This article draws together two linked studies on formal teaching spaces within one university. The first consisted of a multi-method analysis, including observations of four teaching events, interviews with academics and estates staff, analysis of architectural plans, and a talking campus tour. The second study surveyed 166 students about their perceptions of existing teaching spaces and dreams of ideal spaces, eliciting qualitative comments. Researchers used a comparative analysis of the data to generate themes. Academics and students held differing conceptions of space. For students, a functional view prevailed with teacher-centred and dominant approaches (lectures, seminars, tutorials) constraining their imagination of fresh possibilities. Academics reflected on the limits and potential of spaces, surfacing more abstract concepts about familiarity, invisibility, space-time dimensions, territoriality and collegiality. The article explores the boundaries that space may place over imagined and alternative pedagogies, and concludes that familiar, computer-networked and conventional spaces may re-inscribe hierarchical, teacher-centred approaches.
This article explores the relationship between the lack of visible attention to formative assessment in degree specifications and its marginalization in practice. Degree specification documents form part of the quality apparatus emphasizing the accountability and certification duties of assessment. Ironically, a framework designed to assure quality may work to the exclusion of a pedagogic duty to students. This study draws on interview and documentary evidence from 14 programmes at a single UK university, supported by data from a national research project. The authors found that institutional quality frameworks focused programme leaders' attention on summative assessment, usually atomized to the modular unit. The invisibility of formative assessment in documentation reinforced the tendency of modular programmes to have high summative demands, with optional, fragmented and infrequent formative assessment. Heavy workloads, modularity and pedagogic uncertainties compounded the problem. The article concludes with reflections about facilitating a more pervasive culture of formative assessment to improve student learning.
This paper explores the extent to which korfball can be considered egalitarian. The intention of this research was to use ethnographic methods to discover the ways in which gender was negotiated, challenged or recreated in a junior korfball setting and examine to what extent korfball provided an opportunity to promote gender egalitarianism. Analysis of the data incorporated a broad Foucauldian lens and subsequently revealed that sex equality was visible to some degree in the junior korfball space. From observations and interviews it was clear that male domination was rarely evident when considering the vocal nature of the game, the physicality and competitiveness of players, or their general ability and skill, yet when interviewed players still constructed gender in traditional ways. Nevertheless, korfball was seen to offer a space where there were possibilities for sporting equality although the influence that the sport had beyond the court was less apparent. 5 key words: Korfball, Equality, Gender, Mixed-sex, Foucault Introduction While general opportunities for women to engage in sport have clearly improved in recent years, it would be difficult to argue that women are treated equally in all aspects of sport, whether at professional or recreational level. However, while claims that sport remains a predominantly male dominated arena are valid, it is still misleading to assume that all men automatically experience sport positively and all women will invariably have negative experiences. Consequently, one of the central issues at the heart of the gender debate (not only in sport) is the continued approach to treating women and men as completely separate and that their experiences will always be different. What is needed is a more nuanced approach that takes into consideration the complex forms of power operating between and around those that take part in any sporting activity. A Foucauldian lens is a useful starting point when investigating complex and multiple relationships of power. Unlike the binary understandings of power relationships often recognised through hegemony (Connell 2005), Foucault (1978: 94) suggests that power is not 'a system of domination exerted by one group over another'. Subsequently, many writers exploring the field of sport have utilised Foucault to investigate the complex power relations and multiple discourses that reside within sport or physical activity. For instance, Markula and Pringle (2006) in their research into rugby in 1 New Zealand highlight the influence of sport on the gendering of bodies where there is a presumption that the discourse of sport aids the production of contemporary gendered identities where 'masculine and feminine bodies are both docile, yet different' (Markula and Pringle, 2006: 100). By acknowledging these complex relationships of power, further insight can be made into why there remains a lack of appeal for sport by girls (and many boys). While it can be argued that there still remains a disparity between boys and girls levels of participation in sport (Ba...
Korfball was invented in a mixed Primary School in Amsterdam in the early 1900s (IKF, 2006;Summerfield and White, 1989). The main catalyst for the development of korfball was a need for a competitive mixed sport that relied on cooperation and meant boys and girls could participate on a level playing field (Summerfield and White, 1989). Previous research into gender in physical education (PE) has found that young people gain gender-related understandings
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