The Use of Video Games by Kindergartners in a Family Child Care Setting

In this interpretive study of children’s social interactions in a family child care setting, children were seen to spend a significant portion of their time playing, watching others play, and distracted by video games. When children were focused on video games, their interactions with one another were disjointed, rushed, and ineffective. Because children’s interactions are considered to be important learning opportunities, the prevalence of video games in child care settings and the implications of their use should be studied more closely.     

Bridges or isolates? Investigating the social networks of academic inventors

We analyze the acquaintances of a sample of academic inventors and their paired controls to investigate the contribution of social networks to the generation of inventive ideas in academe. Prior to patenting, inventors work in networks of similar dimension and structure as those of their colleagues who do not invent. The ego-networks of the inventors are however more cohesive (denser), a circumstance that is often seen as associated to the exchange of more fine-grained information and to a greater climate of trust which facilitates long-term relationships and learning. Over time, both inventors and non-inventors extend their networks and become more central. In general, we found no evidence that after patenting inventors isolate or close their networks.     

The ontological politics of evidence and policy enablement

Ontological politics has received increasing attention within education policy studies, particularly as a support for the notion of policy enactment. While policy enactment offers serious challenges to traditional approaches toward policy implementation, this paper takes up ontological politics as a concept that extends beyond implementation and holds consequences for policy formation as well. Analysing the different uses of evidence in recent policy documents from Aotearoa New Zealand, this paper argues that an ontological politics of evidence grounds policies in ways that define what can and cannot be enacted, what this paper terms policy enablement. The analyses illustrate an ontological politics of evidence that excludes non-experts in the first instance, and that sanitises the critical elements of enactment in the second. Both analyses highlight the ways policy enablement emerges from ontological politics and offers a supplement to policy enactment. Following these analyses, the paper offers some provisional thoughts on the relationship between enablement and enactment as an approach that attends to context as a constitutive element of policy-making.     

An integrated model of school students’ academic achievement and life satisfaction. Linking soft skills,extracurricular activities,self-regulated learning,motivation, and emotions

The role of soft skills at school is still debated, but they have emerged as important factors for students’ academic achievement and life satisfaction. This study focuses on the combined influence of soft skills (in terms of adaptability, curiosity, leadership, initiative, perseverance, and social awareness), extracurricular activities, achievement emotions, self-regulated learning, motivation, and cognitive abilities on academic achievement and life satisfaction. A sample of 603 students (5th to 12th graders) participated in the study. The results of a Bayesian path analysis based on meta-analytical priors show that soft skills were (i) directly positively associated with students’ achievement emotions, self-regulated learning, motivation, and life satisfaction and (ii) indirectly related with academic achievement through the mediation of self-regulated learning and motivation. On the other hand, only soft skills and achievement emotions were directly related to life satisfaction. Extracurricular activities showed a positive association with both soft skills and cognitive abilities. These results are the first to demonstrate the importance of soft skills and extracurricular activities when integrating all the above-mentioned factors in a model of students’ academic achievement and life satisfaction.

     

Biomechanical determinants of cross-country skiing performance: A systematic review

ABSTRACT

Cross-country skiing is a complex endurance sport requiring technical skills, in addition to considerable physiological and tactical abilities. This review aims to identify biomechanical factors that influence the performance of cross-country skiers. Four electronic databases were searched systematically for original articles in peer-reviewed journals addressing the relationship between biomechanical factors (including kinematics, kinetics, and muscle activation) and performance while skiing on snow or roller skiing. Of the 46 articles included, 22 focused exclusively on the classical technique, 18 on the skating technique, and six on both. The indicators of performance were: results from actual or simulated races (9 articles); speed on specific tracts (6 articles); maximal or peak speed (11 articles); skiing economy or efficiency (11 articles); and grouping on the basis of performance or level of skill (12 articles). The main findings were that i) cycle length, most often considered as a major determinant of skiing speed, is also related to skiing economy and level of performance; ii) higher cycle rate related with maximal speed capacity, while self-selected cycle rate improves skiing economy at sub-maximal speeds; iii) cross-country skiing performance appears to be improved by joint, whole-body, ski, and pole kinematics that promote forward propulsion while minimizing unnecessary movement.     

Organizing links with science: Cooperate or contract?: A project-level analysis

Links with science have been argued to improve the (innovation) performance of firms. Yet we still know comparatively little about the project-level characteristics affecting the organization of such links. Our study, based on a sample of 52 projects carried out by a multinational company in the semiconductor industry, reveals that the knowledge attributes of a project help in predicting how the R&D activities will be organized. In particular, basic projects are likely to be developed through formal cooperative agreements with universities. Such projects also tend to be strategically less important. For strategically more important projects, in contrast, and for those where the knowledge to be developed is particularly novel to the firm, the firm is more likely to resort to formal contracting with a university for a specific component of the R&D project, usually early on in the project.     

Selective spatial working memory impairment in a group of children with mathematics learning disabilities and poor problem-solving skills

This study examines visual and spatial working memory skills in 35 third to fifth graders with both mathematics learning disabilities (MLD) and poor problem-solving skills and 35 of their peers with typical development (TD) on tasks involving both low and high attentional control. Results revealed that children with MLD, relative to TD children, failed spatial working memory tasks that had either low or high attentional demands but did not fail the visual tasks. In addition, children with MLD made more intrusion errors in the spatial working memory tasks requiring high attentional control than did their TD peers. Finally, as a post hoc analysis the sample of MLD was divided in two: children with severe MLD and children with low mathematical achievement. Results showed that only children with severe MLD failed in spatial working memory (WM) tasks if compared with children with low mathematical achievement and TD. The findings are discussed on the basis of their theoretical and clinical implications, in particular considering that children with MLD can benefit from spatial WM processes to solve arithmetic word problems, which involves the ability to both maintain and manipulate relevant information.