A critical endeavour? Supporting teachers’ journeys towards critical engagement with curriculum in physical education through cross-border dialogue

For decades, scholars have advocated for critical perspectives in Physical Education (PE), supporting more creative and inclusive ways of thinking about and doing PE. Unfortunately, this ‘critical’ work has had limited impact on how PE is conceptualised - within curricula or by teachers - both in the United Kingdom (UK) and internationally. We propose that PE teachers from across the four UK nations of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales might think more critically about their PE curricula through opportunities to engage in cross-border dialogue. We planned a series of workshops to enable PE teachers from across the UK to discuss their respective curricula. We found that the teachers were beginning to think critically through learning about other curriculum contexts and considering alternative possibilities for PE and their learners. We also uncovered persistent PE discourses related to blocks of activity and teaching games. We suggest that the teachers are on a journey of becoming critical, and more time and support is necessary to interrogate prevailing discourses in PE, and allow new ways of thinking to emerge

Poverty and maternal mortality in Nigeria: towards a more viable ethics of modern medical practice

Poverty is often identified as a major barrier to human development. It is also a powerful brake on accelerated progress toward the Millennium Development Goals. Poverty is also a major cause of maternal mortality, as it prevents many women from getting proper and adequate medical attention due to their inability to afford good antenatal care. This Paper thus examines poverty as a threat to human existence, particularly women's health. It highlights the causes of maternal deaths in Nigeria by questioning the practice of medicine in this country, which falls short of the ethical principle of showing care

Primary teachers as physical education curriculum change agents

There has been some exploration of the conceptualisation of teachers as change agents within educational change literature. While this body of work does consider how teachers understand, harness and influence the process of curriculum change, within the policy rhetoric and educational change literature there is limited reference made to how the change agent role is translated into practice. To illustrate the complex nature of the change process this paper explores the experiences of generalist primary teachers at the ‘chalk face’ as they initiate physical education curriculum change within their school contexts. This paper reports on the findings of a study investigating how five Scottish primary teachers with a postgraduate qualification in primary physical education construed and took forward curriculum change. A qualitative and interpretivist approach to the research was taken to analyse how the knowledge and skills the teachers gained from the professional development they had undertaken contributed to their agency to initiate curriculum change within their school contexts. Drawing on the work of Fullan, the concept of change agentry is used to analyse the experiences of the individual teachers as they exercised their agency to enact curriculum change. The paper concludes by reflecting on the findings of the study to suggest factors that may support and constrain teachers acting as change agents

Prognostic model to predict postoperative acute kidney injury in patients undergoing major gastrointestinal surgery based on a national prospective observational cohort study.

Background: Acute illness, existing co-morbidities and surgical stress response can all contribute to postoperative acute kidney injury (AKI) in patients undergoing major gastrointestinal surgery. The aim of this study was prospectively to develop a pragmatic prognostic model to stratify patients according to risk of developing AKI after major gastrointestinal surgery. Methods: This prospective multicentre cohort study included consecutive adults undergoing elective or emergency gastrointestinal resection, liver resection or stoma reversal in 2-week blocks over a continuous 3-month period. The primary outcome was the rate of AKI within 7 days of surgery. Bootstrap stability was used to select clinically plausible risk factors into the model. Internal model validation was carried out by bootstrap validation. Results: A total of 4544 patients were included across 173 centres in the UK and Ireland. The overall rate of AKI was 14·2 per cent (646 of 4544) and the 30-day mortality rate was 1·8 per cent (84 of 4544). Stage 1 AKI was significantly associated with 30-day mortality (unadjusted odds ratio 7·61, 95 per cent c.i. 4·49 to 12·90; P < 0·001), with increasing odds of death with each AKI stage. Six variables were selected for inclusion in the prognostic model: age, sex, ASA grade, preoperative estimated glomerular filtration rate, planned open surgery and preoperative use of either an angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor or an angiotensin receptor blocker. Internal validation demonstrated good model discrimination (c-statistic 0·65). Discussion: Following major gastrointestinal surgery, AKI occurred in one in seven patients. This preoperative prognostic model identified patients at high risk of postoperative AKI. Validation in an independent data set is required to ensure generalizability

Young people, physical education and physical activity: The ontological shift to complexity

This entry considers how the ontological shift to complexity, currently evident across most disciplines, is creating a context in which school PE has a key role to play in the lifelong and life-wide PE journeys of young people. Focussing on the young person, the entry employs key ideas from complexity thinking to make sense of the unfolding PE journeys of young people as they move through their childhood and adolescent years. Beginning at this micro level of the education system, we take a bottom-up approach to explore how four inter-related complexity commonalities (becoming, lived time, self-organisation and boundaries) shape the emergent, non-linear and differentiated nature of young people’s lifelong and life-wide PE journeys. This bottom-up approach is important because it not only captures the complex nature of young people’s PE journeys but also moves away from the traditional top-down curriculum approach represented by specific activities being delivered in time-constrained units to passive learners (Kirk, 2010). Young people’s PE journeys are an important starting point for the ontological shift towards a complexity-informed PE as they should ultimately be at the heart of the macro level discourse across the political, professional and academic arenas

Performance of permeability-reducing admixtures in marine concrete structures

The use of permeability-reducing admixtures is a potential preventative of the chloride-induced corrosion of steel reinforcement, which is the main cause of the deterioration of concrete structures exposed to coastal environments. This paper presents an experimental investigation into the effectiveness of two typical commercially available permeability-reducing admixtures: one characterized by crystallization activity and the other by hydrophobic and pore-blocking effects. Concrete specimens were exposed to simulated coastal environments, and chloride concentration profiles at 28-, 365-, and 730-day exposures were determined by X-ray fluorescence spectrometry. The results suggested that the incorporation of the admixture, characterized by hydrophobic and pore-blocking effects, appeared to considerably enhance the concrete durability with respect to chloride-induced corrosion. The inclusion of the admixture characterized by crystallization activity however, seemed to have almost no detectable effect. This implies the necessity of exercising a degree of caution during specification. Copyright © 2010, American Concrete Institute. All rights reserved