Elite rugby union coaches' interpretation and use of Game Sense in Australia and New Zealand : an examination of coaches' habitus, learning and development

Contains fulltext : 139520.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, 29 april 2015Promotores : Lagro-Janssen, A.L.M., Hutton, E.K. Co-promotor : Jonge, A. d

The bearing of studies of expertise and experience on ethnography

In a recent article published in this journal, Atkinson and Morris explore the kinds of expertise and competence needed by ethnographic researchers. In doing so, they refer to the work of Collins and Evans and, in particular, the idea of interactional expertise, which they dismiss as largely unhelpful to their project. In this response, we show that the Atkinson and Morriss miss-represent this work in important ways and that, if these mistakes are corrected, interactional expertise provides a useful way of addressing the methodological concerns they identify

Critical Casimir Forces and Colloidal Phase Transitions in a Near-Critical Solvent : A Simple Model Reveals a Rich Phase Diagram

From experimental studies it is well-known that colloidal particles suspended in a near-critical binary solvent exhibit interesting aggregation phenomena, often associated with colloidal phase transitions, and assumed to be driven by long-ranged solvent mediated (SM) interactions (critical Casimir forces), set by the (diverging) correlation length of the solvent. We present the first simulation and theoretical study of an explicit model of a ternary mixture that mimics this situation. Both the effective SM pair interactions and the full ternary phase diagram are determined for Brownian discs suspended in an explicit two-dimensional supercritical binary liquid mixture. Gas-liquid and fluid-solid transitions are observed in a region that extends well-away from criticality of the solvent reservoir. We discuss to what extent an effective pair-potential description can account for the phase behavior we observe. Our study provides a fresh perspective on how critical fluctuations of the solvent might influence colloidal self-assembly.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

The Academic Achievement of Elite Athletes at Australian Schools

While sport and student-athletes have featured in the Australian education system since compulsory schooling, there has been no analysis to date of the link between academic achievement and elite student-athletes. However, this is in stark contrast to the United States of America (US), where student-athletes have been the subject of sustained research and examination. In order to rectify this neglected area of research in the Australian context, this study investigated the Higher School Certificate (HSC) results of 641 Combined High School (CHS) Blues recipients over 11 years from 2001 until 2011, comparing them with the performance of the total general HSC population over the same period. The HSC summary aggregate data for Blues recipients was examined for 15 subjects, plus gender and sport. School Index of Community Socio-Economic Advantage (ICSEA) value also formed part of the analysis. The results demonstrated the student-athletes performed at levels similar to, or better than, their peers. Their performance was notably superior in some subjects such as Personal Development, Health and Physical Education (PDHPE). In particular, female Blues performed at higher levels than male Blues, across the range of subjects. Female Blues also generally outperformed the general HSC population. Analysis of individual Blues sports suggests that swimming produced a disproportionate number of high attainers. The findings suggest that despite their heavy sporting commitments and necessarily demanding training timetables, the sampled elite student-athletes performed at levels equal to, or better than, their peers

STS as science or politics

In a recent editorial for this journal, Sismondo makes two claims. First, he states that STS bears no responsibility for the emergence of post-truth politics. Second, he claims that debates about the nature of expertise that take place within STS are irrelevant in this context. In contrast, we argue that whether or not STS had a causal influence on the emergence of post-truth politics, there is a clear resonance between the two positions and that the current political climate makes empirically informed and scientific analyses of expertise and the form of life of science more important than ever. We argue that treating STS’s contribution to these matters as essentially political rather than scientific surrenders any special role we have as experts on the organisation and values of science and leaves STS as just one political actor among other