Physical activity and healthcare: Capturing the potential or creating the problem

Physical education, sport and everyday living, no matter in which cultural context, has at its centrality physical activity. The concept of movement, whether one understands it as a social construct or originating from an innate ability, is central to 21st Century living. Indeed contemporary understandings of physical activity acknowledge that one of its important functions is in the maintenance of health and the development of healthy lifestyles. However this acknowledgement has become far too simplistic, evidenced by the popular and proliferated media and corporate messages and programmes constructed and designed to facilitate individual and collective health – most of which is focused on claiming to address and solve the ‘obesity and physical inactivity crisis’ with young people. Resulting from this particular health focus, which has as its central message ‘ energy in and energy out balance’, is the degradation of the educative and social value of physical activity and physical education, particularly in schools. Instead of promoting a holistic view and capturing the educative and social value of physical activity and physical education justifications for such programmes are more and more reliant on rationalising physical activity and physical education as having a primary purpose of obesity reduction. This paper argues that given this focus, young people are at risk of being denied learning opportunities which may result in impoverished physical activity and physical education understandings and experiences. More specifically this presentation will: • Highlight how some simplistic health messages, particularly around addressing obesity concerns, maybe counter-productive to the overall health and physical education learning of our young people. • Stress the need to capture the health benefits of physical activity and physical education in a more holistic and critical manner. • Suggest a series of recommendations that may strengthen the health physical activity nexus

Sport and the political economy: Considerations for enhancing the human condition

Sport needs a balanced and inter-disciplinary approach between sport’s educative, social and scientific value and the political economy. This paper argues that the possible meanings of sport for the individual and contemporary society, at whatever level, needs to be conceptualised predominately from a human development perspective. This is sports major purpose - enhancing the human condition, if healthy active living is a desired outcome. Inherent in this purpose is the imperative for the State to manage the constraints of scientific functionalism of commercialisation, the commodification of sport and the objectification of the athlete. Contemporary sport is confronted by potentially deviant and destructive forces when scientism dominates sport discourse. The emphasis on winning, the reduction of sport to physical performance and the quest for extrinsic rewards for the athlete and the political economy shakes and fractures the foundations of sport being a “valued human practice”. The State needs to manage this, embrace and articulate a more educative and socio-cultural function of sport that integrates a holism based on enhancing the human condition. The philosophy of neo Olympism provides a possible systematic way forward. This presentation will provide a contemporary and conceptual framework upon which sport, at all levels can build upon the philosophy of Olympism. It will do this by: • critically examining dominant thinking around sport and the State’s role; • arguing for the educative, social, scientific and moral base of sport to be inculcated into school physical education and sports based programmes • highlighting the need for Olympism to be more broadly promoted as a way of life to active healthy living through balanced development of the person, celebrating the joy in effort; promoting the educative value of role modelling and the observance of an integrated set of universal ethics

New Zealand's socio-critical physical education curriculum: Three unique pedagogical developments

Physical education (PE) in New Zealand/Aotearoa (NZ) has recently undergone some seismic conceptual shifts. This came from the introduction of a socio-critical orientated Health and Physical Education curriculum in 1999.This curriculum required PE teachers to re-think programmes to: - Promote learning of new skills associated in, through and about physical activity and sport and - Enhance, extend, inform and critique the deliberate use of play, exercise, sport and physical activity. The new socio-critical curriculum fostered a 21stC view of learning that promoted students (5 year olds to 18 years) being active, virtuous and critical consumers of the movement culture. The socio-critical orientation for PE necessitated PE teachers to examine alternative visions to what it might mean to be physically educated and to seek alternative pedagogical understandings and practices to acknowledge the emergent strong socio-ecological perspective. Emerging from this has been the implementation of a number of overseas social constructivist PE pedagogical models. Recent developments, unique to NZ, have seen the development of culturally responsive pedagogical models that seek to address the NZ Curriculum’s socio-critical intent – these are; 1. Te Ao Kori – a cultural contextualisation of a Maori celebration of life through movement. Recent research indicates the uptake of this model is happening but concern exists that many non-Maori teachers show reluctance because of its strong cultural orientation. 2. Olympism Education – where the life principles of Olympism are fostered, practised and critiqued to promote a virtuous critical consumer of active lifestyles 3. A Critical Analysis Process Model that seeks to redress the theory/practice nexus across the movement culture. The developers of this model report on its usefulness and practicality particularly at the senior school level. While the intent of this socio-critical curriculum is yet to achieve its potential a small group of NZ scholars are beginning to move into a ‘post’ conceptualisation of PE and further develop programmes to suit 21stC learners – this is a challenge. The development of the three pedagogical models and futurist considerations will be showcase

Emotions, Physical Education Leadership in Schools, and the Quest for Authenticity

Effective leadership starts with a desire to make a difference, and equally requires the completion of a variety of duties that in turn elicit a range of emotions. This article reports on a research study that investigated key emotions experienced and reported by four Physical Education leaders. Leadership within secondary schools occurs mostly through carrying out the Head of Department or Head of Faculty role, both of which will normally involve overseeing the implementation of Physical Education, Health Education, and in many cases, Outdoor Education. Guided by pre-planned questions, the study involved conducting semi- structured interviews with four Physical Education Heads of Department. The data collected were analysed and interpreted using qualitative thematic data analysis. Two distinct themes revealed contrasting emotional experiences that were consistently reported by all four leaders. The results indicated that leaders experienced negative emotions elicited by professional tasks, but that they also experienced positive emotions when performing tasks that involved staff care. Leaders indicated how their preparation for, and implementation of activities fostering staff care, were important contributors to their job satisfaction. Through executing such deeds, the leaders showed their commitment to maintaining positive socio-professional relationships, and also reported behaviours consistent with high levels of Emotional Intelligence in conjunction with being motivated to develop staff both professionally and personally. The study found that leaders ‘live’ the curriculum as they believed that this was important in creating personal authenticity

Clean catalogues of blue horizontal-branch stars using

Context. Blue horizontal-branch stars evolve from low-mass stars that have completed their main-sequence lifetimes and undergone a helium flash at the end of their red-giant phase. As such, blue horizontal-branch stars are very old objects that can be used as markers in studies of the Galactic structure and formation history. To create a clean sky catalogue of blue horizontal-branch stars, we cross-matched the Gaia data release 2 (DR2) dataset with existing reference catalogues to define selection criteria based on Gaia DR2 parameters. Following the publication of Gaia early data release 3 (EDR3), these methods were verified and subsequently applied to this latest release. Aims. Previous catalogues of blue horizontal-branch stars were developed using spectral analyses or were restricted to individual globular clusters. The purpose of this catalogue is to identify a set of blue horizontal-branch star candidates that have been selected using photometric and astrometric observations and exhibits a low contamination rate. This has been deemed important as the success of the Gaia mission has changed the way that targets are selected for large-scale spectroscopic surveys, meaning that far fewer spectra will be acquired for blue horizontal-branch stars in the future unless they are specifically targeted. Methods. We cross-matched reference blue horizontal-branch datasets with the Gaia DR2 database and defined two sets of selection criteria. Firstly, in Gaia DR2 – colour and absolute G magnitude space, and secondly, in Gaia DR2 – colour and reduced proper motion space. The main-sequence contamination in both subsets of the catalogue was reduced, at the expense of completeness, by concentrating on the Milky Way’s Galactic halo, where relatively young main-sequence stars were not expected. The entire catalogue is limited to those stars with no apparent neighbours within 5 arcsec. These methods were verified and subsequently applied to the Gaia EDR3. Results. We present a catalogue, based on Gaia EDR3, of 57 377 blue horizontal-branch stars. The Gaia EDR3 parallax was used in selecting 16 794 candidates and the proper motions were used to identify a further 40 583 candidates

The Voice of Parents who have used Rhythmic Movement Training with their Children

This study investigates the experiences of seven families who have used Rhythmic Movement Training (RMT) as an intervention with their child with retained primitive reflexes. The theoretical framework of phenomenology and interpretivism was the basis for a qualitative phenomenological research design. Through semi-structured interviews, the collective voice of 14 parents captured their reasons for seeking additional help with their child’s development issues, finding RMT, using RMT within their family routine and their perceptions of the benefits they experienced and the costs, both financial and time, incurred. While there is a small amount of research into movement programmes targeting retained primitive reflexes, to-date there appears to have been no empirical studies completed on RMT. The parents in this study found that RMT was relatively easy to manage within their family routine and that it was a low-impact, cost-effective intervention with a range of perceived benefits for the child who had completed RMT

The population of hot subdwarf stars studied with

In light of substantial new discoveries of hot subdwarfs by ongoing spectroscopic surveys and the availability of the Gaia mission Early Data Release 3 (EDR3), we compiled new releases of two catalogues of hot subluminous stars: The data release 3 (DR3) catalogue of the known hot subdwarf stars contains 6616 unique sources and provides multi-band photometry, and astrometry from Gaia EDR3 as well as classifications based on spectroscopy and colours. This is an increase of 742 objects over the DR2 catalogue. This new catalogue provides atmospheric parameters for 3087 stars and radial velocities for 2791 stars from the literature. In addition, we have updated the Gaia Data Release 2 (DR2) catalogue of hot subluminous stars using the improved accuracy of the Gaia EDR3 data set together with updated quality and selection criteria to produce the Gaia EDR3 catalogue of 61 585 hot subluminous stars, representing an increase of 21 785 objects. The improvements in Gaia EDR3 astrometry and photometry compared to Gaia DR2 have enabled us to define more sophisticated selection functions. In particular, we improved hot subluminous star detection in the crowded regions of the Galactic plane as well as in the direction of the Magellanic Clouds by including sources with close apparent neighbours but with flux levels that dominate the neighbourhood