Students' conceptions of sport and sport education

This article explores a class of Grade 5 (age 9 and 10) children’s conceptions of sport during a season of sport education at Forest Gate Primary School. The purpose, following Kirk and Kinchin (this issue), is to examine the extent to which the potential transfer of learning between school and sport as a community of practice may be possible through sport education in school physical education. With reference to student interviews and drawings we report and discuss children’s conceptions of sport, their experiences of sport outside of the school, and their emerging conceptions of sport education in light of these prior understanding and experiences. We conclude that there was an evident level of compatibility between students’ experiences of sport education and their conceptions of sport more broadly.

Attentional bias toward fear-related stimuli: An investigation with nonselected children and adults and children with anxiety disorders

Research investigating anxiety-related attentional bias for emotional information in anxious and nonanxious children has been equivocal with regard to whether a bias for fear-related stimuli is unique to anxious children or is common to children in general. Moreover, recent cognitive theories have proposed that an attentional bias for objectively threatening stimuli may be common to all individuals, with this effect enhanced in anxious individuals. The current study investigated whether an attentional bias toward fear-related pictures could be found in nonselected children (n = 105) and adults (n = 47) and whether a sample of clinically anxious children (n = 23) displayed an attentional bias for fear-related pictures over and above that expected for nonselected children. Participants completed a dot-probe task that employed fear-related, neutral, and pleasant pictures. As expected, both adults and children showed a stronger attentional bias toward fear-related pictures than toward pleasant pictures. Consistent with some findings in the childhood domain, the extent of the attentional bias toward fear-related pictures did not differ significantly between anxious children and nonselected children. However, compared with nonselected children, anxious children showed a stronger attentional bias overall toward affective picture stimuli. (C) 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Male teachers, homophobia, misogyny and teacher education

Placing issues of homophobia and anti-lesbianism on the agenda of teacher education programmes often meets with resistance from some students, and others. Such resistance is indicative of broader attempts to maintain the straight face of schooling. However, one way in which it is possible to place such issues on the agenda in schooling and teacher education is to demonstrate how these discourses impact upon all students and teachers. A current opening for raising such matters within teacher education programmes is the problematisation of the calls for more male teachers, calls that are becoming pervasive in many Western education systems. Within the drives to attract more male teachers to the profession there is usually a silence relating to the ways in which homophobia and its counterpart, misogyny, work to construct normalised notions of teachers. This paper examines the ways in which these silences perpetuate existing gender regimes in schools to the detriment of female teachers, girls, and marginalised male teachers and boys. It then suggests that teacher education programmes use this topic to demonstrate the impact of homophobia and misogyny on all involved in education.

Why children and adults sometimes (but not always) compute implicatures

Noveck (2001) argued that children even as old as 11 do not reliably endorse a scalar interpretation of weak scalar terms (some, might, or) (cf. Braine & Rumain, 1981; Smith, 1980). More recent studies suggest, however, that children's apparent failures may depend on the experimental demands (Papafragou & Musolino, 2003). Although previous studies involved children of different ages as well as different tasks, and are thus not directly comparable, nevertheless a common finding is that children do not seem to derive scalar implicatures to the same extent as adults do. The present article describes a series of experiments that were conducted with Italian speaking subjects (children and adults), focusing mainly on the scalar term some. Our goal was to carefully examine the specific conditions that allow the computation of implicatures by children. In so doing, we demonstrate that children as young as 7 (the youngest age of the children who participated in the Noveck study) are able to compute implicatures in experimental conditions that properly satisfy certain contextual prerequisites for deriving such implicatures. We also present further results that have general consequences for the research methodology employed in this area of study. Our research indicates that certain tasks mask children's understanding of scalar terms, not only including the task used by Noveck, but also tasks that employ certain explicit instructions, such as the training task used by Papafragou & Musolino (2003). Our findings indicate further that, although explicit training apparently improves children's ability to draw implicatures, children nevertheless fail to achieve adult levels of performance for most scalar terms even in such tasks, and that the effects of instruction do not last beyond the training session itself for most children. Another relevant finding of the present study is that some of the manipulations of the experimental context have an effect on all subjects, whereas others produce effects on just a subset of children. Individual differences of this kind may have been concealed in previous research because performance by individual subjects was not reported. Our general conclusions are that even young children (7-year olds) have the prerequisites for deriving scalar implicatures, although these abilities are revealed only when the conversational background is natural.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder across developmental trajectory: Cognitive processing of threat in children, adolescents and adults

Background. While the cognitive theory of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is one of the most widely accepted accounts of the maintenance of the disorder in adults, no study to date has systematically evaluated the theory across children, adolescence and adults with OCD. Method. This paper investigated developmental differences in the cognitive processing of threat in a sample of children, adolescents and adults with OCD. Using an idiographic assessment approach, as well as self-report questionnaires, this study evaluated cognitive appraisals of responsibility, probability, severity, thought-action fusion (TAF), thought-suppression, self-doubt and cognitive control. It was hypothesised that there would be age related differences in reported responsibility for harm, probability of harm, severity of harm, thought suppression, TAR self-doubt and cognitive control. Results. Results of this study demonstrated that children with OCD reported experiencing fewer intrusive thoughts, which were less distressing and less uncontrollable than those experienced by adolescents and adults with OCD. Furthermore, responsibility attitudes, probability biases and thought suppression strategies were higher in adolescents and adults with OCD. Cognitive processes of TAF, perceived severity of harm, self-doubt and cognitive control were found to be comparable across age groups. Conclusions. These results suggest that the current cognitive theory of OCD needs to address developmental differences in the cognitive processing of threat. Furthermore, for a developmentally sensitive theory of OCD, further investigation is warranted into other possible age related maintenance factors. Implications of this investigation and directions for future research are discussed.

Testing the protracted lexical restructuring hypothesis: The effects of position and acoustic-phonetic clarity on sensitivity to mispronunciations in children and adults

Although developmental increases in the size of the position effect within a mispronunciation detection task have been interpreted as consistent with a view of the lexical restructuring process as protracted, the position effect itself might not be reliable. The current research examined the effects of position and clarity of acoustic-phonetic information on sensitivity to mispronounced onsets in 5- and 6-year-olds and adults. Both children and adults showed a position effect only when mispronunciations also differed in the amount of relevant acoustic-phonetic information. Adults' sensitivity to mispronounced second-syllable onsets also reflected the availability of acoustic-phonetic information. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to the lexical restructuring hypothesis. (c) 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Belief in dealing with depression alone: Results from community surveys of adolescents and adults

Background: Community surveys have found that some people believe that it is better to deal with depression alone rather than seek help. However, there has been little research into the characteristics of this group. Methods: Data were drawn from three Australian surveys: (1) a national survey of 1001 adults aged 18+ years; (2) a school survey of 552 students aged 14-16 years from two regions; (3) a survey of 577 young people aged 12-17 years from the Melbourne region. In all three surveys, participants who believed it would be helpful to deal with depression alone were contrasted with those who believed it would be harmful in terms of sociodemographic characteristics, recognition of depression in a vignette, contact with people who experienced depression, beliefs about treatments, beliefs about using substances, beliefs about long-term outcomes, and beliefs about causes. Results: In both adolescents and adults, belief in dealing with depression alone was associated with male gender, less favourable views about mental health professionals, more favourable views about using substances to deal with depression, and a more positive expectation about the outcome if treatment is not sought. Adolescents believing in dealing with depression alone had more favourable views about some potential helpers, such as church workers and pharmacists. In adults, but not adolescents, there was an association with the belief that depression is caused by personal weakness. Limitations: The surveys did not directly ask about reasons for believing that dealing with depression alone would be helpful and did not assess actual help-seeking. Conclusions: Factors encouraging dealing with depression alone are a belief that it is a self-limiting disorder, that substances are an effective way to deal with it and, in adults, that depression is due to personal weakness. Consistent with previous research, males are an important target group for encouraging seeking help to deal with depression. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Promoting Learning for Sustainability: Principals' Perceptions of the Role of Outdoor and Environmental Education Centres

Outdoor and Environmental Education Centres provide programs that are designed to address a range of environmental education aims, and contribute broadly to student learning for sustainability. This paper examines the roles such Centres can play, and how they might contribute to the Australian Government’s initiative in relation to sustainable schools. Interviews with the principals of 23 such Centres in Queensland revealed three roles or models under which they operate: the destination model; the expert/advisor model; and the partnership model. Principals’ understandings of these roles are discussed and the factors that support or hinder their implementation are identified. It is concluded that while the provision of programs in the environment is still a vital role of outdoor and environmental education centres, these can also be seen as a point of entry to long-term partnerships with whole school communities.

Bridging the divide between theory and practice. Experiential learning approaches for tourism and hospitality education

Experiential learning approaches such as role-play have been found to be valuable methods of bridging the divide between academic knowledge and practical skills, a problem often cited in tourism and hospitality management education. Such approaches have been found to contribute towards deeper learning by enhancing students' interest, motivation, participation, knowledge and skill development. This paper reports on the implementation of an experiential learning approach designed to encourage and facilitate deeper learning approaches, with the contributing aims of providing students with a more interesting learning experience and a broader set of skills for future employment.