Biopedagogies and Indigenous knowledge: examining sport for development and peace for urban Indigenous young women in Canada and Australia

This paper uses transnational postcolonial feminist participatory action research (TPFPAR) to examine two sport for development and peace (SDP) initiatives that focus on Indigenous young women residing in urban areas, one in Vancouver, Canada, and one in Perth, Australia. We examine how SDP programs that target urban Indigenous young women and girls reproduce the hegemony of neoliberalism by deploying biopedagogies of neoliberalism to \u27teach\u27 Indigenous young women certain education and employment skills that are deemed necessary to participate in competitive capitalism. We found that activities in both programs were designed to equip the Indigenous girls and young women with individual attributes that would enhance their chances of future success in arenas valued by neoliberal capitalism: Eurocentric employment, post-secondary education and healthy active living. These forms of \u27success\u27 fall within neoliberal logic, where the focus is on the individual being able to provide for oneself. However, the girls and young women we interviewed argued that their participation in the SDP programs would help them change racist and sexist stereotypes about their communities and thereby challenged negative stereotypes. Thus, it is possible that these programs, despite their predominant use of neoliberal logic and biopedagogies, may help to prepare the participants to more successfully negotiate Eurocentric institutions, and through this assist them participants in contributing to social change. Nevertheless, based on our findings, we argue that SDP programs led by Indigenous peoples that are fundamentally shaped by Indigenous voices, epistemologies, concerns and standpoints would provide better opportunities to shake SDP\u27s current biopedagogical foundation. We conclude by suggesting that a more radical approach to SDP, one that fosters Indigenous self-determination and attempts to disrupt dominant relations of power, could have difficulty in attracting the sort of corporate donors who currently play such important roles in the current SDP landscape

Performativity and creativity in senior secondary drama classrooms

This article examines the intersection between the senior secondary drama classroom, creativity and neoliberalism. Informed by a research project involving fifteen West Australian drama teachers and thirteen students, it considers the drama classroom as one site where tensions between the performative needs of neoliberal education and the more humanistic desires that drama teachers embody are enacted. This paper suggests that drama education can be a powerfully transformative vehicle for creative and innovative thinking because of its spatially unique classroom environment and embodied nature. However, collisions between rhetoric and reality, social good and economic return, can mean that young people are denied opportunities for choice and the capability development that drama education brings

More than “sluts” or “prissy girls”: Gender and becoming in senior secondary drama classrooms

This article examines the relationships between the embodiment of dramatic characters, gender, and identity. It draws on ethnographic data based on observations and interviews with 24 drama teachers and senior secondary drama students in Western Australia. We explore how student becomings in year 12 drama classrooms are mediated and constituted through socially overcoded gender binaries in a dominant neoliberal culture of competitive performativity. We ask the questions: What constructions of femininity and masculinity are students embodying from popular dramatic texts in the drama classroom at a critical time in their social and emotional development? Are these constructions empowering? Or disempowering? What factors are influencing teachers’ choices of texts for their predominantly female students? Our research shows that what is delimiting about this potentiality in a time of identity exploration and formation are the constraining gender-binary roles available to young women particularly, and the performative pressures teachers are experiencing

On the use of control surface excitation in flutter testing

peer reviewedFlutter testing is aimed at demonstrating that the aircraft flight envelope is flutter free. Response measurements from deliberate excitation of the structure are used to identify and track frequency and damping values against velocity. In this paper, the common approach of using a flight control surface to provide the excitation is examined using a mathematical model of a wing and control surface whose rotation is restrained by a simple actuator. In particular, it is shown that it is essential to use the demand signal to the actuator as a reference signal for data processing. Use of the actuator force (or strain) or control angle (or actuator displacement) as a reference signal is bad practice because these signals contain response information. It may also be dangerous in that the onset of flutter may not be seen in the test results

Development of an Item Pool for a Needs-Based Measure of Quality of Life of Carers of a Family Member with Dementia.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: This paper describes the development of an item pool for a needs-based self-report outcome measure of the impact of caring for a relative, friend or neighbour with dementia on carer quality of life. The aims are to give a detailed account of the steps involved and describe the resulting item pool. METHODS: Seven steps were followed: generation of an initial item set drawing on 42 needs-led interviews with carers; a content and face validity check; assessment of psychometric potential; testing of response formats; pre-testing through cognitive interviews with 22 carers; administration rehearsal with two carers; and final review. RESULTS: An initial set of 99 items was refined to a pool of 70 to be answered using a binary response format. Items were excluded due to overlap with others, ceiling effects, ambiguity, dependency on function of the person with dementia or two-part phrasing. Items retained covered a breadth of areas of impact of caring and were understandable and acceptable to respondents. CONCLUSIONS: The resulting dementia carer-specific item pool reflects the accounts of a diverse sample of those who provide care for a person with dementia, allowing them to define the nature of the impact on their lives and resulting in a valid, acceptable set of items.Jan Oyebode, Penny Wright, Simon Pini, Mike Horton, each declare that this work was supported by the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). Grant title: HQLC Dementia Carers Instrument Development: DECIDE (MR/M025179/1) and that the grant is registered on the UK Research and Innovation Gateway: http://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=MR/M025179/1 . They also declare that they have received financial support for travel to meetings for the study, manuscript preparation or other purposes from the grant funder as part of the award only. In addition, Penny Wright has declared that she is the principal investigator and was the main applicant for the funding that was received from the MRC and NIHR, and Jan Oyebode has declared her position as a coinvestigator. The following authors have no conflicts of interest to declare: Emma Ingleson, Molly Megson, Linda Clare, Hareth Al-Janabi, Carol Brayne

Pentagrams and paradoxes

Klyachko and coworkers consider an orthogonality graph in the form of a pentagram, and in this way derive a Kochen-Specker inequality for spin 1 systems. In some low-dimensional situations Hilbert spaces are naturally organised, by a magical choice of basis, into SO(N) orbits. Combining these ideas some very elegant results emerge. We give a careful discussion of the pentagram operator, and then show how the pentagram underlies a number of other quantum "paradoxes", such as that of Hardy.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figure

A school-based intervention to promote physical activity among adolescent girls: Rationale, design, and baseline data from the Girls in Sport group randomised controlled trial

Background: Physical activity levels decline markedly among girls during adolescence. School-based interventions that are multi-component in nature, simultaneously targeting curricular, school environment and policy, and community links, are a promising approach for promoting physical activity. This report describes the rationale, design and baseline data from the Girls in Sport group randomised trial, which aims to prevent the decline in moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity (MVPA) among adolescent girls. Methods/design: A community-based participatory research approach and action learning framework are used with measurements at baseline and 18-month follow-up. Within each intervention school, a committee develops an action plan aimed at meeting the primary objective (preventing the decline in accelerometer-derived MVPA). Academic partners and the State Department of Education and Training act as critical friends. Control schools continue with their usual school programming. 24 schools were matched then randomized into intervention (n = 12) and control (n = 12) groups. A total of 1518 girls (771 intervention and 747 control) completed baseline assessments (86% response rate). Useable accelerometer data (≥ 10 hrs/day on at least 3 days) were obtained from 79% of this sample (n = 1199). Randomisation resulted in no differences between intervention and control groups on any of the outcomes. The mean age (SE) of the sample was 13.6 (± 0.02) years and they spent less than 5% of their waking hours in MVPA (4.85 ± 0.06). Discussion: Girls in Sport will test the effectiveness of schools working towards the same goal, but developing individual, targeted interventions that bring about changes in curriculum, school environment and policy, and community links. By using community-based participatory research and an action learning framework in a secondary school setting, it aims to add to the body of literature on effective school-based interventions through promoting and sustaining increased physical activity participation among adolescent girls