Touchy Subject: A Foucauldian Analysis of Coaches’ Perceptions of Adult-Child Touch in Youth Swimming

It has been suggested that child safety discourses are creating an environment in which safety from abuse defines every act of adult-child touch as suspicious, resulting in adults who work with children being positioned as ‘risky’ and child-related settings becoming no-touch zones. Research on the impact of these discourses on coaches is limited and there have been few attempts to theorize coaches’ behaviors to better understand how child safety concerns impact on their practice. Focusing on coaches’ avoidance of child touch, this paper uses a Foucauldian perspective to explore coaches’ embodied disciplinary and emancipatory responses to child protection discourses in competitive youth swimming. It also discusses the implications of coaches’ apprehension about child touch on swimming practice and young athletes.</jats:p

“None of the Kids are Allowed to Eat Junk at the Pool": Discourses of "Optimal Nutrition" in Competitive Youth Swimming and the Impact on Athlete Welfare

In modern competitive sport, athletic success is posited as a result of more than simply being physically fit (Johns and Johns, 2000; Romana, 2010). Rather, understandings of the ‘best’ way to physically prepare as an athlete, underpinned by bio-scientific discourses of performance that emphasize rationalistic concepts of productivity, efficiency and conformity, have come to attribute certain meanings to athletes’ preparation, including that they must comply with strict training regimes and controlled lifestyles to achieve success (Lang, 2010; Potrac et al., 2000). Within this, ensuring ‘appropriate’ nutritional intake is considered crucial. However, knowledge of coaches’ discourses in relation to athlete development and how they enact this in their practice is under-researched (Jones, Glintmeyer and McKenzie, 2005), particularly in relation to coaches’ work with child athletes and coaches’ understandings and enacting of discourses of athlete nutrition. This paper aims to shed light on the discourses coaches draw on in relation to athlete nutrition and how they enact these in their practice to inform and enhance youth coaching practice. It reports the findings from an ethnographic study into coaches’ understandings of good practice when working with competitive youth swimmers. The study comprised an ethnography of three competitive youth swimming clubs at different levels of the performance spectrum. One key finding was that coaches considered it good practice to educate youth athletes about what they referred to as ‘good’ or ‘optimal’ nutrition and consequently, particularly among coaches at the elite level, they enforced strict dietary rules to achieve this. The consequences of such practices are discussed in relation to the health and wellbeing of (child) athletes

The Orbital Period of the Ultraluminous X-ray Source in M82

The ultraluminous x-ray source (ULX) in the galaxy M82 has been identified as a possible intermediate-mass black hole. We have found that the x-ray flux from M82 is modulated with a peak-to-peak amplitude corresponding to an isotropic luminosity of 2.4x10^40 erg/s in M82 and a period of 62.0 +/- 2.5 days, which we interpret as the orbital period of the ULX binary. This orbital period implies that the mass-donor star must be a giant or supergiant. Large mass-transfer rates, sufficient to fuel the ULX, are expected for a giant-phase mass donor in an x-ray binary. The giant phase has a short lifetime, indicating that we see the ULX in M82 in a brief and unusual period of its evolution.Comment: 3 pages, appeared in Scienc

Sustainable Energy-Efficient Living – A First-Year Project-Based Workshop For Energy Engineers

For many engineering students a lack of study motivation plays a significant role in their drop-out process (Heublein 2014). Therefore, students’ motivation to study should be encouraged as early as possible. A proven strategy for increasing the study motivation is the integration of project-based learning (PjBL) in the course of studies (Kokotsaki et al. 2016). This paper introduces a PjBL-workshop concept which was developed for first-year energy engineering students at a university of applied sciences in Germany. During this one-semester workshop, the students are working weekly as student trainees in a fictitious engineering office. Guided by the teacher as the project lead, the students are developing a concept for integrating various renewable and sustainable energy systems in a single-family home. Each week they take on subtasks of a different work package supporting other employees of the engineering office. During their time as student trainees they have to face authentic engineering challenges like constructing a photovoltaic plant or dimensioning a battery system. Progress and results are documented in a project journal. First insights of initial implementations of the concept led to a closer focus on the aspect of the perceived authenticity of the PjBL-setting (engineering office) by the students. Therefore, besides the conceptual and contentual design of the workshop, this paper will also address the creation of the authentic setup of the engineering office. Future research in this ongoing study will examine the influence of the perceived authenticity on various aspects such as the motivation to study