The relationship between commitment and exercise behavior

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between commitment and exercise behavior using the Sport Commitment Model (SCM; J Sport & Exercise Psychology, 15, 1) as a guiding conceptual framework.Design: Cross-sectional survey.Methods: Participants at two universities (N₁=205; 83.4% female; N₂=223; 73.1% female) provided demographic information and completed measures of exercise commitment and frequency of exercise behavior.Results: Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses supported the presence of 5 determinants (personal investments, social support, satisfaction, social constraints, and invovlement alternatives) and 2 dimensions (‘want’ and ‘have’) of commitment. Structural equation modeling analyses supported the predictive utility of the SCM accounting for 31% and 51% of the commitment dimension variance and 12% of the exercise behavior variance respectively. Satisfaction and personal investment predicted both commitment dimensions, whereas alternatives and social constraints predicted ‘have to’ commitment only, and the ‘want to’ commitment dimension was the only significant predictor of exercise behavior.Conclusion: These results render some support for the psychometric properties of the measures used to assess commitment constructs in the exercise domain and provide partial support for the application of the SCM to the study of exercise motivation issues.     

(Mis)Understanding Strategy as a ‘Spectacular Intervention’: A Phenomenological Reflection on the Strategy Orientations Underpinning School Improvement in England

The introduction of the ‘National Strategies’ for primary education in 1998, positioned ‘strategy’ as a powerful instrument for mobilising the school ‘workforce’ in England in the cause of continuous improvement. Government approaches to strategy formulation and enactment appear to reflect an instrumentalist orientation found in many mainstream strategic management publications. This paper reflects on how the strategic pursuit of quick, ‘spectacular’ gains may lead to the loss of ethics of care. Phenomenological insights into modes of being-in-the-world are drawn upon to suggest that a preoccupation with strategy and its accompanying ‘toolkit’ of targets, standards and inspections diminishes a deeper engagement with the meaning and purpose of education. Based on Heidegger’s premise that understanding is at the core of being human, it is posited that the concern with ‘spectacular’ outputs is both superficial and potentially de-humanising. At the root of strategic thinking and the resulting forgetfulness of being is the Cartesian dogma and its dualistic (mis)understandings.     

Four components that sustain teachers’ commitment to students – a relational and temporal model

Teacher commitment is a key factor for explaining how and why teachers care about their students’ learning and well-being, and it is a well-known fact that teachers invest emotionally in their work and their students. The purpose of the article is to contribute to the conceptual underpinning of commitment in relation to the teacher-student relationship and to suggest a conceptual model based on empirical material. Eight teachers were selected for interview, all of whom had been in the profession since 1993 and had reported high commitment throughout their careers. The content of the teachers’ accounts were analysed, with attention to how commitment to students manifested itself in their stories. The analysis resulted in a model consisting of four temporally related components of teacher commitment to students: moral, action/motivational, knowledge/self-confidence and reward/self-esteem. Understanding teacher commitment is important for preventing teacher attrition. Rather than applying general measures to boost commitment, this model provides conceptual bases for addressing deficits in particular components of teacher commitment.     

Proximal Intentions,Non-executed Proximal Intentions and Change of Intentions

This paper investigates the conceptual and empirical possibility of non-executed, non-conscious proximal intentions, i.e., non-conscious proximal intentions to act that do not turn into a final act, but perhaps are vetoed or overcome by an alternative action. It constructs a conceptual framework in which such cases are justifiably considered ‘proximal intentions’. This is achieved by combining Alfred Mele’s notion of non-conscious proximal intentions together with the notion of trying or striving taken from Brian O’Shaughnessy’s model of action. With this framework in hand we analyze empirical electroencephalography (EEG) findings regarding ‘change of intention’ scenarios. Prior to EEG development (and other brain imaging techniques), one would never consider non-executed, non-conscious proximal intentions a case of intention at all. However, with technological and interpretable development of EEG, a whole group of so called ‘intentions’ appears, and the main aim of the paper is to justify this expanded usage.     

Fostering Change-Oriented Behaviors: A Broaden-and-Build Model

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to develop and test a broaden-and-build model relating LMX to employees’ change-oriented behaviors (creative performance and taking charge) through the mediators of positive affect and psychological capital.

Design/Methodology/Approach

Time-lagged, two-source data were collected from 248 participants and 40 direct leaders, which composed a heterogeneous sample of professional jobs from a three-wave data collection strategy. Mplus was employed to test the proposed hypotheses.

Findings

We found that LMX predicts employees’ change-oriented behaviors through two sequential paths: (a) the positive affect mediates the relationship between LMX and employee psychological capital, and (b) psychological capital mediates the relationship between positive affect and employees’ creative performance and taking charge. Our results provide a logical explanation of the ‘broadening’ and ‘building’ mechanisms through which LMX enhances employees’ change-oriented behaviors.

Implications

This study specifically suggests affective and psychological mechanisms by promoting the broadening and building phases that facilitate the transformation of individual perceptions of LMX, positive affect, and psychological capital in explaining employees’ creative performance and taking charge.

Originality/Value

This study develops a broaden-and-build model of change-oriented behaviors and contributes to research on proactive behaviors in the context of leader-member relationships.

     

Values and psychological well-being among adolescents – are some values ‘healthier’ than others?

We analyzed links between psychological well-being (PWB: autonomy, environmental mastery, personal growth, relationships, purpose, self-acceptance) and values among 147 adolescents. Values corresponded with PWB: Openness to change correlated positively with Autonomy and negatively with Purpose in Life; Self-enhancement negatively with Environmental Mastery, Personal Growth and Positive Relationships; Self-transcendence positively with Personal Growth and Positive Relationships; Conservation negatively with Autonomy, but positively with Purpose in Life. We identified four value clusters: ‘Young wolves’ (strong openness and self-enhancement) experienced stronger autonomy but a lower positive relationships; ‘Post-materialists’ (openness and self-transcendence), experienced stronger autonomy and positive relationships; ‘spiritual traditionalists’ (conservation and self-transcendence), had higher sense of personal growth and positive relationships; and the ‘undecided’ (no dominating value set) experienced lower autonomy and personal-growth.     

Interpreting the Butterfly Dream

This paper follows the tradition of treating Zhuangzi's Butterfly Dream episode as presenting a version of skepticism. However, unlike the prevalent interpretations within that tradition, it attempts to show that the skepticism conveyed in the episode is more radical than it has been conceived, such that the episode can be read as a skeptical response to Descartes’ refutation of skepticism based on the Cogito, ergo sum proof. The paper explains how the lack of commitment in Zhuangzi to the dubious assumption about ‘I’ that it necessarily refers to something existing to which Descartes seems to uncritically adhere allows Zhuangzi to doubt what for Descartes is absolutely indubitable: I exist.     

Rehabilitating neutrality

This article responds to Janet Kourany’s proposal, in Philosophy of Science after Feminism, that scientific practices be held to the ideal of ‘socially responsible science’, to produce results that are not only cognitively sound, but also significant in the light of values ‘that can be morally justified’. Kourany also urges the development of ‘contextualized philosophy of science’—of which feminist philosophy of science is exemplary—that is ‘politically engaged’ and ‘activist’, ‘informed by analyses of the actual ways in which science interacts with the wider society in which it occurs, the ways in which science is shaped by and in turn shapes society’, and that can contribute to understanding both the cognitive and social dimensions of science. Although I share Kourany’s commitment to contextualized philosophy of science, I question her proposed ideal of ‘socially responsible science’ and the grounds she provides for adopting it. My argument leads me to defend rehabilitating the traditional ideal of the ‘neutrality’ of science, which I reinterpret as the ideal of ‘inclusiveness and evenhandedness’.     

Transient convergence and relational sensibility: Beyond the modern constitution of nature

The paper builds on the critique of what Latour (1993) terms the ‘modern constitution’ and its configuration of nature as an independent and external entity to human culture and politics. The paper suggests that, firstly, moving beyond the modern constitution to a world of amodern or postnature (Braun, 2004, Hayles, 1999) marks a shift from ontological stability to ontological instability, where ‘nature’ is now constituted by merging and emerging ontologies. In this unstable new world order, the paper argues that postnature should be understood as a transient convergence in a context of flow, union, and divergence. This perspective emphasises the role that emotions play in this relationship, arguing that they are both part and product of the transient convergence of postnature. ‘Humans’ are now constituted in and with the temporary coincidences that form ‘nature’, and the relational sensibility that is produced through this convergence is vital to fully understand the post-natural world. The paper concludes by suggesting that this postnature can provide new premises for protecting the world of which we are a part.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">What is ?Curriculum Theorizing</Emphasis>: for a People Yet to Come

What is ?Curriculum Theory articulates the problematic of difference, diversity, and multiplicity in contemporary curriculum thought. More specifically, this essay argues that the conceptualization of difference that dominates the contemporary curriculum landscape is inadequate to either the task of ontological experimentation or the creation of non-representational ways for thinking a life. Despite the ostensible radicality ascribed to the curricular ideas of difference and multiplicity, What is ?Curriculum Theory argues that these ideas remain wed to an structural or identitarian logic that derives difference from the a priori conditions of the possible. Further, this essay argues that the orthodox conceptualization of difference in contemporary curriculum studies is complicit with the capitalist commitment to quantitative multiplicity, or rather, the proliferation of ‘multiple consumer choices’. Following this problematic, the task of this paper is oriented to the conceptualization of difference adequate to the creation of a people yet-to-come, or rather, a people for which no prior image exists. To accomplish this, What is ?Curriculum Theory draws upon Deleuze’s Bergsonism in order to advance a conceptualization of difference that breaks from modes of dialectical negation and contradiction particular to the tyranny of representational thinking. Articulating an image of difference that no longer accords to the possible, this essay composes a thought experiment conceptualizing a pedagogical life in a manner that explicates the transversal relationship between the actual (what is) and the virtual (what is not-yet).     

Cutting it (too) fine

It is widely held that propositions are structured entities. In The Nature and Structure of Content (2007), Jeff King argues that the structure of propositions is none other than the syntactic structure deployed by the speaker/hearers who linguistically produce and consume the sentences that express the propositions. The present paper generalises from King’s position and claims that syntax provides the best in-principle account of propositional structure. It further seeks to show, however, that the account faces serve problems pertaining to the fine individuation of propositions that the account entails. The ‘fineness of cut’ problem has been raised by Collins (The unity of linguistic meaning, 2007) and others. King (Philos Stud 163(3):763–781, 2013) responds to these complaints in ways this paper rebuts. Thus, the very idea of structured propositions is brought into doubt, for the best in-principle account of such structure appears to fail.     

Transitions of Developmental Trajectories of Depressive Symptoms Between Junior and Senior High School Among Youths in Taiwan: Linkages to Symptoms in Young Adulthood

We investigated the heterogeneous developmental trajectories of depressive symptoms in junior and senior high school, the transitions to different trajectories after entering senior high school, and the linkages to the development of depressive symptoms in early adulthood among Taiwanese adolescents. An eight-wave longitudinal data set was analyzed, including 2687 Taiwanese adolescents (51.2% boys, M age?=?14.3 at first wave). Using a manual three-step latent transition growth mixture model, we found that a three-class solution fit the data for both junior high school (termed high-improving, cumulative, and JS-low-stable) and senior high school period (termed heightening, moderate-stable, and HS-low-stable). The depressive symptoms of most individuals maintained at a low level (i.e., low-stable) from adolescence to early adulthood; however, nearly a quarter of the adolescents reported depressive symptoms that were moderately or highly severe in senior high school and beyond. More than 30% of the participants experienced transitioning into a different developmental trajectory between junior and senior high school. When perceiving a higher level of paternal behavioral control, adolescents categorized in the high-improving class in junior high school would have a higher chance to transition to the moderate-stable class than to HS-low-stable class in senior high school. Adolescent boys and girls did not differ in the probability of transitioning between trajectories across junior and senior high school. However, a clear and consistent pattern of symptoms between late adolescence and early adulthood was not observed. These results help elucidate the heterogeneity and fluidity associated with the development of depressive symptoms between early adolescence and early adulthood in light of school transition among youths in Taiwan.     

South[ern] Africa’s Dar ul-‘Ulums: Institutions of Social Change for the Common Good?

Muslim communities in principally non-Muslim nation states (e.g. South Africa, United States of America, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands) established a plethora of Muslim theological institutions. They have done so with the purpose of educating and reinforcing their Muslim identity. These educational structures have given rise to numerous questions that one encounters as one explores the rationale for their formation. Some are: have these institutions contributed towards the growth of Muslim extremism as argued by American and European Think Tanks? If so, then in which and why did they do so? If not, then why have they been falsely accused, and how should Muslims counter these erroneous criticisms? And, more importantly, have some of these educational institutions—as agents of ‘social change’—contributed towards the ‘common good’ of the society? In response, the article attempts to investigate the reasons for the formation of these Muslim educational institutions within a broad Southern Africa democratic context. It prefaces the discussion by first constructing ‘social change’ as a viable theoretical frame and it thereafter places the madrasas and Dar ul-‘Ulums within the mentioned context prior to reflecting upon the notion of the ‘common good.’ It then proceeds by making reference to the Dar ul-‘Ulum curriculum that plays a significant role in shaping and moulding the theologians’ thinking and behaviour. It concludes by questioning to what extent the type of theological curriculum that they constructed assists them to contribute towards the ‘common good’ of Southern Africa’ societies.     

‘That&#x27;s just what I do’: Placing emotion in academic activism

In this paper, I wish to critically reflect on the role of emotion/s in how I position myself with regards to research, teaching and learning, drawing on experiences over the past three years as a human geography lecturer ‘doing’ research with refugees and asylum seekers in a local inner city area. While there has been increasing debate regarding what constitutes ‘the activist-academic’, in particular deconstructing any dualism or border between ‘academic’ and ‘activist’, the motivation for undertaking such a role is generally ascribed to an ‘ideological commitment’ to social and personal change of one type or another. For me, such a commitment cannot be separated from how I feel about the issues that I research, learn and teach about. In particular, I explore how emotions relate across different spaces and places in my life to produce motivation for activism and how that activism – specifically the encounters with people through it – feeds back into emotional geographies across my professional (and personal) endeavours. More broadly, I'm concerned with the ways in which emotional becomings and the interconnectivities across spaces of activity/ism and everyday life play out beyond my own individual subjective experience, but rather are caught up in ‘situated, relational perspectives’ (after Bondi, 2005). I argue that recognising the significance of emotion has implications for how we conduct and disseminate research.     

Advancing a grounded theory of parental support in competitive girls’ golf

Parental support in youth sport has been associated with positive athlete outcomes, such as sport enjoyment and continued participation. Although research has demonstrated the significant and influential role parents fulfil in the youth sport context, there remains a dearth of theoretical frameworks detailing parental support in youth sport and an absence of empirical research examining parental support across athlete development stages and sports. The present study sought to examine athletes’ perceptions of parental support, with a view to advancing a grounded theory of parental support in youth golf. Fourteen online synchronous focus groups were conducted with an international sample (Australia, Canada, England, Finland, Ireland, New Zealand, Scotland) of 61 girls, in the specialising (n = 27) and investment stages (n = 34) of athlete development. Data were analysed in three phases: open-coding, axial coding, and theoretical integration. The substantive grounded theory is constructed on the core category of ‘Individual Parental Support Preferences’. This core category is underpinned by four sub-categories of parental support which were evident across development stages: instrumental, informational, emotional, and autonomy support, and is influenced by a host of athlete (e.g., athletes’ performance), parent (e.g., parents’ knowledge), and contextual characteristics (e.g., location). Unconditional parental support is an important aspect of emotional support, however the concept of adopting a person-first approach to sport parenting is novel. These results provide a rich and novel insight of parental support in girls’ golf, advancing a grounded theoretical understanding of parental support mechanisms in a youth sport context.     

Small acts,kind words and “not too much fuss”: Implicit activisms

In this paper, we suggest that social scientists' accounts of ‘activism’ have too often tended to foreground and romanticise the grandiose, the iconic, and the unquestionably meaning-ful, to the exclusion of different kinds of ‘activism’. Thus, while there is a rich social-scientific literature chronicling a social history of insurrectionary protests and key figures/thinkers, we suggest that there is more to ‘activism’ (and there are more kinds of ‘activism’) than this. In short, we argue that much can be learnt from what we term implicit activisms which – being small-scale, personal, quotidian and proceeding with little fanfare – have typically gone uncharted in social-scientific understanding of ‘activism’. This paper will reflect upon one example of this kind of ‘implicit’ activism, by re-presenting findings from interviews undertaken with 150 parents/carers, during an evaluation of a ‘Sure Start’ Centre in the East Midlands, UK. From these interviews emerged a sense of how the Centre (and the parents/carers, staff and material facilities therein) had come to matter profoundly to these parents/carers. We suggest that these interviews extend and unsettle many social-scientific accounts of ‘activism’ in three key senses. First: in evoking the specific kinds of everyday, personal, affective bonds which lead people to care. Second: in evoking the kinds of small acts, words and gestures which can instigate and reciprocate/reproduce such care. And third: in suggesting how such everyday, affective bonds and acts can ultimately constitute political activism and commitment, albeit of a kind which seeks to proceed with ‘not too much fuss’.     

Missing -ing in reading: Developmental changes in reading units

College students and school children between the ages of 6 and 10 were asked to search four 50-word passages for instances of the target letter n. The subjects made most letter detection errors on the function words in and and, and on the suffix morpheme -ing. This “missing letter” effect showed a developmental trend, with the proportion of errors on function words and suffix morphemes increasing as a function of school grade. The data are consistent with the hypothesis that frequent linguistic entities such as word-boundary morphemes tend to be unitized in fluent reading, and that the ability to form such units is acquired gradually in the course of learning to read.     

Reading development in agglutinative languages: Evidence from beginning,intermediate, and adult Basque readers

Do typological properties of language, such as agglutination (i.e., the morphological process of adding affixes to the lexeme of a word), have an impact on the development of visual word recognition? To answer this question, we carried out an experiment in which beginning, intermediate, and adult Basque readers (n = 32 each, average age = 7, 11, and 22 years, respectively) needed to read correctly versus incorrectly inflected words embedded in sentences. Half of the targets contained high-frequency stems, and the other half contained low-frequency stems. To each stem, four inflections of different lengths were attached (-a, -ari, -aren, and -arentzat, i.e., inflectional sequences). To test whether the process of word recognition was modulated by the knowledge of word structure in the language, half of the participants’ native language was Basque and the other half’s native language was Spanish. Children showed robust effects of frequency and length of inflection that diminished with age. In addition, the effect of length of inflection was modulated by the frequency of the stem and by the native language. Taken together, these results suggest that word recognition develops from a decoding strategy to a direct lexical access strategy and that this process is modulated by children’s knowledge of the inflectional structure of words from the beginning of their reading experience.