Beyond the competitive aspect of the IOI : it is all about caring for talent

The IOI is not just an informatics competition, but a means to care for talent in informatics. Caring for talent involves a broad range of issues, including identification of talent and education adjusted to that talent. There is (almost?) no generally accessible literature focusing on informatics talent. To show what such literature could offer, we review several books that address talent in mathematics. These books also contain much that is directly applicable to talent in informatics

Evaluation of ‘imove’, Yorkshire and Humber’s Legacy Trust UK Regional Programme for the London 2012 Olympic & Paralympic Games [Final Report]

imove was Yorkshire & Humberside’s Legacy Trust UK programme for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. By becoming part of the Cultural Olympiad it aimed to leave a lasting legacy from the Games at grassroots and institutional levels across the region. It built engagement through a dynamic and imaginative arts programme, which integrated sport and physical activities in a celebration of human movement. Formally launched to the public in 2010, imove’s programme included performing and visual arts, creative movement, sport and outdoor activity. The programme involved a range of partners in delivering both small[ and large[scale projects in response to the imove mission, which was to: • Explore and transform people’s relationship to their own bodies through movement. • Shift the relationship between society and the moving body. These were ambitious aims and the London 2012 Olympics offered an opportunity to realise them. Between 2009 and September 2012, imove worked in partnership with over 150 artists and cultural organisations. From a total core funding of £2.65m1, imove generated some £1.5m in matched funds, involved over 25,700 people as participants, over 2 million as live audiences and over 4 million as online audiences

The (Sport) Performer-Environment System as the Base Unit in Explanations of Expert Performance

In this article we propose that expertise can be best explained as the interaction of the varying constraints/characteristics of the environment and of the individual, framed by the ecological dynamics approach. This rationale of expert performance is contrasted with the typical way that science has approached the study of expertise: i.e., by looking for constraints, located in the individual, either nurture- or nature-based, and related to high performance levels. In ecological dynamics, the base unit of analysis for understanding expertise is the individual-environment system. Illustrating this perspective with Bob Beamon’s 8.90 m long jump, whose 1968 world-record jump was substantially longer than any previous, we argue that expert performers should not be seen as an agglomeration of genes, traits, or mental dispositions and capacities. Rather, expert performance can be captured by the dynamically-varying, functional relationship between the constraints imposed by the environment and the resources of each individual performer

Lilly Endowment, Inc. - 2008 Annual Report

Contains board chair and president's message; program information; education and religion grantee profiles; grants list; grant guidelines; financial statements; and lists of board members and officers

Newsbites

• Introduction• More than participate in the first 250 students intra-AKU Sports Olympiad• Students’ sports activities continued consistently• Student Events• Introducing the new Student Psychiatrist• Celebrating World Mental Health Day• Photography competition 500 student receives over submissions • Specialised workshops arranged for Residents under the Post Graduate Medical Education (PGME) department• AKU students participate in and win at The National Entrepreneurship Competition 2021• Outdoor screenings of the ICC T20 Men’s World Cup• IED students welcome new cohort, say goodbye to graduands in a ‘Get Together’ • Celebrating International Teachers Day at IED• Work and Study Programmehttps://ecommons.aku.edu/pakistan_sas_newsbites/1000/thumbnail.jp

Globalizing Boxing

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Boxing is a traditional sport in many ways, characterized by continuities in the form of practices and regulations and heavy with legends and heroes reflecting its traditional/historical values. Associations with class, hegemonic masculinity and racialized inclusions/exclusions, however, sit alongside developments such as women's boxing and involvement in Mixed Martial Arts. This book will be the first to use boxing as a vehicle for exploring social, cultural and political change in a global context. It will consider to what degree and in what ways boxing reflects social transformations, and whether and how it contributes to those transformations. In exploring the relationship it will provide new ways of thinking critically about the everyday

A Notable Endeavor: The Nature and Significance of Olympic Education in the Pre-and Post-Period of Beijing\u27s 2008 Olympic Games

This study investigated the nature and significance of Beijing’s Olympic education initiative from its inception seven years before the 2008 Olympic Games to 2015, seven years after the conclusion of the great festival. As exploratory research, this study is the first to cover this academic topic. In 2001, commensurate with Beijing’s award of the 2008 Olympic Summer Games, a non-governmental “grassroots team” initiated an Olympic Education and Olympic Spirit initiative in a small sample of Beijing’s primary and secondary schools. The team was led by a Canadian-trained professor, Dongguang Pei. In 2005, impressed with Pei’s and his team’s initiative, and following the International Olympic Committee’s guidelines for host cities mounting Olympic Education initiatives, the Chinese government endorsed and supported an Olympic Education Legacy initiative called the Olympic Action Plan. The Chinese government’s support of disseminating Olympic knowledge to 400 million Chinese youth nationwide presented Chinese schools, the IOC, and the world with a model for a comprehensive, vigorous, and what some have judged a highly successful public and private school Olympic education program. Compared with the unique Olympic education program presented throughout the seven year period before and during the 2008 Olympic Games, in the seven years following (2008-2015), the carefully and energetically-built program of Olympic Education deteriorated badly. The Chinese government abandoned its leadership and enterprise in sustaining Olympic Education. Based on the investigation sample, “Olympic education activities” in the program’s “model schools” deteriorated abruptly after 2008. Funding, Olympic Education teacher training, and international school partner associations ceased. On-site observation and interviews resulted in the finding that Yangfangdian Central Primary school, the pioneer school of Beijing’s Olympic education, remained the only model school which retained Olympic education activity after the iii 2008 Games. During the post-Games period, Beijing’s Olympic education was replaced by new government approaches to education. This study needs to be understood within China’s unique social, educational and political climate. On the one hand, a centralized political system ensured that Olympic education be implemented under extremely powerful organizational orders. These orders guaranteed not only financial and human resources support, but also the climate for Olympic education to expand extremely quickly through multiple administrative levels. On the other hand, and correspondingly, the disappearance of Olympic education after the Games was, most certainly, due chiefly to the government’s withdrawal of initiative and support. It is a justifiable conclusion that the Chinese centralized system, though enabling the program at its outset and early development periods, in the end rapidly constrained the entire initiative

Creative Potential in Science: Conceptual and Measurement Issues

This paper examines the concept of creative potential as it applies in science. First, conceptual issues concerning the definition of creative potential are explored, highlighting that creative potential is a moving target, and measures of creative potential are estimates of future behavior. Then three main ways to detect creative potential are examined. First, a person's previous accomplishments in science can be analyzed. These accomplishments can be regarded as predictors of future creative performance. Second, science talent competitions can help to detect creative potential in children and adolescents. There are particular types of talent competitions differing from each other by the extent of focusing on individual (e.g., Science Fairs) or collaborative (e.g., Science Olympiads) work. Third, to measure an individual's creative potential, psychometric tools such as Creative Scientific Ability Test (C-SAT), Test of Scientific Creativity Animations for Children (TOSCAC), and Evaluation of Potential Creativity (EPoC) can be used. These tools are conceptualized in terms of two scientific activities: hypothesis generation and hypothesis testing. In a final section, these three types of measures are placed in a novel time-space framework as applied to creative potential. Suggestions for future work are also discussed

The Secondary School Science Olympiad Experience: Coaches Opinions and Attitudes Regarding Participation and Content Acquisition

Science Olympiad (SO) is a team-oriented STEM competition that offers students the opportunity to participate in a wide range of STEM topics attracting students with varying STEM interests. This hermeneutic phenomenological cross-case study explored the experiences of 12 SO coaches with experience coaching middle school and/or high school teams. Educational settings for the teams included public schools, private schools, and homeschool. Coaches were asked to fill out an open-ended questionnaire about their SO coaching experiences. Based upon questionnaire responses, coaches were invited to participate in follow-up interviews. The experiences related by the coaches in the interviews were written as case studies and a cross-case analysis was conducted to reveal patterns and themes across the coaches’ experiences. Themes explored encompassed coaches’ views on student benefits as well as personal benefits to the coaches; challenges coaches perceived students overcoming as well as challenges experiences for the coaches; and the amount and type of support coaches have discovered they and their students need in order to have a positive SO experience. Coaches indicated that they found coaching an SO team to be enjoyable or rewarding because they saw students having fun while learning. Some coaches also stated that SO allowed students to gain knowledge (literacy) not available to them in the classroom setting and they viewed this knowledge to be especially valuable for the student pursuing a STEM career in the future. Key findings of coaches’ perspectives included that student participation in SO confirmed STEM career choice, assisted in STEM skills acquisition, and encouraged several areas of personal development. Some coaches reported their own personal knowledge and skill growth as benefits to coaching. Some key findings support other related research. The perspective that competition offers opportunities for personal growth coincides with studies conducted by Wirt (2011) and Schmidt (2014). Examples given by coaches of STEM knowledge acquisition as a part of preparation for competition match with some literacy goals stated in the NGSS (NRC, 2013) document and the general literacy idea promoted by UNESCO (2017) that literacy exists along a continuum where individuals find the level of competency needed for their personal interests and career goals. Coaches’ examples of students enjoying and benefiting from competition support the findings of studies by Campbell and Walberg (2011), Wirt (2011), Ozturk & Debelak (2008), Abernathy and Vineyard (2001), and Verhoeff (1997). Many coaches discussed the importance of mentors for student success in SO competition. The descriptions of the guidance given by the mentors’ support statements by Ozturk and Debelak (2008) claiming that an adult guide is necessary for students to glean the maximum benefits from participation in competitions. Most of the coaches in this study were eager to share their experiences and offer advice to anyone interested in coaching an SO team. Included in the findings of this study are recommended strategies for acquiring funding, recruitment of team members, team structuring, team building, and promoting team recognition and publicity for achievements