Observed need-supportive and need-thwarting teaching behavior in physical education: Do teachers' motivational orientations matter?

ObjectivesThe behaviors physical education (PE) teachers engage in affect a number of important student outcomes. Therefore, it is essential to study the antecedents of these teaching behaviors.Design and methodGrounded in Self-Determination Theory, this cross-sectional study explored the relations between PE teachers' autonomous and controlled motivational orientations and a variety of observed need-supportive and need-thwarting teaching behaviors in 79 PE classes by means of regression analyses.ResultsControl-oriented teachers made less use of an overall need-supportive teaching style and provided less structure during the activity in particular, while they engaged in more need-thwarting teaching behavior in general and in more controlling and cold teaching behavior in particular.ConclusionAlthough autonomy-oriented teachers tended to display the opposite pattern of correlates, these associations were non-significant. As the current findings suggest that teachers' actual teaching behavior is rooted at least partly in their own dispositional motivational orientation, they may inform the design of effective continuous professional development programs and interventions aimed at enhancing teachers' need-supportive teaching. Directions for future research are discussed.     

Social relationships and social support among post‐war youth in Northern Uganda

Although social relationships and social support are salient factors for post‐war adolescents' psychosocial coping and adjustment, there is only limited information regarding war‐affected adolescents' views on social support and the relationships within which social support is provided. This study therefore explored both elements among a clinical sample of 20 adolescents living in post‐war Northern Uganda. Following Braun and Clarke's thematic analysis, we found a prominent role of the biological mother and other primary biological family members in the upbringing of our participants. Spiritual and material support were perceived to be the most important type of support, respectively, while the adolescents were growing up and in their current lives. These findings provide support for the perception that caregiving systems are adaptable to particular sociocultural contexts. Further, the importance of particular functions of social support could signify a potentially selective buffering effect of these functions in adverse contexts. Because of the importance of the primary biological family and the salient role of parent–child relationships in the face of adversity, future research needs to focus on this particular kind of social relationship in contexts of prolonged collective violence.     

To Recycle or Not to Recycle? An Intergenerational Approach to Nuclear Fuel Cycles

This paper approaches the choice between the open and closed nuclear fuel cycles as a matter of intergenerational justice, by revealing the value conflicts in the production of nuclear energy. The closed fuel cycle improve sustainability in terms of the supply certainty of uranium and involves less long-term radiological risks and proliferation concerns. However, it compromises short-term public health and safety and security, due to the separation of plutonium. The trade-offs in nuclear energy are reducible to a chief trade-off between the present and the future. To what extent should we take care of our produced nuclear waste and to what extent should we accept additional risks to the present generation, in order to diminish the exposure of future generation to those risks? The advocates of the open fuel cycle should explain why they are willing to transfer all the risks for a very long period of time (200,000 years) to future generations. In addition, supporters of the closed fuel cycle should underpin their acceptance of additional risks to the present generation and make the actual reduction of risk to the future plausible.     

Microstructural organization of corpus callosum projections to prefrontal cortex predicts bimanual motor learning

The corpus callosum (CC) is the largest white matter tract in the brain. It enables interhemispheric communication, particularly with respect to bimanual coordination. Here, we use diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) in healthy humans to determine the extent to which structural organization of subregions within the CC would predict how well subjects learn a novel bimanual task. A single DTI scan was taken prior to training. Participants then practiced a bimanual visuomotor task over the course of 2 wk, consisting of multiple coordination patterns. Findings revealed that the predictive power of fractional anisotropy (FA) was a function of CC subregion and practice. That is, FA of the anterior CC, which projects to the prefrontal cortex, predicted bimanual learning rather than the middle CC regions, which connect primary motor cortex. This correlation was specific in that FA correlated significantly with performance of the most difficult frequency ratios tested and not the innately preferred, isochronous frequency ratio. Moreover, the effect was only evident after training and not at initiation of practice. This is the first DTI study in healthy adults which demonstrates that white matter organization of the interhemispheric connections between the prefrontal structures is strongly correlated with motor learning capability.     

The tenuous interface: Policymakers,researchers and user-publics the case of the netherlands’ development cooperation

In development cooperation, the linkage between research and policy is particularly tenuous due to the fact that user-publics are not only far removed, but also more numerous. The interests of the various parties involved in the research policy linkage tend to diverge even more than on the national level. Traditional models of linkage between research and policy therefore do not suffice, especially regarding the involvement of user-public(s) in research priority setting. A simple conceptual model is presented showing some elementary interfaces between the main actors involved, i.e., researchers, policymakers and user-publics. Through a case study of recent development policy changes in The Netherlands aimed at involving the relevant user-publics, issues are raised with regard to the mechanisms of priority setting.     

Economic Hardship and Well-Being: Examining the Relative Role of Individual Resources and Welfare State Effort in Resilience Against Economic Hardship

With the aftermath of the economic crisis starting to fold out, the extent and the conditions under which the experience of economic hardship thwarts subjective well-being spark academic interest. In this paper, we examine the cushioning impact of three immaterial buffers embedded within civil society—namely social networks, religiosity, and confidence in politics—in combination with the cushioning role of the welfare state. Analyzing the 2010 wave of the European Social Survey, the results confirm that the experience of economic hardship is inversely related to happiness. All three proposed protective measures cushion the negative impact of economic strain on happiness, whereby the positive effect of social networks and confidence in politics is stronger in countries with lower levels of social expenditure. The latter finding provides some evidence for the crowding out-thesis but mainly suggests that a strong welfare state can take over the role of protective buffers in civil society, which is helpful as such buffers are less present among the most vulnerable social groups. The results of the analysis are discussed in relation to social science research and public policy.     

Impact of group rejections from a physical activity on physical self-esteem among university students

This study examined the effects of trait physical self-esteem (TPSE) and reasons for group rejections upon state physical self-esteem (SPSE) in a social psychology experiment. Two vignettes were prepared for students to imagine themselves being rejected from a group physical activity. In one vignette, students were rejected by chance, whereas in the other, due to physical incapability. The results indicated that SPSE did not change significantly after rejection by chance, but that SPSE decreased significantly after rejection due to physical incapability. When the sample was divided to subgroups, high TPSE students decreased SPSE to the same level as low TPSE students, and the magnitude of decrease in high TPSE students was even larger than that in low TPSE students after rejection due to physical incapability. The similar pattern was observed in the comparison between male and female students, whereas SPSE of Physical Education major students did not drop as much after rejection due to physical incapability. Contrary to previous research, high TPSE failed to protect the decline of SPSE after group rejections particularly due to physical incapability. The involvement of the importance theory, coping strategies, and sources of rejections needs to be investigated further. Educational implications of the findings are discussed.     

Norms and screening utility of the Dutch version of the Children's Depression Inventory in clinical and nonclinical youths

This study aimed to (a) assess relationships between the Children's Depression Inventory (CDI) and DSM-oriented depression and anxiety scales of the Youth Self Report, (b) develop reliable norms for the CDI, and (c) determine CDI cutoff scores for selecting youngsters at risk for depression and anxiety. A total of 3,073 nonclinical and 511 clinically referred children and adolescents from The Netherlands and Belgium were included. Results showed that CDI scores were significantly related to DSM-oriented symptoms of both depression and anxiety. CDI scores correlated highly with depression symptoms and moderately with anxiety symptoms. Norms for the CDI were determined by means of multiple regression analysis and depended on sex, age, and country. CDI cutoff scores for selecting individuals at risk for depression and anxiety as measured by the DSM-oriented depression and anxiety scales of the Youth Self Report were determined by means of multiple regression analysis and receiver operating characteristic analysis. A CDI score of 16 was found to have the most optimal balance between sensitivity and specificity for depression, whereas a score of 21 provided the best sensitivity and specificity for anxiety in a subsample of children. We conclude that the CDI is an effective instrument for screening depression and to a lesser extent anxiety in primary and secondary care centers, before applying further assessment of high-risk individuals.     

Factorial Validity of the Personality Adjective Checklist in a Dutch-Speaking Sample

We examined the factorial structure of the Dutch version of the Personality Adjective Checklist (PACL–D) in a Belgian sample of 3,012 community-dwelling adults. Exploratory factor analyses revealed a 5-factor structure (Neurotic, Aggressive/Dominant, Introverted vs. Extraverted, Conscientious, and Cooperative), that showed considerable overlap with 3 of the Big Five factors (i.e., Neuroticism, Extraversion, and Conscientiousness). Moreover, the 5-factor structure closely resembled the structure found in the original American PACL and was equivalent across gender and age.     

A Standardized Set of 380 Pictures for Lebanese Arabic: Norms for Name Agreement,Conceptual Familiarity,Imageability, and Subjective Frequency

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research - Research on language processing requires language-specific norms of pictorial and linguistic experimental stimuli across different psycholinguistic variables....