RePresent Strathclyde : Decolonising the Humanities & Social Science Curriculum

In Summer 2022, Dr Lizann Bonnar and the HaSS Faculty GEDI committee were awarded funding from the Resilient Learning Communities Fund for 2 undergraduate interns on decolonising the curriculum within HaSS. The interns are: Daniyaal Ali (School of Social Work & Social Policy) and Sara St George (School of Humanities), supervised by Dr Navan Govender (lecturer in applied language and literacy studies, School of Education). The interns developed two main objectives: 1) to produce a report or resource that would serve as a productive starting point for HaSS staff and students as they work toward decolonising their own practices and curriculums, and 2) to begin developing a student body survey that would enable the faculty to gain insight into HaSS students’ perspectives on decolonising the curriculum. Attached is the resource that the interns produced. We hope this will provide a springboard for staff and student learning and action across the faculty

An active play intervention to improve physical activity and fundamental movement skills in children of low socio-economic status:Feasibility cluster randomised controlled trial

Introduction: Active play is a novel approach to addressing low physical activity levels and fundamental movement skills (FMS) in childhood and new interventions must be developed and evaluated. Aim: This study aimed to determine the feasibility of a 10-week school-based 'active play' intervention, and present preliminary findings on four outcomes: physical activity levels, FMS, inhibition, and maths fluency. Methods: This was a feasibility cluster RCT in which eight schools (one primary three class per school) were paired and randomly allocated to either the 10-week intervention ( n  = 4) or waiting-list control ( n  = 4). The active play intervention consisted of a 1-h outdoor physical activity session per week, incorporating 30 min of facilitated games and 30 min of free play. Feasibility measures were gathered using appropriate methods and physical activity was measured using an ActiGraph GT3X accelerometer, FMS were assessed using the Test of Gross Motor Development-2 (TGMD-2), inhibition was measured using a Flanker Test and maths fluency was assessed using the One Minute Basic Number Facts Test. Results: Sixty-six percent of eligible children ( n  = 137) agreed to participate in the research. No schools withdrew from the study and three participants were lost to follow-up. Compliance to the intervention was high-none of the participants missed more than two of the ten scheduled active play sessions. Data lost to follow-up were minimal; most were lost (14%) for school day physical activity. Active play sessions were shorter than planned on average by 10 min, and participants spent a mean of 39.4% (14.2) of the session time in moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity (MVPA). There was preliminary evidence of a small intervention effect on MVPA ( d  = 0.3), FMS score ( d  = 0.4), inhibition (fish trial: d  = 0.1, arrow trial d  = 0.1) and maths fluency (addition: d  = 0.3, subtraction: d  = 0.1). Conclusion: The active play intervention was feasible and benefitted from a relatively high MVPA content; however, preliminary findings suggest the intervention had a small effect on the outcomes. Having more active play sessions per week and/or extending the duration of the intervention may increase the effects and these should be tested before a future definitive cluster RCT is undertaken. Trial registration: This trial was registered on the International Standardised Randomised Controlled Trials Number register (ISRCTN) in August 2017 (ISRCTN11607781)

Understanding Dali's 'Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire' : a case study in the scale information driving perception

A generic problem in vision is to know which information drives the perception of a stimulus. We address this problem in a case study that involves the perceptual reversal of an ambiguous image (here, Dali's painting the Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire 1940). In experiment 1, we use 'bubbles' (Gosselin and Schyns, 2001 Vision Research 41 2261-2271) to disambiguate the image and to determine the specific visual information that drives each possible perception (here, the nuns versus the bust of Voltaire). Experiment 2 validates that this information does determine the selective perception of the ambiguous image. We adapted the spatial-frequency channels of observers selectively to the information that mediates one of the two perceptions, to induce the opposite perception of the ambiguous image in a transfer phase. Together, the results suggest a method of revealing the visual information that drives perception