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Application of the Facial Feedback Hypothesis to Endurance Performance– Does Frowning Modulate Perception of Effort?
Get PDFObjectives: People frown during strenuous exercise. Research on the facial feedback hypothesis raises the intriguing
possibility that frowning may modulate (i.e., amplify/soften) perception of effort during endurance performance and
therefore play a causal role in endurance performance. This study examined whether intentionally frowning
throughout a cycling time-to-exhaustion test increased perception of effort and, consequently, reduced time to
exhaustion. This study also examined the effects of frowning on affective states experienced during performance
and after exhaustion.
Design: A randomised, controlled, crossover experimental design was used to compare (within-subjects) the effects
of frowning with control conditions.
Methods: Ten recreational endurance athletes performed cycling time-to-exhaustion tests in three conditions. In a
frowning condition, participants frowned throughout the time-to-exhaustion test. In a matched-workload control
condition, participants pressed their thumb against the ergometer handlebar throughout the test. Electromyography
biofeedback was used to deliver these interventions. There was also a no-intervention control condition. Perception
of effort and exercise-related affect were measured throughout the time-to-exhaustion test, and positive and
negative affective states were measured before and after the test.
Results: Intentionally frowning did not affect perception of effort, affective states experienced while cycling or after
exhaustion, or time to exhaustion.
Conclusions: Frowning may not modulate perception of effort or affective responses during endurance exercise to
exhaustion. Although additional research using different methods would allow firmer conclusions to be drawn, these
findings suggest that interventions that target the expression of a frown would be unlikely to offer an efficacious
method of improving endurance performance
Changing student behaviour in schools located in areas of socioeconomic deprivation: findings from the ‘coastal academies’ project
Get PDF‘Am I employable?’: Understanding students' employability confidence and their perceived barriers to gaining employment
Get PDFThis paper addresses employability among undergraduate Marine Sport Science students' at a post-92 HE Institution in the UK, focusing on perceptions of their own employability and their confidence in gaining graduate employment after having careers education embedded within their programme. Mixed method surveys (69% of cohort/n=57) produced results that showed that Marine Sport Science students' perception of their employability increased year on year whilst conversely, confidence in gaining graduate employment decreased year on year. This was due to seven perceived barriers: competition, experience, location, degree quality, qualifications, economy and confidence. The ‘diving board theory’ was established explaining the juxtaposition of improving perceived employability alongside decreasing confidence in gaining employment
Extracurricular enterprise activities in HE, students’ perceptions of their entrepreneurial behaviors, competencies and capability.
Get PDFQuestions: Which students participate in extra-curricular enterprise activities? Why do these students choose to participate in extra-curricular enterprise activities? What impact do they perceive it to have on their entrepreneurial competencies?
Objectives: To evaluate the literature to understand the role extra-curricular enterprise activities have in enhancing entrepreneurial competencies. To collect empirical data on students’ perceptions pre and post extra-curricular enterprise activity engagement.
Approach: This study used an online survey method to conduct a pre and post evaluation of extra-curricular enterprise activities running at a post 1992 University in the 2015/16 academic year. Each survey contained both open and closed questions to provide quantitative and qualitative data. A control group of students that did not engage in extracurricular enterprise activities was also surveyed at the beginning and end of the academic year (2015/16) using a non-engagement survey providing a comparison.
Results: The study found that students participating in extra-curricular enterprise activities were more likely to be female, studying a programme within the Faculty of Business and in the second or final stages of their programme.
Students reported participating in extra-curricular enterprise activities for many reasons, the most popular being ‘interest’, followed by ‘enhancement of employability’. A comparison was made to a non-engagement ‘control’ group, and outcomes were comparable to those students engaging in extra-curricular enterprise activities. This raises questions of the importance of addressing these outcomes within enterprise-focussed education. With reference to specific competencies, students improved across all competencies bar ‘creativity’ in the enterprise engagement groups, with significant improvements in ‘resilience’ and ‘perseverance’. Yet in the non-engagement groups, most competencies decreased. This strongly suggests that extracurricular enterprise activities are useful for improving students’ personal competencies.
Implications: Enterprise educators must consider how to attract and deliver enterprise education to students from a more diverse range of discipline areas. In relation to competencies, enterprise educators may also benefit from signpostingthe competencies that can be developed within extra-curricular enterprise activities so students are aware of what they may be improving through their engagement
Teaching for Innovation, Creativity and Enterprise (ICE): An Evaluation of Embedding ICE in Initial Teacher Education
Get PDFThe strategic approach to studying, and the value of assessment
Get PDFIn this paper I seek to reflexively theorise the following pedagogical problem: why do so many students adopt a strategic approach to studying and value assessment for the grade awarded rather than as a learning opportunity? Firstly, I differentiate my sociological perspective from the phenomenographic perspective, and argue that the strategic approach is worthy of serious analysis. Secondly, I deploy the concepts social character and the social individual to argue that the strategic approach is a product of extrinsic rather than intrinsic forces: it emanates from within the social relations of contemporary capitalism. Thirdly, I frame the strategic approach as academic labour using concepts from Marx’s labour theory of value: use and exchange value, concrete and abstract labour. This enables me to explain how assessment has become commodified and why students have a limiting quasi-market concept of value that privileges grades over learning. Finally, I argue that Marx’s dialectical method of enquiry enables practitioners to not only deconstruct the strategic approach to studying but also to challenge it
Playtime: Developing creativity through outdoor education
Get PDFIn this presentation I argue for a re-conceptualization of “playtime” and the development of playfulness as a useful learning tool to cultivate creativity. “Playful
play facilitates creativity 1 – sometimes immediately and sometimes after a considerable delay” (Bateson and Martin, 2012, p.8-9). Teaching at a University the question I address is why we may wish to engage in “playtime” and how might this be achieved. There are two arguments for including “playtime”. Firstly, the neoliberalist discourse about higher education is concerned with employability and
“getting a job”. In this sense, creativity is seen as a graduate employability skill by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI)2 who consider the skill of creative thinking as a prime outcome of higher education. This CBI report found that a fifth of employers were not satisfied with graduates’ use of creative thinking. Secondly,
there are theoretical and empirical accounts about adult playfulness that describe its relation to positive outcomes including: quality of life, creativity and spontaneity,
virtuousness, stress coping and academic achievement. Playfulness also has the potential in serving as a lubricant in social situations and for teamwork in workrelated settings. There is a clear relationship between exhibiting playfulness and experiencing positive emotions. In this paper I suggest that outdoor educators engage
in “playtime” and I propose a pedagogy of play to do this. However, we need to overcome the Victorian values of our educational past and its cultural association of playtime as childish and frivolous, since, as Proyer and Ruch (2011) argue, playfulness can be seen as an intellectual act, which opposes the view of playfulness in adults as
being childish and without any great sense
Real-Time Visual Feedback of Airflow in Voice Training: Aerodynamic Properties of Two Flow Ball Devices
Get PDFSummary
Objectives:
Flow ball devices have been used as teaching tools to provide visual real-time feedback of airflow during singing. This study aims at exploring static back pressure and ball height as function of flow for two devices, marketed as flow ball and floating ball game.
Study Design:
This is a comparative descriptive study.
Methods:
A flow-driven vocal tract simulator was used to investigate the aerodynamic properties of these two devices, testing them for four different ball sizes. The flow range investigated was between 0 and 0.5 L/s. Audio, flow, pressure, and ball height were recorded.
Results:
The flow pressure profiles for both tested devices were similar to those observed in previous studies on narrow tubes. For lifting the ball, both devices had a flow and a pressure threshold. The tested floating ball game required considerably higher back pressure for a given flow as compared with the flow ball.
Conclusions:
Both tested devices have similar effects on back pressure as straws of 3.7 and 3.0 mm in diameter for the flow ball and the floating ball game, respectively. One might argue that both devices could be used as tools for practicing semi-occluded vocal tract exercises, with the additional benefit of providing real-time visual feedback of airflow during phonation. The flow threshold, combined with the flow feedback, would increase awareness of flow, rather than of pressure, during exercises using a flow ball device
Youth Work Process, Product and Practice:creating an authentic curriculum in work with young people
No full textYouth Work Process and Practice provides an overview of the central concerns in youth work today, exploring what youth work actually consists in and developing an authentic theoretical framework for practice.
This accessible textbook places the role of the curriculum and idea of practice as a process at the centre of youth work. Exploring important aspects of practice – such as empowerment, participation and choice, group work, experiential learning and the importance of relationship building – Jon Ord explains how the idea of curriculum can be used to communicate, legitimate and develop youth worth practice, as well as help to articulate its value and importance.
The book includes a detailed and up-to-date analysis of the policy climate, looks at the implications of its focus on measurability and outcomes and discusses the impact of devolution in the UK on youth work practice. It contrasts dominant contemporary perspectives of youth and youth culture and argues that, rather than competing, ‘informal’ and ‘social’ education are twin aspects of an educational practice which must emphasises both individual development and wider social change.
Youth Work Process and Practice is an essential read for all students of youth and community work and will also be an important reference for practising youth workers
"Environmental awareness" and rock climbing: changing pedagogies to enhance pro-environmental graduate attributes
No full textGeography has long been seen as having a central role in education for sustainable development, and yet the degree to which a geographical education translates to personal capacities for action has been questioned. Having struggled for some years to engage Outdoor Adventure Education students with physical geography science-based knowledge of the environment, we trialled a pedagogical shift to emphasize a relational, self-in-environment consciousness developed through autoethnography. We recount this experience to suggest that a similar approach may have potential to connect geography students’ cognitive knowledge of societies and environments with personal identities and capacities for action