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Western Society for Physical Education of College Women |
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2004 |
Abstracts of Research and Scholarly Presentations
The purpose is to show the method of collecting digital video and using the video to break down the movement frame by frame. It's a useful visual technique and the software is free for instructional purposes.
With over 7,000 franchises in the United States and a dozen other countries around the world, Curves Fitness Centers for women have seen tremendous growth in their first decade of existence. The Curves 30 minute workout is targeted and appeals to middle aged women, in part, through empowerment rhetoric. Curves markets its franchises as inclusive, female-centered, non-competitive, supportive, and empowering communities whose purpose is to support female health. We seek to examine the emancipatory potential of this rhetoric through the use of participant observation, focus groups, interviews, and textual analysis of Curves publications. In their descriptions, women contrasted Curves to other gyms and classes in which isolation, competitiveness, physical difficulty, and emphasis on appearance were demoralizing. Despite the emergence of multiple discourses, we argue that far from liberating, Curves reproduces, rather than resists, restrictive and finite notions of femininity and health. Progress and success within Curves is defined and quantified by body surveillance strategies, including the preoccupation with weight loss and size reduction. We argue that in place of a genuine community Curves produces a feeling of community grounded in the member's shared dislike of exercise and mutual discomfort with their bodies. Curves contributes to women's alienation from their bodies by promoting psychic fragmentation of the body into good and bad parts and substitution of quantitative "truths" for sensual knowledge of the body.
In this presentation, I am pleased to present an update on my research about the Women's Challenge international cycling stage race, a project supported by the Society's Professional Development award. In the past year, I have studied the history of other prominent international road races for women cyclists and examined the role of the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) in governing such races. Despite the inherent difficulties associated with locating historical artifacts, particularly those associated with international organizations, I have analyzed the material and ideological restrictions and limitations faced by female cyclists that were, and are, codified by the UCI. As the international governing body for cycling, the UCI sets the rules and regulations for several different cycling disciplines, including road stage racing. The rules for women's stage racing include restrictions that set the maximum distance for individual stages, maximum average distance for all stages, maximum number of race days in an event, and a minimum number of rest days. Men's stage racing rules, on the other hand, establish limits in the other direction, for example, requiring minimum distances. Not surprisingly, men's races cover much more road. The Women's Challenge gained notoriety for breaking these rules, and at one point in its history, had been denied UCI sanctioning on a number of grounds, including excessive individual stage distance, excessive individual stage distance with climbing, excessive number of stages, and lack of required rest days. In addition to the differences in race lengths, in my research on the history and development of women's racing, I have identified an ongoing line of discourse about the differences in the style of women's racing in contrast to that of men. To conclude my presentation, I will share future research plans to examine this discourse and to analyze possible connections to the current difficulties faced by women's cycling advocates, promoters, sponsors and athletes.
In the athletic administration world, there are a large number of problems that occur on a daily basis. In order to conduct and maintain a well-organized athletic program, administrators must be aware of concrete methods to defuse problems as they occur. This presentation defines conflict and problem solving. We identify several types of conflict styles to assist professionals with the handling of each type of encounter. Furthermore, this presentation serves to explain techniques and strategies that athletic professionals may use to address various problematic situations. The presenters include methods to solve conflict issues such as: morphological forced connections, imitation, mind mapping, story-boarding, synectics, and metaphorical think. While this information can be utilized in any setting, it is particularly vital to have knowledge of various conflict resolution strategies to deal with varied personality types in athletics.
In the world of sport, there is scant representation of women as administrators and head coaches. Because of this lack of representation, there are conflicts with women in leadership roles. In order to keep a gender balance, women must be knowledgeable of the statistical data that represent women in sport. This presentation depicts this statistical information and identifies issues regarding gender discrimination, gender differences in career success, gender differences in salaries, and percentages of women serving as administrators, assistant coaches, sport directors, and athletic trainers. This presentation will encourage women in sport to continue to apply for jobs in the area of management. Our goals is to assist women with dealing and coping with the male dominated professions in sport leadership.
Although the scholarship on expectancy theory in sport is extensive, researchers have relied almost entirely on performance cues as sources of expectancy information, neglecting personal and psychological cues. Scholars have assumed that coaches utilize performance impression cues, such as perceived physical ability and past performance, as their sole source of expectancy formation regarding their athletes. What is glaringly missing in this line of research is a direct examination of what coaches actually include when developing expectations of athletes in their care. The Solomon Expectancy Sources Scale (SESS; 2003) was created to determine the sources of information collegiate coaches utilize to assess athlete ability. The purpose of this presentation is to examine the utility of this new measure created to explore collegiate head coaches' assessment of athlete expectations by determining the primary sources of expectancy information used by female intercollegiate coaches. Two samples were queried: Division I intercollegiate head coaches and Junior College track and field coaches. Female intercollegiate head coaches who met the pre-determined criteria (n=24) were issued a demographic questionnaire and the SESS. These coaches represented a variety of sports including basketball, softball, and tennis. Furthermore, female junior college track and field coaches (n=9) were also administered the demographic questionnaire and SESS. The data were analyzed in two ways. First, expectancy sources used most commonly among the two subject pools were identified. Division I coaches relied heavily on psychological variables, such as coachability, when evaluating athlete ability. Junior college track and field coaches relied on physical components such as strength and speed. Second, a series of independent t-tests were performed to determine if there were significant differences in factors used to assess athletic ability between Division I and junior college coaches. These results will be presented and interpreted in light of implications for coach education. |
2003 |
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2000 |
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