Action research in physical education: focusing beyond myself through cooperative learning

This paper reports on the pedagogical changes that I experienced as a teacher engaged in an action research project in which I designed and implemented an indirect, developmentally appropriate and child‐centred approach to my teaching. There have been repeated calls to expunge – or at least rationalise – the use of traditional, teacher‐led practice in physical education. Yet despite the advocacy of many leading academics there is little evidence that such a change of approach is occurring. In my role as teacher‐as‐researcher I sought to implement a new pedagogical approach, in the form of cooperative learning, and bring about a positive change in the form of enhanced pupil learning. Data collection included a reflective journal, post‐teaching reflective analysis, pupil questionnaires, student interviews, document analysis, and non‐participant observations. The research team analysed the data using inductive analysis and constant comparison. Six themes emerged from the data: teaching and learning, reflections on cooperation, performance, time, teacher change, and social interaction. The paper argues that cooperative learning allowed me to place social and academic learning goals on an even footing, which in turn placed a focus on pupils’ understanding and improvement of skills in athletics alongside their interpersonal development

Learning from Communities: The Local Dynamics of Formal and Informal Volunteering in Korogocho, Kenya

Taking the Korogocho community as its starting point, this article explores the respective roles, dynamics and relationship between formal and informal volunteering. Following an overview of the research's participatory systemic action research (SAR) methodology, the article outlines how the widespread use of stipends and allowances by external development organisations has blurred the distinction between formal volunteerism and low?paid work – something that disincentivises volunteering through local organisations who lack the resources to pay allowances. It examines informal volunteering, such as mutual aid and self?help groups, and highlights how they add significant value when they emerge in response to a directly experienced community need. Finally, it discusses the risks and opportunities associated with formal and informal volunteering. Issues include how volunteering can be used in complementary ways to address community needs, the scales at which they are most effective, and their potential in promoting greater inclusion and more equitable gender roles

Noncomparabilities & Non Standard Logics

Many normative theories set forth in the welfare economics, distributive justice and cognate literatures posit noncomparabilities or incommensurabilities between magnitudes of various kinds. In some cases these gaps are predicated on metaphysical claims, in others upon epistemic claims, and in still others upon political-moral claims. I show that in all such cases they are best given formal expression in nonstandard logics that reject bivalence, excluded middle, or both. I do so by reference to an illustrative case study: a contradiction known to beset John Rawls\u27s selection and characterization of primary goods as the proper distribuendum in any distributively just society. The contradiction is avoided only by reformulating Rawls\u27s claims in a nonstandard form, which form happens also to cohere quite attractively with Rawls\u27s intuitive argumentation on behalf of his claims

Climatic variability in Mfabeni peatlands (South Africa) since the late Pleistocene

It has been postulated that a bipolar seesaw interhemispheric mechanism dominated the relationship between the Northern and Southern hemisphere climates since the late Pleistocene. A key test for this proposition would be to undertake palaeoenvironmental studies on terrestrial archives in climatically sensitive regions. Southern Africa's contemporary C-3 and C-4 terrestrial plant distributions display a definitive geographical pattern dictated by different growing season rainfall and temperature zones; however, the region is generally archive poor due to its overall semi-arid climate and high relief topography. The Mfabeni peatland, with a basal age of c. 47 k yrs calibrated before present (kcal yr BP), is one of the oldest continuous coastal peat deposits in Southern Africa. Molecular leaf wax isotopes (delta C-13(wax)) were generated for a 810 cm long core, and combined with previously published bulk geochemical (delta C-13(bulk), %TOC), palynological, and stratigraphic data, to reconstruct the late Pleistocene and Holocene palaeoenvironments. We interpreted environmental shifts associated with the Heinrich 4, Last Glacial Maximum, deglacial and Holocene periods, which are consistent with adjacent Indian Ocean sea surface temperature records. However, the other shorter climate perturbations during the Heinrich 5, 3, 2, 1, Antarctic cold reversal and Younger Dryas, were muted, most likely due to local hydrological overprinting on the Mfabeni record. A general anti-phase sequence was observed between the Mfabeni record and better established Northern Hemisphere events, underpinning the bipolar seesaw interhemispheric mechanism proposed for global climate forcing since the Late Pleistocene

Enhancing innovation between scientific and indigenous knowledge: pioneer NGOs in India

Abstract Background Until recently, little attention has been paid to local innovation capacity as well as management practices and institutions developed by communities and other local actors based on their traditional knowledge. This paper doesn't focus on the results of scientific research into innovation systems, but rather on how local communities, in a network of supportive partnerships, draw knowledge for others, combine it with their own knowledge and then innovate in their local practices. Innovation, as discussed in this article, is the capacity of local stakeholders to play an active role in innovative knowledge creation in order to enhance local health practices and further environmental conservation. In this article, the innovative processes through which this capacity is created and reinforced will be defined as a process of "ethnomedicine capacity". Methods The field study undertaken by the first author took place in India, in the State of Tamil Nadu, over a period of four months in 2007. The data was collected through individual interviews and focus groups and was complemented by participant observations. Results The research highlights the innovation capacity related to ethnomedical knowledge. As seen, the integration of local and scientific knowledge is crucial to ensure the practices anchor themselves in daily practices. The networks created are clearly instrumental to enhancing the innovation capacity that allows the creation, dissemination and utilization of 'traditional' knowledge. However, these networks have evolved in very different forms and have become entities that can fit into global networks. The ways in which the social capital is enhanced at the village and network levels are thus important to understand how traditional knowledge can be used as an instrument for development and innovation. Conclusion The case study analyzed highlights examples of innovation systems in a developmental context. They demonstrate that networks comprised of several actors from different levels can synergistically forge linkages between local knowledge and formal sciences and generate positive and negative impacts. The positive impact is the revitalization of perceived traditions while the negative impacts pertain to the transformation of these traditions into health commodities controlled by new elites, due to unequal power relations

Improving community health through marketing exchanges: A participatory action research study on water, sanitation, and hygiene in three Melanesian countries

Diseases related to poor water, sanitation and hygiene (WaSH) are major causes of mortality and morbidity. While pursuing marketing approaches to WaSH to improve health outcomes is often narrowly associated with monetary exchange, marketing theory recognises four broad marketing exchange archetypes: market-based, non-market-based, command-based and culturally determined. This diversity reflects the need for parameters broader than monetary exchange when improving WaSH. This study applied a participatory action research process to investigate how impoverished communities in Melanesian urban and peri-urban informal settlements attempt to meet their WaSH needs through marketing exchange. Exchanges of all four archetypes were present, often in combination. Motivations for participating in the marketing exchanges were based on social relationships alongside WaSH needs, health aspirations and financial circumstances. By leveraging these motivations and pre-existing, self-determined marketing exchanges, WaSH practitioners may be able to foster WaSH marketing exchanges consistent with local context and capabilities, in turn improving community physical, mental and social health

Applying Sentinel Event Reviews to Policing

A sentinel event review (SER) is a system-based, multistakeholder review of an organizational error. The goal of an SER is to prevent similar errors from recurring in the future rather than identifying and punishing the responsible parties. In this article, we provide a detailed description of one of the first SERs conducted in an American police department—the review of the Lex Street Massacre investigation and prosecution, which resulted in the wrongful incarceration of four innocent men for 18 months. The results of the review suggest that SERs may help identify new systemic reforms for participating police departments and other criminal justice agencies

Articulating choice and deliberation in conducting research - researchers 'working in the interpretive zone'.

Gedragsveranderingen bij leerlingen en hun lerare