Meeting Needs of Young Children at Risk for or Having a Disability

Poverty-related factors place children at higher risk for disabilities and also serve as barriers to families accessing services for their children and themselves. Early childhood practitioners can play a critical role in supporting families by providing services to overcome these obstacles and by working in partnership with specialized early intervention programs to assure the families and children receive those services. Families (N = 3,001) enrolled in the Early Head Start (EHS) Research and Evaluation Project were randomly assigned to the program group (who received EHS services) or the control group in a rigorous, experimental design study in order to evaluate program impacts. All participating families were living in poverty, included a pregnant woman or a child below age 1, and were eligible for EHS. The majority of children enrolled in the EHS Research and Evaluation Project was identified as having at least one of a great variety of disability indicators (e.g., family received Part C services, child has been diagnosed as having asthma). There was a very small number of families, however, actually enrolled in Part C services. Enrollment in EHS was associated with children being less likely to have cognitive or language delays and their families being more likely to receive early intervention (Part C) services and have Individualized Family Service Plans (IFSPs) when they needed them.     

Cultural Connections: An Ethnocultural Counseling Intervention for Black Women in College

Counseling interventions that support the exploration of ethnocultural concerns are beneficial to the overall well‐being of Black women in college. The authors describe Cultural Connections, a theoretically based and culturally adapted group counseling intervention for Black women in college. Also presented are a case example demonstrating the intervention's utility and recommendations for implementation in college counseling centers.     

Evaluating strategic periodisation in team sport

The planned peaking for matches or events of perceived greatest priority or difficulty throughout a competitive season is commonplace in high-level team sports. Despite this prevalence in the field, little research exists on the practice. This study aimed to provide a framework for strategic periodisation which team sport organisations can use to evaluate the efficacy of such plans. Data relating to factors potentially influencing the difficulty of matches were obtained for games played in the 2014 Australian Football League season. These included the match location, opposition rank, between-match break and team “form”. Binary logistic regression models were developed to determine the level of association between these factors and match outcome (win/loss). Models were constructed using “fixed” factors available to clubs prior to commencement of the season, and then also “dynamic” factors obtained at monthly intervals throughout the in-season period. The influence of playing away from home on match difficulty became stronger as the season progressed, whilst the opposition rank from the preceding season was the strongest indicator of difficulty across all models. The approaches demonstrated in this paper can be used practically to evaluate both the long- and short-term efficacy of strategic periodisation plans in team sports as well as inform and influence coach programming.     

Lifting ‘Round the World': The Goodwill Weightlifting Tours of 1955

Abstract

In the first visit by American athletes to the Soviet Union since World War II, the U.S. weightlifting team included 340-pound Paul Anderson who startled the sports world in June of 1955 by pressing a world record 402 pounds, exceeding that of his Soviet adversary by 77 pounds. The admiration evoked by his colossal size and strength encouraged the State Department to send Anderson and other weightlifters on goodwill tours to counter Soviet expansionism in the Middle East and South Asia. The first tour evoked praise from President Dwight Eisenhower and Vice President Richard Nixon, but the second tour proved disappointing when Anderson was unable to perform as expected and Coach Bob Hoffman made disparaging remarks about local customs, thus inadvertently planting seeds of ill-will. The 1955 weightlifting tours illustrated the likelihood of unanticipated consequences and limitations of using athletics as a Cold War strategy to counter Soviet influence in non-aligned countries. Previous accounts have provided chiefly macroscopic views with only a vague notion of what transpired on the ground during goodwill tours. This study provides a closer view of how they were conducted, examples of interaction between visitors and locals, and their failure to fulfil the strategic aims of the Eisenhower Administration.     

‘I just can’t bear these procedures,I just want to be out there working with children’: an autoethnography on neoliberalism and youth sports charities in the UK

This paper uses an autoethnography to recount my experiences with SportHelp, a UK youth sports charity. Using a layered account format, which jumps through time and space, I demonstrate the extent to which neoliberal values have influenced the continuity and change of SportHelp. This paper does not constitute an attack on the charity, its staff, nor the charity sector. The focus is on how the wider neoliberal context shapes how SportHelp operates. The findings are analysed in terms of Foucault’s (2008, The birth of biopolitics. Lectures at the Collége de France, 1978–79. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan) notion of governmentality by examining SportHelp’s monitoring and reporting practices, as well as the managers’ use of New Public Management discourse. The conclusion reflects on the extent to which neoliberal governmentality, though in some instances beneficial for SportHelp, ultimately does more harm than good. This paper, by offering an ‘insider’s view’, adds to the literature calling for a change in how policy makers and funders shape the current hypercompetitive socio-political landscape. Charities should be supported, not discouraged, to develop holistic programmes that move beyond ‘economic rationales’ and are capable of addressing the multifaceted needs of their service users.     

Social entrepreneurship in a sport policy context

This article investigates social entrepreneurship in relation to government state policies in Sweden and to the Swedish sports movement. Social entrepreneurship within sport comprises three elements that need to be qualified: the social element, entrepreneurship and sport. We wish to offer both a specific and a wider definition of social entrepreneurship in sport; specific in the sense that we try to define the concept theoretically, and wider in that we place the concept in a societal context where we relate it to different sectors in society. The method can be described as ethnographically inspired case studies. Four cases are presented. Previous research and the cases have helped us to formulate theses concerning ‘sport’ and ‘profit’ as means for social entrepreneurship, ‘social’ being normatively defined in the public sector, and entrepreneurial activities being understood as acts, crossing boundaries between the different sectors of society, leading to conflicts.     

From Felt Need to Actual Need: A Multi‐method Multi‐sample Approach to Needs Assessment

This study reports on an approach for assessing managerial development needs. The approach uses multi‐methods such as qualitative career plots, critical incidents, a skill rating form, and surveys to identify the critical managerial development needs for a target managerial position. In addition, it uses multi‐subject groups in an ef fort to triangulate on the development needs. The empirical findings indicate that, through this approach, congruent managerial development needs can be identified. By doing so, the organization can design a systematic development effort that will enable them to have both effective managers when they need them in an efficient manner.     

A Half Century of Progress in US Student Achievement: Agency and Flynn Effects,Ethnic and SES Differences

Educational Psychology Review - Policymakers, conceptualized here as principals, disagree as to whether US student performance has changed over the past half century. To inform...     

School accountability and teacher stress: international evidence from the OECD TALIS study

Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability - Accountability—the monitoring and use of student performance data to make judgements about school and teacher effectiveness—is...