed a ‘cultural’ boundary, beyond the simple fact of its having been exported/imported into a different location as an economic activity. Such an audience position requires the consumer to transcend his or her grounded nationality to forge abstract identification with the foreign characters on screen, a foreignness that is, in turn, potentially reabsorbed into an idea of (East) ‘Asia’; a potential ‘East Asian identity’, emerging from consumption of popular cultural products, is thus imaginable.     

Self‐efficacy,school resources,job stressors and burnout among Spanish primary and secondary school teachers: a structural equation approach

This study examines the relationship between school resources, teacher self‐efficacy, potential multi‐level stressors and teacher burnout using structural equation modelling. The causal structure for primary and secondary school teachers was also examined. The sample was composed of 724 primary and secondary Spanish school teachers. The changes occurring in the Spanish teacher role in the last decade were taken into account to select job stressors. The results obtained revealed that external (school support resources) and internal (management classroom self‐efficacy and instructional self‐efficacy) coping resources have a negative and significant effect on job stressors. In turn, job stressors have a positive and significant effect on teachers’ burnout considering it as both a unidimensional and multidimensional construct. Furthermore, the hypothesised structure of burnout dimensions revealed that emotional exhaustion plays a key role in explaining Spanish school teachers’ burnout. Practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

The importance of being a ‘lady’: hyper‐femininity and heterosexuality in the private,single‐sex primary school

Drawing on recent ethnographic research in one single‐sex, private primary school, this paper will explore what it meant for the girls in this setting to embody the discourse of the ‘lady’. The paper will propose that classed and gendered discourses of respectability featured strongly in the girls’ lives, as they were expected to behave like ‘proper’ upper‐middle‐class ladies. However, the paper will also suggest that these discourses were being reworked through post‐feminist, neo‐liberal notions of modern girlhood, meaning that the girls also felt compelled to make themselves as heterofeminine ‘girly’ girls; as sassy, sexy and successful, as well as respectable and upper‐middle‐class(y) enough. By exploring the clash between these two sets of discourse, the paper will specifically seek to examine the lived embodiment of intersections of class, gender and sexuality and to explore the relevance of Judith Butler’s heterosexual matrix for these upper‐middle‐class girls.