Qualifying the Definition of Dispositions

The National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) Standards are in place to ensure teacher preparation programs produce candidates who meet the high standards of the field and who work to help all students learn. NCATE dictates that teacher preparation programs must provide assessment data which demonstrates the knowledge, skills, and professional dispositions of candidates in the program. While teacher preparation programs have historically assessed the areas of knowledge and skills in candidates, the same programs are struggling to understand the concept of dispositions and how to assess the professional dispositions of candidates. The purpose of this research study was to describe how one teacher preparation program attempts to document candidate concerns in the areas of knowledge, skills and professional dispositions. The research looks at the students who are considered to be at-risk of successfully completing the teacher preparation program and reveals some of the themes which emerged from analyzing one college\u27s conference record forms

The engagement of further and higher education with the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games II

The second report from a survey of Podium's stakeholders, assessing the Engagement of Further and Higher Education with the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games

Sport mega-events, the non-West and the ethics of event hosting

Events and sports events are perceived as having the potential to contribute to a number of benefits for the host country and its communities. However, mega sports events in particular are also known for their darker side. These consequences flow from the scale and complexity of the event, and the logistics of delivering what is effectively a national mega-project. The socio-political and economic environment of the host is an important consideration for both prospective hosts and event owners when allocating hosting rights. It is therefore, unsurprising that concerns have been raised over the relatively recent relocation of events to developing countries which, by their nature, frequently lack the economic, political and social stability of the traditional industrialised host. Developing nations are less affluent and arguably less prepared to deliver large scale sports events than developed nations. Within developing contexts the cost of hosting and risk of failure is likely to be far higher than for events held in the developed world. Therefore, this paper asks, ‘are governing bodies, when equipped with this knowledge, ethically obliged to withhold hosting rights from developing countries?’ This paper argues that denying sovereign States the right to make their own decisions would appear to compound the low status of countries that mega-event hosting is perceived to address. It would also reinforce the positioning of countries as subordinate and subject to a form of neo-colonial control. Indeed, despite laudable claims, the primary interest of the event owners is the delivery of an event, meaning that considerations of individual national contexts are largely irrelevant to any award. The paper contends that event hosts – particularly those in the developing world - are potentially vulnerable to exploitation by the event owner

The engagement of further and higher education with the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games

Podium commissioned the Centre for Sport, Physical Education & Activity Research (SPEAR) at Canterbury Christ Church University to carry out research to capture the engagement of the further and higher education sectors and related stakeholders with the past, current and future opportunities presented by the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The full report was released on 15 March 2011 to mark 500 days to go until the start of London 2012

Bimodal Distribution of Glucose Is Not Universally Useful for Diagnosing Diabetes

OBJECTIVE—Bimodality in the distribution of glucose has been used to define the cut point for the diagnosis of diabetes. Previous studies on bimodality have primarily been in populations with a high prevalence of type 2 diabetes, including one study in a white Caucasian population. All studies included participants with known diabetes. The aim of this study was to assess whether a bimodal structure is a general phenomenon in fasting plasma glucose (FPG) and 2-h plasma glucose that is useful for deriving a common cut point for diabetes in populations of different origin, both including and excluding known diabetes