Targeting Mr Average: Participation, gender equity and school sport partnerships

The School Sport Partnership Programme (SSPP) is one strand of the national strategy for physical education and school sport in England, the physical education and school sport Club Links Strategy (PESSCL). The SSPP aims to make links between school physical education (PE) and out of school sports participation, and has a particular remit to raise the participation levels of several identified under-represented groups, of which girls and young women are one. National evaluations of the SSPP show that it is beginning to have positive impacts on young people's activity levels by increasing the range and provision of extra curricular activities (Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED), 2003, 2004, 2005; Loughborough Partnership, 2005, 2006). This paper contributes to the developing picture of the phased implementation of the programme by providing qualitative insights into the work of one school sport partnership with a particular focus on gender equity. The paper explores the ways in which gender equity issues have been explicitly addressed within the 'official texts' of the SSPP; how these have shifted over time and how teachers are responding to and making sense of these in their daily practice. Using participation observation, interview and questionnaire data, the paper explores how the coordinators are addressing the challenge of increasing the participation of girls and young women. The paper draws on Walby's (2000) conceptualisation of different kinds of feminist praxis to highlight the limitations of the coordinators' work. Two key themes from the data and their implications are addressed: the dominance of competitive sport practices and the PE professionals' views of targeting as a strategy for increasing the participation of under-represented groups. The paper concludes that coordinators work within an equality or difference discourse with little evidence of the transformative praxis needed for the programme to be truly inclusive. © 2008 Taylor & Francis

The oldest lagonomegopid spider, a new species in Lower Cretaceous amber from Álava, Spain

The new species Burlagonomegops alavensis (Araneae: Lagonomegopidae) is described from Lower Cretaceous (Aptian) amber from Álava (Basque Country), Spain. This is the first fossil spider to be described from this deposit and extends the known geological range of this family by approximately 15-20 Ma, from the previously oldest described lagonomegopid in Burmese amber. Given the broad geographic range of this family in the Cretaceous and their absence in Tertiary fossil resins, the global extinction of this family is enigmatic. In contrast to other spider families, it may be that the end-Cretaceous extinction event did have an effect on this strictly fossil family

First Caribbean Floricomus (Araneae: Linyphiidae), a new fossil species in Miocene Dominican Republic amber : a new synonymy for the extant North American fauna

The new species Floricomus fossilis (Araneae: Linyphiidae) is described from Miocene Dominican Republic amber. This is the first fossil record of Floricomus, extending its known geological range by 15-20 Ma, and is the first record of the genus outside North America and Canada. Extant species may exist on Hispaniola, given the similarities between the known fossil and extant faunas. Most extant Floricomus species were described during the first half of the twentieth century and have received little, or no further taxonomic attention. The extant F. ornatulus GERTSCH and IVIE, 1936 is a junior synonym of F. littoralis CHAMBERLIN and IVIE, 1935 n.syn. The high degree of variation in somatic and genitalic characters observed in species currently assigned to Floriomus indicate the genus requires revision

Soil acidity in Alberta – Part I: extent and importance to crop production

Non-Peer Reviewe