218 research outputs found
Peer Motivational Climate in Youth Sport: Measurement Development and Validation
The influence of the peer group on young people’s achievement motivation has been highlighted in the literature as an area that needs examination (e.g.,
Harwood & Swain, 2001). To this effect, a new measure of youngsters’ perceptions of the peer motivational climate (Peer Motivational Climate in Youth Sport Questionnaire; PeerMCYSQ) was developed and tested across three studies.
In Study 1, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) with 431 athletes between the ages of 11 to 16 years suggested that the PeerMCYSQ had 6 factors that could also be subsumed into 2 higher order factors (Task-Involving climate: improvement, relatedness support, effort; Ego-Involving climate: intra-team competition, normative ability, intra-team conflict). In Studies 2 and 3 the 6-factor solution and the corresponding hierarchical one were
tested using CFA with two independent samples (N = 606 and 495, respectively)of similar age. The results showed that the 6-factor model was problematic and that a 5-factor solution should be preferred instead. Further support to the 5-factor model was provided with hierarchical and multilevel CFAs. Suggestions for further research on peer motivational climate are discussed
Peer motivational climate in youth sport: a qualitative inquiry
Objectives: Little is known about the influence and nature of the motivational climate initiated by peer groups
on children’s sport behaviour and experiences. To address this research need, in-depth interviews were employed in
order to identify the factors that underpin the motivational climate created by peers in youth sport.
Methods: Individually and in small focus groups, 14 boys and 16 girls (NZ30), aged between 12 and 16 years old from both individual and team sports, were interviewed regarding peer-induced characteristics of their motivational climates.
Results: Using content analyses, the following 11 dimensions of peer climate emerged: cooperation, effort,
improvement, mistakes, intra-team competition, intra-team conflict, equal treatment, normative ability, autonomy
support, evaluation of competence and relatedness support.
Conclusions: Some of the resulting dimensions are similar to the factors included in existing instruments assessing adult (i.e. PE teacher or coach-created) motivational climates. However, some facets of the climate unique to peer groups were also identified in this study. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed
and suggestions for future research on the peer motivational climate are provided
Gradual Liquid Type Inference
Liquid typing provides a decidable refinement inference mechanism that is
convenient but subject to two major issues: (1) inference is global and
requires top-level annotations, making it unsuitable for inference of modular
code components and prohibiting its applicability to library code, and (2)
inference failure results in obscure error messages. These difficulties
seriously hamper the migration of existing code to use refinements. This paper
shows that gradual liquid type inference---a novel combination of liquid
inference and gradual refinement types---addresses both issues. Gradual
refinement types, which support imprecise predicates that are optimistically
interpreted, can be used in argument positions to constrain liquid inference so
that the global inference process e effectively infers modular specifications
usable for library components. Dually, when gradual refinements appear as the
result of inference, they signal an inconsistency in the use of static
refinements. Because liquid refinements are drawn from a nite set of
predicates, in gradual liquid type inference we can enumerate the safe
concretizations of each imprecise refinement, i.e. the static refinements that
justify why a program is gradually well-typed. This enumeration is useful for
static liquid type error explanation, since the safe concretizations exhibit
all the potential inconsistencies that lead to static type errors. We develop
the theory of gradual liquid type inference and explore its pragmatics in the
setting of Liquid Haskell.Comment: To appear at OOPSLA 201
Peer-Created Motivational Climate
Learning Objectives
On completion of this chapter, the reader should have
1. understanding of the importance of studying perceptions of the peer motivational climate in youth sport;
2. knowledge of how young athletes perceive different facets of the peer motivational climate;
3. capacity to describe the relationship of different dimensions of the peer motivational climate to young athletes’ motivational indices;
4. awareness of future research directions that aim to
enhance our understanding of the antecedents and consequences of the peer motivational climate; and
5. knowledge of appropriate guidelines for building a task-involving peer motivational climate
Self-Determination Through Circus Arts: Exploring Youth Development in a Novel Activity Context
Youth development takes place in many contexts, with different resulting participant outcomes. Broadening the scope of research to include non-traditional contexts such as youth circus arts programs, which are both similar to and different from other out-of-school-time contexts, may promote better understanding of the ways in which these programs impact youth development. The present study examined the prevalence of support for basic psychological needs and positive developmental outcomes among youth circus program participants. Single time-point quantitative surveys were completed by 111 youth members of the American Youth Circus Organization (62% female), ranging in age from 10 to 21. Results indicated psychological need support predicted positive developmental outcomes. Relatedness was the strongest predictor of intrinsic motivation, affect, and positive youth development. This study illustrates a novel way in which physical activity and youth development can be integrated in youth programs. It contributes to the understanding of youths’ self-determined motivation in physical activities and points to the importance of examining under-studied youth activity contexts such as circus arts
Functional Extensionality for Refinement Types
Refinement type checkers are a powerful way to reason about functional
programs. For example, one can prove properties of a slow, specification
implementation, porting the proofs to an optimized implementation that behaves
the same. Without functional extensionality, proofs must relate functions that
are fully applied. When data itself has a higher-order representation, fully
applied proofs face serious impediments! When working with first-order data,
fully applied proofs lead to noisome duplication when using higher-order
functions.
While dependent type theories are typically consistent with functional
extensionality axioms, refinement type systems with semantic subtyping treat
naive phrasings of functional extensionality inconsistently, leading to
unsoundness. We demonstrate this unsoundness and develop a new approach to
equality in Liquid Haskell: we define a propositional equality in a library we
call PEq. Using PEq avoids the unsoundness while still proving useful
equalities at higher types; we demonstrate its use in several case studies. We
validate PEq by building a small model and developing its metatheory.
Additionally, we prove metaproperties of PEq inside Liquid Haskell itself using
an unnamed folklore technique, which we dub `classy induction'
Psychologically informed physical fitness practice in schools: A field experiment
Objectives Physical education could play a role in attenuating the decline in physical activity during the childhood-to-adolescence transition and inspiring children to adopt a lifelong physical activity habit. While psychological theories (e.g., Self-Determination Theory, Achievement Goal Theory) offer pointers for desirable changes to practice norms, experimental tests of the effectiveness of theory-based interventions in school settings are lacking. In this study, we compared the effects of a traditional and a novel physical education lesson on affective valence, enjoyment, and perceived satisfaction of the psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Design Within-subjects field experiment, with two counterbalanced conditions. Method The participants were 148 children (4-6th grade, 52% female). Both lessons consisted of practicing aerobic capacity (running), core (curl-ups), and upper-body (push-ups) strength and endurance. In the traditional lesson, practice procedures followed FITNESSGRAM™ test instructions. The novel lesson incorporated elements designed to address basic psychological needs (e.g., freedom to select preferred running path, positive interactions among peers) and other evidence-supported modifications (e.g., music and video). Results Affective valence declined in the traditional lesson but remained stable in the novel lesson. Enjoyment and need-satisfaction for competence were higher after the novel lesson. These differences occurred despite no significant differences in total accelerometer-assessed moderate-to-vigorous physical activity and the intensity of the aerobic components. Conclusions Easily implementable, theory-based modifications to physical education practices could improve the experiences derived by students. In turn, experiencing physical education as more pleasant, enjoyable, and need-supportive could raise the odds of long-term physical activity participation
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