Black and minority ethnic trainees’ experiences of physical education initial teacher training

The official published version can be accessed at the link below.This report draws together the findings of research that aimed to explore black and minority ethnic (BME) trainees’ experiences of Physical Education (PE) initial teacher training (ITT). Although the numbers of BME trainees opting to enter teaching have improved considerably over the last few years, PE remains one of three specific subject areas where they remain significantly under-represented. Current figures suggest that PE attracts approximately 3% of trainees from BME backgrounds, compared with 11% for new entrants into teaching overall. The relative lack of success in attracting BME trainees into PE teaching compared to other subject areas suggests that the subculture of the subject may be a compounding factor. Over the last decade or so, a number of studies have explored the impact of ethnicity on teachers’ professional socialisation and their experiences as teachers in school, but none have focused on experiences within specific subject cultures. The centrality of the body in PE, and the link between this and the perceived low status of the subject, are influencing factors highlighted in the broader literature, including sports studies. For example, research exploring racism and the under-representation of BME participants in sport has highlighted the prevalence of stereotypical attitudes about their physicality and abilities held by coaches, administrators and spectators. Other research has suggested that some minority ethnic groups favour higher status, better paid, careers in areas such as law or medicine rather than teaching. As yet, there has been little attention to ‘race’ and ethnicity within PEITT, although studies have shown the impact of gender on trainees’ developing professional identities, and how teachers’ gendered bodies are important ‘tools’ of their work. In addition, there has been little research that has acknowledged trainees’ multiple identities, or the complex ways in which ‘race’, ethnicity, class and gender and other identity markers intersect to impact on the professional socialisation process. The research on which this report is based sought to fill some of these gaps in our understandings of BME trainees’ experiences of PEITT, and to identify strategies that might help in their recruitment and retention in the longer term. The research was funded through a small Recruitment and Retention Challenge Grant from the Teacher Development Agency (TDA). These grants form part of the TDA’s wider policy agenda to widen the diversity of new intakes opting into teaching. Higher education institutions have been encouraged, through targets and financial support and incentives, to develop specific strategies aimed at widening the diversity of their cohorts. Examples of such strategies include the provision of specialist admission help for BME prospective trainees; opportunities to gain experience in schools; open days and ‘taster’ events; advertising in the ethnic minority media, and the development of good practice guides and staff training to help ITT providers address issues of ‘race’ and ethnicity. 5 The impetus for this research resulted, in part, from presentations and discussions at a one day PEITT Network1 staff seminar on diversity held in October, 2007. The quantitative research conducted by the Association for Physical Education (AfPE) and the Ethnic Minority Foundation (EMF) presented here, showed the extent of the national under-representation of BME students in PEITT. Although the day focused on addressing reasons for BME under representation and strategies that might be used for improving recruitment, we felt it was also important to learn about the qualitative experiences of trainees that have been attracted into PEITT. Understanding the experiences of our current BME trainees might offer useful insights into how we might recruit and retain future such trainees. Our choice of qualitative research was supported by a national study published shortly after the network day, investigating the links between gender, ethnicity and degree attainment (Higher Education Academy, HEA, 2008), which specifically calls for further qualitative studies of students’ experiences of different subject areas.Funding from the Training and Development Agency (TDA

ELVIS: Entertainment-led video summaries

© ACM, 2010. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications, and Applications, 6(3): Article no. 17 (2010) http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1823746.1823751Video summaries present the user with a condensed and succinct representation of the content of a video stream. Usually this is achieved by attaching degrees of importance to low-level image, audio and text features. However, video content elicits strong and measurable physiological responses in the user, which are potentially rich indicators of what video content is memorable to or emotionally engaging for an individual user. This article proposes a technique that exploits such physiological responses to a given video stream by a given user to produce Entertainment-Led VIdeo Summaries (ELVIS). ELVIS is made up of five analysis phases which correspond to the analyses of five physiological response measures: electro-dermal response (EDR), heart rate (HR), blood volume pulse (BVP), respiration rate (RR), and respiration amplitude (RA). Through these analyses, the temporal locations of the most entertaining video subsegments, as they occur within the video stream as a whole, are automatically identified. The effectiveness of the ELVIS technique is verified through a statistical analysis of data collected during a set of user trials. Our results show that ELVIS is more consistent than RANDOM, EDR, HR, BVP, RR and RA selections in identifying the most entertaining video subsegments for content in the comedy, horror/comedy, and horror genres. Subjective user reports also reveal that ELVIS video summaries are comparatively easy to understand, enjoyable, and informative

The iconography of Asphyxiophilia: From fantasmatic fetish to forensic fact

This is a post print version of the article. The official published version can be accessed from the link below

Undergraduate student expectations of university in the United Kingdom: What really matters to them?

Students spend 12 to 14 years in school settings learning in what could be considered a carefully controlled and structured environment. Higher education may not offer the same landscape to students and it appears that many enter with unrealistic conceptions of what is expected of them and are faced with different approaches to aspects of teaching, learning and assessment. This qualitative study explores the perceptions of second-year and final-year students in relation to their expectations whilst studying at university. Focus groups were used across two programmes in one university faculty to ascertain student expectations and what they perceived as important. From the thematic analysis, four areas were highlighted by the students as key to the transition into university these were directed time, non-directed time, support and relationships. Overall these students where positive about the university experience and the levels of support offered to them, particularly noting that working in peer learning groups (PLGs) was beneficial. Issues were raised around the timetabling of face-to-face contact time and the value of the experience and this is an area that needs further research as is understanding the complexity of the students’ lives outside of the institution

Co- Creating a Blended learning Curriculum in Transition to Higher Education: A Student Viewpoint.

Involving students in the design and development of their curriculum is well established in Higher Education but comes with challenges and concerns for both the staff and students. This is not a simple concept and understanding more about the experiences of the student co-creators supports others in developing this aspect of curriculum design. This small scale project uses the individual and collective voices of five second year students who worked with one programme team to co-create a transition module to support new learners entering university. The study explores the co-creation experience and the student’s response to the feedback their co-created curriculum received when it was run for the first time. The study was designed to consider if co-creation of a module was beneficial to the students involved in its co-creation. The findings explored issues in relation to the experience, the actual design of the materials and how this could be developed. The students enjoyed the co-creation, felt appreciated and listened to and felt that this was a positive learning experience. They realised how difficult it is to please everybody and gained a much better appreciation of building learning experiences for others to use. The research highlights the fact that with regards to curriculum development within universities that students should be involved in co-creation as they have an understanding of the requirements of learning form a student perspective. Whilst student satisfaction cannot be necessarily be measured directly, the anecdotal comments from students involved in this project as they graduate are the values they place on the opportunities afforded to them

M.I.T./Canadian Vestibular Experiments on the Spacelab-1 Mission. Part 1: Sensory Adaptation to Weightlessness and Readaptation to One-G: An Overview

Experiments on human spatial orientation were conducted on four crewmembers of Space Shuttle Spacelab Mission 1. The conceptual background of the project, the relationship among the experiments, and their relevance to a 'sensory reinterpretation hypothesis' are presented. Detailed experiment procedures and results are presented in the accompanying papers in this series. The overall findings are discussed as they pertain to the following aspects of hypothesized sensory reinterpretation in weightlessness: (1) utricular otolith afferent signals are reinterpreted as indicating head translation rather than tilt, (2) sensitivity of reflex responses to footward acceleration is reduced, and (3) increased weighting is given to visual and tactile cues in orientation perception and posture control. Results suggest increased weighting of visual cues and reduced weighting of graviceptor signals in weightlessness

Student Expectations: what is university really about?

Students spend 12 to 14 years in school learning in a carefully controlled and structured system. It appears that many students enter university with unrealistic conceptions of what is expected of them in many aspects of teaching and learning, including assessment. Hence, when they reach university they are faced with the challenge of adjusting to radically different styles of teaching, learning and assessment. It follows that this lack of preparedness is key reason why students drop out or take longer to complete their studies. To compound the issue, university teachers may not fully appreciate students' expectations and are unable to anticipate and address these in curriculum development and delivery. Therefore, developing a better understanding of students’ perceptions, expectations and experiences is crucial to being able to deliver programmes of study that support students in the transition from school to university and as they move through their university life. This paper explores the perceptions of Level 5 and Level 6 students on two LJMU programmes in the Faculty of Education, Health and Community with the overarching aim to investigate key aspects of the student experience relating to induction, support and transition. By exploring students’ ideas around key areas we hope to be able to better understand what the student expectation is and identify strategies to bridge any gap that exists between staff and student beliefs