Yiannis Giossos

While John Locke’s significant contributions to liberal political thought and empiricist epistemology are well recognized, his views on physical education are less explored. The central research question addressed here is: What constitutes the ideal model of physical education according to Locke, and how does it contribute to moral development? Using the historical analysis method, this study aims to reconstruct Locke’s concept of physical education by synthesizing his key educational writings, particularly. The findings indicate that, for Locke, physical education is not merely a practice focused on physical health; rather, it serves a deeper purpose. He emphasizes that cultivating habits through physical training fosters self-control, moderation, and the ability to subordinate impulses to reason—qualities essential for virtuous citizenship in a liberal state. Furthermore, the study reveals that Locke’s ideal model of physical education is that of education through movement. Article visualizations:

Air pollution is a major health-related environmental challenge that affects many aspects of people’s daily lives. For amateur endurance athletes/exercisers, air pollution can cause, apart from the common health issues, reduced performance capacity during training and races. The most significant inconveniences that these amateur athletes/exercisers have to deal with, are related to breathing difficulty, increased heart rate, cough or respiratory problems, and eye or nose discomfort. The aim of this study is to create a psychometric scale that estimates the nuisance/discomfort that amateur endurance athletes/exercisers (triathlon, cycling, running, swimming) feel during their training, under conditions of increased air pollution, and to see how this is linked to demographic characteristics. The main overall purpose is the identification of possible correlation between air pollution and reduced athletic performance, as well as between air pollution and the wellbeing of amateur endurance athletes/exercisers, and to thus enable recommendations on training in a polluted environment. To this aim, a questionnaire was developed, initially through a pilot stage. The fully developed scale was provided to two hundred and ninety-two (292) amateur endurance athletes/exercisers for an exploratory factor analysis to be carried out. The exploratory factor analysis indicated three (3) factors accounting for 37.11% of the overall variance. The first factor “Physical discomfort” included nine (9) questions, the second factor “Lack of discomfort” five (5) questions, and the third factor “No general discomfort” six (6) questions. The degree of reliability was satisfactory, since Cronbach’s a coefficient was 0.841 for the first factor, 0.642 for the second, and 0.766 for the third factor. Subsequently, fluctuation analysis (ANOVA), multivariate fluctuation analysis (MANOVA), and Pearson’s r coefficient were used to indicate correlations between the independent variables and the three factors identified. Correlation between discomfort due to air pollution and the place of residence, as well as the presence or absence of allergies, was indicated. On the other hand, there were no significant statistical differences between gender, type of sport, the volume of training, the presence or not of respiratory problems, and smoking. Overall, the scale can be considered both valid and reliable.

Teaching physical education (PE) involves adopting contemporary instructional models and teaching methods. Especially at an undergraduate level, the teachers’ participation in professional communities can support their self-efficacy in adopting context-specific instructional models, leading to an improvement in student learning. The aim of the present study was to examine the effects of preservice PE teachers’ participation in a professional development (PD) program designed according to the principles of the community of inquiry (CoI) on their self-efficacy in teaching physical education using instructional models. Twenty-three preservice PE teachers (male = 11, female = 12) at the University of Athens, Greece, participated during the 2022–2023 spring semester in a PD program specifically designed according to the CoI principles to support them in the use of PE curriculum models in a secondary school practicum. A pre-post convergent mixed methodology was used, with quantitative (Ohio State Teacher Efficacy Scale, OSTES) and qualitative (semi-structured interviews) data evaluating the changes in the participants’ self-efficacy in the use of instructional models. Results showed that even though the program was evaluated as effective in terms of supporting the participants’ knowledge and skills on the use of the models, there were no statistically significant changes in their OSTES self-efficacy indices. Given the complexity of PE teaching and the latent structure of the self-efficacy trait, a longer duration of similar PD programs is suggested.

Undoubtfully in covid-19 era one of the sectors seriously affected is that of education. More specifically, an issue widely discussed is that of the form of education offered to the interested parties under the new circumstances. Worldwide, at all levels of education (primary, secondary and tertiary), both educators and learners were forced by the exogenous factor of pandemic, not only to work at distance from their educational institution, but also to adjust in e-learning educational procedures in a very short time. Focusing on tertiary education, this rapid unavoidable change brought forward several educational issues and dysfunctions, as these are revealed from researchers’ publications. Though these issues and concerns are related to issues of unfairness, nevertheless this has not been pinpointed in literature. Thus, the aim of this paper is to identify which elements of unfairness are raised due to the constraints and dysfunctions occurred from the sudden change from face-to-face to online distance learning. For these purpose 15 related papers are critical reviewed. The results showed unfairness elements across countries, within countries, among universities, within universities and among students have been identified. More over two elements of unfairness have a horizontal impact in tertiary education since the beginning of the pandemic era. These unfairness issues highlighted seem that will engage the tertiary educational community and educational community in general, since distance education may become a dominant form of education in the near future. Thus, issues and concerns of fairness at distance education need to come to the proscenium.

The aim of this research was to study the differences in social presence and autonomy concerning the two methods of education used in a training program for science teachers in the years 2015-2016. The first method was the traditional face to face and the other was the Distance Education method. In particular, the study focused on whether there are differences in the social presence and autonomy between the two teaching methods, and the teaching experience of the participants. A closed-type questionnaire of Likert type was used to collect the data, while t-test for independent samples was used for statistical analysis. The study indicated differences in the social presence and autonomy between the two methods of teaching.