The middle years learner

This guide offers a systematic overview of the philosophy, principles, and issues in middle schooling, including contributions from academics and school-based practitioners on intellectual and emotional development in early adolescence, pedagogy, curricula, and the assessment of middle years students.

Physical aspects

As teachers, we must know about the physical developmental processes our students are experiencing. These are reflected in behaviour, emotions and relationships. And for adolescents, who are trying hard to figure out how the world operates, the physical changes they experience have a potent impact on their world view. While the sequencing of much of our physical development is pretty well according to a grand template and rolls out in much the same way from one person to the next, not everything occurs in a set way (Richter, 2006). Some aspects of our physical development cause other things to occur and are tied together. For example, hormonal changes during puberty are tied to the development of secondary sexual characteristics. However, there is individual variation at multiple levels, and we will discuss these. To complicate things, adolescents’ feelings and ideas about themselves and the ways in which they interact with the world as they grow and change are coloured by our societies’ multifaceted sets of ideals, standards and expectations for physical development. Many other things also impact on our conceptions of self and these will be discussed when we turn our attention to the development of identity through adolescence. In this chapter we will present some basic information about the types of physical changes to expect during adolescence, and consider some challenges that confront adolescents during this time of development.

A FR.E.S.H idea

This paper explores the possibility of including human factoring in a business process model. The importance of doing so is twofold: (1) The organization becomes transparent in its processes as all participants (human, activities and events) are identifiable. (2) Including human factoring allows organizations to hire accordingly to the process needs. (3) Human factoring alleviates the current work related stress that is being encountered. (4) Enable quicker transition for newer employees into job scope. This was made possible by including a human behaviour layer in between pools within a process to depict human behaviour and feeling. Future work includes having a human thought symbol and a human interaction symbol included into the Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN).

The effect of traffic lane widths on the safety of cyclists in urban areas

This literature review examines the relationship between traffic lane widths on the safety of road users. It focuses on the impacts of lane widths on motor vehicle behaviour and cyclists’ safety. The review commenced with a search of available databases. Peer reviewed articles and road authority reports were reviewed, as well as current engineering guidelines. Research shows that traffic lane width influences drivers’ perceived difficulty of the task, risk perception and possibly speed choices. Total roadway width, and the presence of onroad cycling facilities, influence cyclists’ positioning on the road. Lateral displacement between bicycles and vehicles is smallest when a marked bicycle facility is present. Reduced motor vehicle speeds can significantly improve the safety of vulnerable road users, particularly pedestrians and cyclists. It has been shown that if road lane widths on urban roads were reduced, through various mechanisms, it could result in a safety environment for all road users.

Exploring the theoretical underpinnings of driving whilst influenced by illicit substances

An increasing number of studies are highlighting the alarming proportion of motorists that drive after having consumed illicit drugs. However presently, little attention has focused on the factors that may facilitate drug driving from a criminogenic paradigm. This study evaluated the contribution of deterrence, defiance, and deviance theories on intentions to drug drive to determine factors that might facilitate or reduce this behaviour. A total of 922 individuals completed a questionnaire that assessed frequency of drug use and a variety of perceptions on deterrence, defiance, and deviance constructs. The analysis showed that the defiance constructs (i.e., experiencing feelings of shame and believing in the legitimacy of sanctioning authority) and the deviance constructs (i.e., moral attachment to the norm and having a criminal conviction) were predictive of drug driving intentions. The facets of deterrence theory were not found to be significant predictors. Ultimately, this study illustrates that a range of behavioural and perceptual factors have the capacity to influence decisions to drug drive. As a result, there appears the need to extend the focus of research endeavours beyond legal sanctions to examine other factors that may be utilised to both understand the aetiology of drug driving as well as increase the possibility of compliance with the corresponding legislation.

The parents at playgroup research report : engaging families in supported playgroups

The past decade has seen increasing numbers of government programs funded to support vulnerable families with young children. Supported playgroups are one important strategy in Australia’s current family policies that are provided in all states and territories (ARTD, 2008). National policies have increasingly invested in family support programs, such as supported playgroups. Despite known challenges in engaging vulnerable families in support programs, little is known about the capacity of supported playgroups to effectively engage families to achieve desired outcomes. This project explores family patterns of attendance in supported playgroups and examines the extent to which parental characteristics and experiences of the playgroup explain variations in engagement. The findings can inform the delivery of other family support programs...

Exploring perceived legitimacy of traffic law enforcement

The purpose of traffic law enforcement is to encourage compliant driver behaviour. That is, the threat of an undesirable sanction encourages drivers to comply with traffic laws. However, not all traffic law violations are considered equal. For example, while drink driving is generally seen as socially unacceptable, behaviours such as speeding are arguably less so, and speed enforcement is often portrayed in the popular media as a means of “revenue raising”. The perceived legitimacy of traffic law enforcement has received limited research attention to date. Perceived legitimacy of traffic law enforcement may influence (or be influenced by) attitudes toward illegal driving behaviours, and both of these factors are likely to influence on-road driving behaviour. This study aimed to explore attitudes toward a number of illegal driving behaviours and traffic law enforcement approaches that typically target these behaviours using self-reported data from a large sample of drivers. The results of this research can be used to inform further research in this area, as well as the content of public education and advertising campaigns designed to influence attitudes toward illegal driving behaviours and perceived legitimacy of traffic law enforcement.

The 'variety effect' is anticipated in meal planning

The 'variety effect' describes the greater consumption that is observed when multiple foods with different sensory characteristics are presented either simultaneously or sequentially. Variety increases the amount of food consumed in test of ad libitum intake. However, outside the laboratory, meals are often planned in advance and then consumed in their entirety. We sought to explore the extent to which the variety effect is anticipated in this pre-meal planning. Participants were shown two food images, each representing a first or a second course of a hypothetical meal. The two courses were either, i) exactly the same food, ii) different foods from the same sensory category (sweet or savoury) or, iii) different foods from a different sensory category. In Study 1 (N = 30) these courses comprised typical ‘main meal’ foods and in Study 2 (N = 30) they comprised snack foods. For each pair of images, participants rated their expected liking of the second course and selected ideal portion sizes, both for the second course and the first and second course, combined. In both studies, as the difference between the courses (from (i) same to (ii) similar to (iii) different) increased, the second course was selected in a larger portion and it was rated as more pleasant. To our knowledge, these are the first studies to show that the variety effect is evident in the energy content of self-selected meals. This work shows that effects of variety are learned and anticipated. This extends our characterisation beyond a passive process that develops towards the end of a meal.

Effects of schedule pressure on construction performance

Accelerating a project can be rewarding. The consequences, however, can be troublesome if productivity and quality are sacrificed for the sake of remaining ahead of schedule, such that the actual schedule benefits are often barely worth the effort. The tradeoffs and paths of schedule pressure and its causes and effects are often overlooked when schedule decisions are being made. This paper analyses the effects that schedule pressure has on construction performance, and focuses on tradeoffs in scheduling. A research framework has been developed using a causal diagram to illustrate the cause-and-effect analysis of schedule pressure. An empirical investigation has been performed by using survey data collected from 102 construction practitioners working in 38 construction sites in Singapore. The results of this survey data analysis indicate that advantages of increasing the pace of work—by working under schedule pressure—can be offset by losses in productivity and quality. The negative effects of schedule pressure arise mainly by working out of sequence, generating work defects, cutting corners, and losing the motivation to work. The adverse effects of schedule pressure can be minimized by scheduling construction activities realistically and planning them proactively, motivating workers, and by establishing an effective project coordination and communication mechanism.

Taming the terabytes : a human-centered approach to surviving the information deluge

A fear of imminent information overload predates the World Wide Web by decades. Yet, that fear has never abated. Worse, as the World Wide Web today takes the lion’s share of the information we deal with, both in amount and in time spent gathering it, the situation has only become more precarious. This chapter analyses new issues in information overload that have emerged with the advent of the Web, which emphasizes written communication, defined in this context as the exchange of ideas expressed informally, often casually, as in verbal language. The chapter focuses on three ways to mitigate these issues. First, it helps us, the users, to be more specific in what we ask for. Second, it helps us amend our request when we don't get what we think we asked for. And third, since only we, the human users, can judge whether the information received is what we want, it makes retrieval techniques more effective by basing them on how humans structure information. This chapter reports on extensive experiments we conducted in all three areas. First, to let users be more specific in describing an information need, they were allowed to express themselves in an unrestricted conversational style. This way, they could convey their information need as if they were talking to a fellow human instead of using the two or three words typically supplied to a search engine. Second, users were provided with effective ways to zoom in on the desired information once potentially relevant information became available. Third, a variety of experiments focused on the search engine itself as the mediator between request and delivery of information. All examples that are explained in detail have actually been implemented. The results of our experiments demonstrate how a human-centered approach can reduce information overload in an area that grows in importance with each day that passes. By actually having built these applications, I present an operational, not just aspirational approach.

Sleepiness : how a biological drive can influence other risky road user behaviours

The Safe System approach to road safety utilises a holistic view of the interactions among vehicles, roads and road users. Yet, the contribution of each of these factors to crashes is vastly different. The role of road users is widely acknowledged as an overwhelming contributor to road crashes. Substantial gains have been made with improvements to vehicle and roads over a number of years. However, improvements of the road user’s behaviour has been (in some cases) less substantial. A road user behaviour that is relatively unregulated is driver sleepiness, which is part of the ‘fatal five’ of risky road user behaviours. The effect of sleepiness is ubiquitous – sleepiness is a state that most, if not all drivers on our roads has experienced, and is habitually exposed to. The quality and quantity of daily sleep is integral to our level of neurobehavioural performance during wakefulness and as such can have a compounding effect on a number of other risky driving behaviours. This paper will discuss the potential influence of sleepiness as an interceding factor for a number of risky driving behaviours. Little effort has been given to increasing awareness of the deleterious and wide ranging effects that sleepiness has on road safety. Given the wide ranging influence of sleepiness, improvements of ‘sleep health’ as a protective factor at the community or individual level could lead to significant reductions in road trauma and increases of general well being. A discussion of potential actions to reduce sleepiness is required if reductions of road trauma are to continue.