Learning in, through and about movement - Teaching research methods and research skills, engaging the imagination to develop creative and reflective thinkers.

This paper has evolved out of a much larger doctoral thesis. It explores firstly the value of placing the learner at the heart of their own learning. Secondly, it examines as a means of trying to do something different when exploring innovative practice, the concept of learning in, through and about movement, in order to teach undergraduates about research methods, research skills and notions of fair testing, and repeatability in a practical environment outside the traditional classroom. The idea explored is that through movement, students would creatively find solutions to the open-ended problems that were set, and then reflect on their own and others learning. Key Words: Movement, Learner Voice, Research Methods, Research Skill

Sinking, Swimming, or just treading water. : The Olympic Legacy for London 2012- 4 Years on. Has it made a difference? Pupil Voice and an an analysis of Swimming Provision.

Barry Costas, 'Sinking, Swimming or just Treading Water. The Olympic Legacy from London 2012 – 4 Years On. Has it made any difference? Pupil Voice and an Analysis of Swimming Provision', Athens Journal of Sports, Vol. 4(1): 35-52, March 2017. This is an Open Access article, available online at: https://www.athensjournals.gr/ajspo/past/v4i1.In what has become an issue of great concern to teachers (and parents) over the last 25 years, many children have been identified as not being able to swim at all, yet the National Curriculum in England states that all children must be able to swim at least 25metres by the age of 10 and 11years old.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Outdoor Adventurous Activities: The Learner's Voice and Learning in, through and about movement

This paper which has evolved out of a much larger doctoral thesis, explores the value of placing the learner at the heart of their own learning, whilst using the notion of learning in through and about movement as a pedagogical approach. This approach is examined in the context of Outdoor Adventurous Activities (OAA) at a residential camping centre, located on the Essex, Greater London borders in South East England in the United Kingdom. One hundred and sixty children, over a four-year period to date, have taken part in the venture and their views and thoughts are used to illuminate the discussion surrounding the value of learning in through and about movement in the outdoors.Peer reviewe

Making a Difference? The Voices of Children aged 10 and 11 - Years old: : London 2012 and the Olympic Legacy

Barry Costas, 'Making a difference? The Voices of Children aged 10 and 11 years old: London 2012 and the Olympic Legacy'. Paper presented at the 7th International Conference on Sport and Society: Leisure, Play, Action: Ecological Awareness in Sports, University of Hawaii, 2-3 June 2016, Honolulu, Hawaii.This paper has evolved out of a much larger doctoral thesis which looked specifically at the voices of year 6 children in the Olympic borough of Hackney in east London. Between the years of 2007 and 2010 the views and thoughts of 236 children from east London were analysed in relation to the Olympic legacy. This paper forms part of a longitudinal study which builds on the earlier doctoral research and the data analysed here emanates from an additional purposive sample of 40 children from 2015. The data collected contributes to an existing body of knowledge where the vast majority of the work on pupil voice in the UK has been concerned with the core subjects (Maths and English) and with secondary schooling. The re-emergence of pupil voice as a pedagogical approach to inform policy and curriculum design is encouraged throughout. In addition to giving young learners a voice this paper also adds something new to the debate surrounding Olympic legacy, as to date their inclusion has been conspicuously absent from such discussions. The data collected examines whether the optimism and positivity initially demonstrated by Hackney’s children in 2007 and 2010 has resulted in the legacy making a difference to the lives of the children or their families in 2015?Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Creative dance as experiential learning in state primary education: The Potential Benefits for Children

© The Author(s) 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).Background: Taking the UK National Curriculum as an example, creative dance is part of physical education classified as a foundation subject rather than an important core subject. Purpose: The article’s primary aim is to examine a range of literature exploring any potential benefits of the role of creative dance for children aged 3-11 years in mainstream state education to evaluate whether creative dance can be categorised as experiential learning. Methodology/Approach: The search included key words in several data bases. The analysis arrived at some potential benefits which can be framed within experiential learning. Findings /Conclusion: This section identifies some benefits of creative dance in socio-emotional, arts-based, transferable, embodied, physical, and cognitive learning. It concludes that conceptualising creative dance as experiential learning could support the consideration of it filling a more central role in the curriculum. Implications: This article breaks new ground in experiential learning re-contextualising the role of creative dance in children’s learning through reviewing some related literature. There is a claim to be made for creative dance to play a more central role in the curriculum when the benefits and its process are framed as experiential learning.Peer reviewe

The voices of year 6 children :their views on physical education and the implications for policy practice and research

Taking a constructivist-interpretivist stance, this mixed methods case study gives a\ud voice to 236 children from east London between 2007 and 2010 through the use of\ud questionnaires and interviews. The aim was to explore what the children thought\ud about Physical Education, with a view to illuminating and informing current policy,\ud practice and research in relation to the aims which under-pin the national curriculum.\ud The children's voices, conspicuously absent from discussions about their physical\ud education, over the last twenty years, give a view of the curriculum from the\ud recipient's perspective. Through the vibrancy of their voices, the current status quo in\ud primary PE is examined, and ways forward are offered as recurring themes throughout\ud the thesis. In addition to valuing children's voices this thesis shows that through\ud democratising the discussion, the children were more than just 'empty vessels', and\ud were able to offer informed views. The children largely enjoyed Physical Education,\ud valued their health and had ideas on curriculum content, timetabling, fund raising, and\ud asked for a greater range of physical activities to be made available them

The GENIE Neutrino Monte Carlo Generator: Physics and User Manual

GENIE is a suite of products for the experimental neutrino physics community. This suite includes i) a modern software framework for implementing neutrino event generators, a state-of-the-art comprehensive physics model and tools to support neutrino interaction simulation for realistic experimental setups (the Generator product), ii) extensive archives of neutrino, charged-lepton and hadron scattering data and software to produce a comprehensive set of data/MC comparisons (the Comparisons product), and iii) a generator tuning framework and fitting applications (the Tuning product). This book provides the definite guide for the GENIE Generator: It presents the software architecture and a detailed description of its physics model and official tunes. In addition, it provides a rich set of data/MC comparisons that characterise the physics performance of GENIE. Detailed step-by-step instructions on how to install and configure the Generator, run its applications and analyze its outputs are also included

28 GBd PAM-8 transmission over a 100 nm range using an InP-Si3N4 based integrated dual tunable laser module

This paper describes the detailed characterization of a novel InP-Si3N4 dual laser module with results revealing relative intensity noise (RIN) as low as -165 dB/Hz and wide wavelength tunability (100 nm). The hybrid coupled laser is deployed in an unamplified 28 GBd 8 level pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) short-reach data center (DC) transmission system. System performance, which is experimentally evaluated in terms of received signal bit error ratio (BER), demonstrates the ability of the proposed laser module to support PAM-8 transmission across a 100 nm tuning range with less than 1 dB variance in receiver sensitivity over the operating wavelength range. Comparative performance studies not only indicate that the proposed source can outperform a commercial external cavity laser (ECL) in an intensity modulation/direct detection (IM/DD) link but also highlight the critical impact of RIN in the design of advanced modulation short-reach systems.Science Foundation Ireland (12/RC/2276_P2, 13/RC/2077_P2, 16/RI/3698, 18/EPSRC/3591, 18/SIRG/5579)

Submarine Navigation using Neutrinos

Neutrinos are among the most abundant particles in the universe, nearly massless, travel at speeds near the speed of light and are electrically neutral. Neutrinos can be generated through man-made sources like particle accelerators or by natural sources like the sun. Neutrinos only interact via the weak force and gravity. Since gravitational interaction is extremely weak and the weak force has a very short range, neutrinos can travel long distances unimpeded through matter, reaching places inaccessible to GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) signals such as underwater locations. The main objective of this work is to sketch an early high-level design of a Neutrino PNT (Position, Navigation and Timing) mission and analyze its feasibility for submarine navigation since there is a need to improve current navigation technologies for submarines. The high-level preliminary concept proposes Cyclotrons or Linear Accelerators based on the physical process Pion Decay at Rest as neutrino sources. For detecting such isotropic neutrino fluxes user equipment must be composed of a high-performance clock synchronized with the system, a detector and possibly additional sensors such as IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit). A feasibility analysis of the recommended system option is performed based on simulations for determining the neutrino detection rate and on a PNT tool to estimate the PNT performances. Although the submarine navigation application is in the limit of being feasible with current technology, it could be realized with some important but reasonable progress in source and neutrino detector technology.Comment: 10pages, 12 figure

Experimental demonstration of 480 Gbit/s coherent transmission using a nanosecond switching tuneable laser

Fast-switching tuneable lasers with a wide wavelength coverage and with noise and linewidth levels suitable for high-order modulation formats can facilitate the implementation of highly flexible and reconfigurable optical metro, access and inter/intra data center networks. In this work, we show the characterization of a tuneable laser capable of covering a wavelength range of 35 nm in the C-band with nanosecond switching time and low linewidth and use it to demonstrate 480 Gbit/s 16QAM transmission over 25 km of single-mode fiber for a wavelength range of 19 nm