Action research in physical education: focusing beyond myself through cooperative learning

This paper reports on the pedagogical changes that I experienced as a teacher engaged in an action research project in which I designed and implemented an indirect, developmentally appropriate and child‐centred approach to my teaching. There have been repeated calls to expunge – or at least rationalise – the use of traditional, teacher‐led practice in physical education. Yet despite the advocacy of many leading academics there is little evidence that such a change of approach is occurring. In my role as teacher‐as‐researcher I sought to implement a new pedagogical approach, in the form of cooperative learning, and bring about a positive change in the form of enhanced pupil learning. Data collection included a reflective journal, post‐teaching reflective analysis, pupil questionnaires, student interviews, document analysis, and non‐participant observations. The research team analysed the data using inductive analysis and constant comparison. Six themes emerged from the data: teaching and learning, reflections on cooperation, performance, time, teacher change, and social interaction. The paper argues that cooperative learning allowed me to place social and academic learning goals on an even footing, which in turn placed a focus on pupils’ understanding and improvement of skills in athletics alongside their interpersonal development

Langevin Simulation of Thermally Activated Magnetization Reversal in Nanoscale Pillars

Numerical solutions of the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert micromagnetic model incorporating thermal fluctuations and dipole-dipole interactions (calculated by the Fast Multipole Method) are presented for systems composed of nanoscale iron pillars of dimension 9 nm x 9 nm x 150 nm. Hysteresis loops generated under sinusoidally varying fields are obtained, while the coercive field is estimated to be 1979 $\pm$ 14 Oe using linear field sweeps at T=0 K. Thermal effects are essential to the relaxation of magnetization trapped in a metastable orientation, such as happens after a rapid reversal of an external magnetic field less than the coercive value. The distribution of switching times is compared to a simple analytic theory that describes reversal with nucleation at the ends of the nanomagnets. Results are also presented for arrays of nanomagnets oriented perpendicular to a flat substrate. Even at a separation of 300 nm, where the field from neighboring pillars is only $\sim$ 1 Oe, the interactions have a significant effect on the switching of the magnets.Comment: 19 pages RevTeX, including 12 figures, clarified discussion of numerical technique

Statistical Tests of Group Differences in ALSCAL-Derived Subject Weights: Some Monte Carlo Results

Several techniques to test for group differences in weighted multidimensional scaling (MDS) subject weights have recently been proposed. The present study presents monte carlo results to evaluate the op erating characteristics of two of these with ALSCAL- derived subject weights. The first uses the analysis of angular variation (ANAVA) on raw subject weights. The second applies the analysis of variance (ANOVA) to the flattened subject weights generated by ALSCAL. The ANOVA on flattened weights was less affected by the presence of error and by distortions caused by ALSCAL'S normalization routine than was the ANAVA.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

Delinquency and reputational orientations of adolescent at-risk and not-at-risk males and females

This research investigated differences in delinquent activities and the reputational orientations of at-risk and not-at-risk male and female adolescents. Initially, we sought to establish that adolescent males and females differed in these respects. This was found to be the case: males (n = 722) scored significantly higher than females (n = 738) on seven self-reported delinquency variables and on eight reputation enhancement variables pertaining to social deviance, non-conforming reputation, and power/evaluation private identity. When a sample of 31 at-risk females was subsequently pair-wise age matched with 31 not-at-risk females, at-risk females scored significantly higher on all delinquency variables other than school misdemeanors. These at-risk females also scored significantly higher on four reputation enhancement variables relating to social deviance and non-conformity. Given that at-risk females did not differ from their not-at-risk counterparts in level of involvement in school misdemeanors, we sought to determine whether this was also the case for at-risk and not-at-risk males. An age-matched sample of 91 pairs revealed that at-risk males reported significantly higher involvement than not-at-risk males in all aspects of delinquency, including school misdemeanors. They also sought a more non-conforming reputation. To explore the relationships between delinquency and reputation enhancement, a canonical correlation analysis was performed. All findings are discussed in the light of reputation enhancement theory. © 2008 Taylor & Franci

Measurement of the polarisation of W bosons produced with large transverse momentum in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV with the ATLAS experiment

This paper describes an analysis of the angular distribution of W->enu and W->munu decays, using data from pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV recorded with the ATLAS detector at the LHC in 2010, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of about 35 pb^-1. Using the decay lepton transverse momentum and the missing transverse energy, the W decay angular distribution projected onto the transverse plane is obtained and analysed in terms of helicity fractions f0, fL and fR over two ranges of W transverse momentum (ptw): 35 < ptw < 50 GeV and ptw > 50 GeV. Good agreement is found with theoretical predictions. For ptw > 50 GeV, the values of f0 and fL-fR, averaged over charge and lepton flavour, are measured to be : f0 = 0.127 +/- 0.030 +/- 0.108 and fL-fR = 0.252 +/- 0.017 +/- 0.030, where the first uncertainties are statistical, and the second include all systematic effects.Comment: 19 pages plus author list (34 pages total), 9 figures, 11 tables, revised author list, matches European Journal of Physics C versio